Product Owner (Scrum)
Within Scrum, the Product Owner represents the interests of the the stakeholder and ensures that the development team delivers maximum value to the business:
- The role of Product Owner cannot be combined with the role of Scrum Master
- Product Owners typically host daily standup meetings.
Responsibilities of a Product Owner
Backlog management
The Product Owner is responsible for creating and maintaining the product backlog, which is a prioritized list of features, enhancements, and fixes. They decide the order in which items are worked on based on their understanding of business priorities and stakeholder needs.
Requirement defintion - User stories
The Product Owner works on defining user stories and acceptance criteria that describe the functionality and requirements of the product. These user stories serve as the basis for the development team's work.
Communication - Representing stakeholders
The Product Owner acts as the bridge between the development team and stakeholders, representing the needs and interests of the business, customers, and other stakeholders.
Communication - feedback
They gather feedback from stakeholders, incorporating it into the product backlog to ensure that the team is working on features that provide the most value.
Deciding on priorities
The Product Owner makes decisions about what features and improvements are most valuable and should be developed next. They must balance short-term and long-term goals and make trade-offs between competing priorities.
Deciding on release planning
The Product Owner makes decisions about what features and improvements are most valuable and should be developed next. They must balance short-term and long-term goals and make trade-offs between competing priorities.
Daily development team interactions
The Product Owner collaborates closely with the development team on a daily basis, providing clarifications, answering questions, and ensuring that the team has a clear understanding of the product backlog items.
Delivery acceptance
The Product Owner is responsible for accepting or rejecting the work done by the development team based on whether it meets the acceptance criteria and fulfills the business needs.
Technical background or not?
It would surely help if a Product Owner has a technical background, but it is not essential: He/she focuses on the business side of things. There is a risk that an overly technically skilled Product Owner, focuses too much on the technical side of things, and not the business side of things.