- Many agile coaches believe that the product owner
is the most important role on the team.
If you step back a little, that makes a lot of sense.
The product owner owns the product.
They're responsible for setting the direction
and prioritizing the work.
There isn't really a role like this in most organizations.
Some organizations have business analysts
which create project requirements.
Then they deliver those requirements to the team.
A business analyst typically moves in between the business
and the developers.
So if the developers have a question,
they have to go back to the customer and find an answer.
But a product owner should have most of the answers.
If the developers have a question,
they shouldn't have to email someone for an answer.
They own the product and have the authority
to make real-time decisions.
Other organizations might have a product manager.
A product manager is closer to a product owner
than a business analyst,
but there are still some key differences.
A product manager works on the long-term strategy
for a product.
They'll create the budget and look at competing products.
Once they have a vision,
then they'll bring in a product owner
to actually own the product.
In a typical agile team,
a product owner will work off of a product backlog.
A product backlog is a ranked list of different features
that the product owner would like included in the product.
Most teams will put user stories in the product backlog,
but you can really put anything you want.
Now remember, we're using scrum terms here
because that's the most popular agile framework.
You can be on an agile team
without relying on any of these terms.
The important thing to remember
is that you need a customer representative
that owns the product is part of your agile team,
regardless of what you name the role.
The key thing to remember about the product owner
is that they're fully integrated into the team.
They should sit with the team
and be able to answer questions.
So that means that the developer wants to know
if their product should have a check box or radio dial,
they should be able to turn their seat around
and ask the product owner.
A lot of teams struggle when they have a product owner
who's not really committed to the team.
Maybe it's because they were a business analyst
and they're used to just handing off their work
and moving onto the next project.
It could be because the product owner
works with several teams.
Either way, this can cause a lot of problems
when you're delivering a product.
When you don't have a product owner,
then the team loses any sense of direction.
The developers will just deliver the parts of the product
that they can finish first.
This may or may not have the highest customer value.
And that's why it's so important for your product owner
to fully embrace their role.