Who should be the Product Owner?

The Product Owner is a single person:

The Product Owner is one person, not a committee. Committees may exist that advise or influence this person, but any person or body of people wanting an item’s priority changed has to convince the Product Owner to make the change. Otherwise, multiple conflicting lists flourish and the Scrum teams don’t know which list to listen to. Without a single Product Owner, far too much floundering, spin, contention, and frustration will result. (Scrum Methodology pdf v0.9 p165)

• For commercial development, the Product Owner may be the product manager.
• For in-house development efforts, the Product Owner could be the product or process manager, or the user department manager.

What else?

• One of the big jobs (perhaps the biggest) for a SM is to get the P.O. (and the business side generally) to play their role(s) well. This starts with the SM convincing the P.O. and the business that the SM actually understands their world and their concerns, and "feels their pain".

• Within this company, the product owner should not be the "project manager" for the IT project. That role means other things. And I am guessing not the PM for the business project (? -- have not seen that case).

• My PO team consists of an Ops Manager and under that three Ops PMs. We call her PO and them the PO Team. -- deb
  • Are you ok with that? Or is the jury still out? -- Joe
  • Usually at least 2 of 4 attend demo, planning, backlog maint meetings. Usually the PO herself is there. So far this is working, but questions are arising about redundancy and delegation. Any one of them, present at a meeting, should have authority to provide requirements, etc. This is not always the case. We've waited days for one member of that team to get the PO approval on requirements details. This is not acceptable. We need to re-set expectations - responses in 1/2 business day or less.

• The P.O. cannot be an IT manager (per G.B.). But already I have a reasonable exception to that.

• The P.O. does not need to be the project sponsor.

• The P.O. should be senior enough to have (a) a bag of money, and (b) a bat.

• The P.O. should be senior/experienced enough to understand the full scope of the project. There should not be any stakeholder for whom the P.O. does not start the project with a good understanding of their "area". (Else how can he prioritize their needs versus other needs in the project?)

• Part of the role of the P.O. is to motivate the Team and to keep their vision on "the prize" (focus on the key goal(s)). Of course, some POs need more coaching on this. Some POs may assume that the Team will automatically fully understand the business goals and will maintain attention at the business goal level. (To me, this is...not a safe assumption.)

How much does "the business" need to be available to the Team?

• Short Answer: As much as the Team needs (perhaps, demands).

• Longer answer: The provision of business knowledge to the Team can come from many people. Including the BSA, the PM, one or more customer proxies, the product owner, stakeholders, people in the business organization (who might report to the PO), etc. Especially the details.

• The P.O. (and her team) must put in substantial work on the product backlog before the team can start sprinting.

• The P.O. must attend all Iteration Planning Meetings. Well, almost all.

• The P.O. (or, when on vacation, a reasonable proxy) should attend every Daily Stand-up.

What does the Scrum Master do about this?

• One: Keep convincing the P.O. of the benefits of commitment. (Many ways to convince.)

• Two: Solicit a specific commitment up-front.

• Three: Re-solicit additional commitment later.

• Four: Make decisions about whether the P.O. (or the business) is playing enough. (Ex: Who is attending each meeting? Is that enough?)

• Five: Raise any issue as a block to appropriate people (start with coaching first) or to appropriate influencers.

• Six: Periodically remind the team of the PO role, and how they are /not allowed to proxy for her/. This will avoid a blurring of the lines, and keep PO accountable for their role.

Comments

• Seems obvious to me that the P.O. must be a one person. Is a SM experiencing a problem in the company related to that? How is that problem playing out? -- Joe

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