Role of the Product Owner in Scrum (Agile)

In Scrum, one of the flavors of agile methodology of software development, there are three fundamental roles: the Product Owner, The ScrumMaster and the team. In current post let us talk about the Product Owner's role in detail.

The Product Owner represents the customer's interest and prioritizes the backlog of tasks according to the business needs. She/ he participates in the Sprint Planning meeting and evaluates the entire product backlog, prioritizes them and include in or exclude from the next Sprint. She/ he has the final say whether the task should be reprioritized or dropped. The team working on the product development can negotiate with the Product Owner on the priority of the task, but the final discretion lies with the Product Owner only. The Product Owner also decides the acceptance criteria for the potentially shippable product after the Sprint is completed.

At times, the Product Owner gets into the temptation of managing the team. But ideally, this role is not meant for managing or dictating the teams work. Once the tasks are assigned to the individual team members, the self organizing team decides itself on how to execute the same. Another problem with the Product Owner is the temptation to interfere the Sprint while it is in progress. The tasks for a particular Sprint are frozen, once it has started. The Product Owner wants to supersede the allocated tasks by including a new one in the mid of a Sprint. This is wrong.

Once the Sprint is finished, the Product Owner evaluates the shippable product based on the acceptance criteria. She/ he also participates in the Sprint review meeting to ensure that all the tasks are completed and the exit criteria for the Sprint is met.

In a nutshell, the Product Owner needs to keep a right balance between the business needs and prioritizing tasks based on the team's strength.