Product Owner

Product owner is vital role in agile methodologies. Product owner is a link between customer and development team.

Product owner decides which features to build, setting the priority from business point, accepting and rejecting stories/work. Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog

Product owner should communicate vision/long term goals to the team. Responsible for cascading any information related to changes in product to team in a timely manner.

The Product Owner is one person, not a committee. The Product Owner may represent the desires of a committee in the Product Backlog, but those wanting to change a Product Backlog item’s priority must address the Product Owner.

Product owner does not dictate how work is done and neither he/she has unlimited influence over the process. How much work can be committed in sprint is decided by team depending on velocity.

For the Product Owner to succeed, the entire organization must respect his or her decisions. The Product Owner’s decisions are visible in the content and ordering of the Product Backlog. No one can force the Development Team to work from a different set of requirements.

Remember that sprint in progress is immutable, any changes in sprint should wait until next sprint or if the whole sprint is cancelled all together. It means, product owner cannot add or remove stories or change acceptance criteria when sprint in progress. Idea is that development team should not be chasing changing goal posts during that sprint and instead focus on delivering work to meet all the acceptance criteria.

Product owner should liaise and devote time for development teams to during the sprint. This helps in handling any confusions, handling any unexpected things. This also helps product owner to make sure development is progressing as per the goals set without any deviations from vision.

Product owner decides whether story meets acceptance criteria and take action on accepting or rejecting a story.