What is the role of the Scrum Product Owner?

The product owner is an important part of a Scrum project. He/She represents the interests of the stakeholder community to the Scrum Team.

The product owner is responsible for ensuring clear communication of product or service functionality requirements to the Scrum Team, defining Acceptance Criteria, and ensuring those criteria are met. In other words, the Product Owner is responsible for ensuring that the Scrum Team delivers value. The Product Owner must always maintain a dual view. He/she must understand and support the needs and interests of all stakeholders, while also understanding the needs and workings of the Scrum Team. Because the Product Owner must understand the needs and priorities of the stakeholders, including customers and users, this role is commonly referred to as the Voice of the Customer.

The table given below, summarizes the Product Owner’s responsibilities in the various Scrum processes.

Process	Product Owner Responsibilities
Create Project Vision	Defines the Project Vision Helps create the Project Charter and Project Budget
Identify Scrum Master and Stakeholder(s)	Helps finalize Scrum Master for the project Identifies Stakeholder(s)
Form Scrum Team	Helps determine Scrum Team members Helps develop a Collaboration Plan Helps develop the Team Building Plan with Scrum Master(s)
Develop Epic(s)	Creates Epic(s) and Personas
Create Prioritized Product Backlog	Prioritizes Prioritized Product Backlog Items Defines Done Criteria
Conduct Release Planning	Creates Release Planning Schedule Helps determine Length of Sprint
Create User Stories	Helps create User Stories Defines Acceptance Criteria for every User Story
Approve, Estimate and Commit User Stories	Approves User Stories Facilitates Scrum Team and commit User Stories
Create Tasks	Explains User Stories to the Scrum Team while creating the Task List
Estimate Tasks	Provides guidance and clarification to the Scrum Team in estimating effort for tasks
Create Sprint Backlog	Helps  Scrum Team in creating Spring Backlog
Create Deliverables	Clarifies business requirements to the Scrum Team
Groom Prioritized Product Backlog	Grooms the Prioritized Product Backlog
Demonstrate and Validate Sprints	Accepts/Rejects Deliverables Provides necessary feedback to Scrum Master and Scrum Teams Updates Release Plan and Prioritized Product Backlog
Ship Deliverables	Helps deploy Product Releases and coordinates this with the customer
Retrospect Project	Participates in Retrospective Sprint Meetings

 Responsibilities of the Product Owner in Scrum Processes

The other responsibilities of a Product Owner are:

• Determining the project’s initial overall requirements and kicking off project activities; this may involve interaction with the Program Product Owner and the Portfolio Product Owner to ensure that the project aligns with direction provided by senior management
• Representing user(s) of the product or service with a thorough understanding of the user community
• Securing the initial and ongoing financial resources for the project
• Focusing on value creation and overall Return on Investment (ROI)
• Assessing the viability and ensuring the delivery of the product or service

The Product Owner as the Voice of the Customer (VOC)
As the representative of the stakeholder, the Product Owner is said to be the Voice of the Customer as he ensures that the explicit and implicit needs of the customer are translated into User Stories in the Prioritized Product Backlog and later on used to create project Deliverables for the customer.
Chief Product Owner
In the case of large projects with numerous Scrum Teams, having a Chief Product Owner may be a necessity. This role is responsible for coordinating the work of multiple Product Owners. The Chief Product Owner prepares and maintains the overall Prioritized Product Backlog for the large project, using it to coordinate work through the Product Owners of the Scrum Teams. The Product Owners, in turn, manage their respective parts of the Prioritized Product Backlog.
The Chief Product Owner also interfaces with the Program Product Owner to ensure alignment of the large project with the program goals and objectives.
In short, it is the product owner, who ensures that the team delivers value.

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Scrum vs Traditional Project Management

Traditional project management emphasizes on conducting detailed upfront planning for the project with emphasis on fixing the scope, cost and schedule – and managing those parameters. Whereas, Scrum encourages data-based, iterative decision making in which the primary focus is on delivering products that satisfy customer requirements.

To deliver the greatest amount of value in the shortest amount of time, Scrum promotes prioritization and Time-boxing over fixing the scope, cost and schedule of a project. An important feature of Scrum is self-organization, which allows the individuals who are actually doing the work to estimate and take ownership of tasks.

Following table summarizes many of the differences between Scrum and traditional project management:

Parameters	Scrum	Traditional Project Management
Emphasis is on	People	Processes
Documentation	Minimal – only as required	Comprehensive
Process style	Iterative	Linear
Upfront planning	Low	High
Prioritization of Requirements	Based on business value and regularly updated	Fixed in the Project Plan
Quality assurance	Customer centric	Process centric
Organization	Self-organized	Managed
Management style	Decentralized	Centralized
Change	Updates to Productized Product Backlog	Formal Change Management System
Leadership	Collaborative, Servant Leadership	Command and control
Performance measurement	Business value	Plan conformity
Return on Investment	Early/throughout project life	End of project life
Customer involvement	High throughout the project	Varies depending on the project lifecycle

In traditionally managed projects, Change management is closely related to Configuration Management. The tolerances will be defined within which the Project Manager can manage the day-to-day activities and decisions of the project. The basis for considering the changes will be their magnitude of variation from a baseline value. Also, it needs approval from several people. Responding to change becomes extremely complicated since you need to do lot of documentation and seek approvals.

Change in Scrum works very differently as compared with Traditional Project Management. Scrum is a simple framework which believes in responding quickly to changes in business environment and the ability to respond to changes is one of the reasons that made Scrum popular. The Scrum framework is highly flexible and enables managing changes effectively and efficiently. The Product Owner is responsible for getting the Product Backlog ready and prioritizing the items in the Product Backlog. The Scrum Master and the development team will use the Product Backlog as the basis for planning the Sprints based on the priority of the items listed.

In complex projects, the customers may not have a concrete idea regarding what the end product should look like and what are their actual requirements. Whenever there is a problem or new requirement that needs to be addressed immediately and mandates a change affecting the current Sprint, the Product Owner terminates the Sprint, with approval from relevant stakeholders. Once terminated, the Sprint will be re-planned and restarted to incorporate the new requirements.

However, if the problem or change is not major and does not warrant a change within the current Sprint, the change will be added to the Prioritized Product Backlog and incorporated into the planning for a subsequent Sprint. Scrum projects are completed in an iterative manner delivering value throughout the project lifecycle. In large projects, various cross-functional teams work in parallel across Sprints, delivering potentially shippable solutions at the end of each sprint.

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