Role of Product Owner

« Back to Glossary Index

A product owner is the single most important role in Scrum. The product owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and acting as a proxy between stakeholders and the development team. This article describes how the product owner should interact with stakeholders, developers, testers, etc.

What Is A Product Owner?

The product owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and acting as a proxy between stakeholders and the development team. The role of the Scrum Master has traditionally been one that emphasizes management functions, with some implication that it may be held by an individual within traditional organizational structures (line managers).

Managing the Product Backlog

The product owner is responsible for managing the product backlog. He must continually add to and improve the items in it, by accepting or rejecting changes to them as appropriate.

Role of Scrum Team

A proper well-defined role of the development team should be defined in the beginning when you start with any scrum project and that includes writing user stories.

What Is The Role Of Testers?

The tester’s role is to provide feedback on the product so that it can move closer to a releasable state. Their primary responsibility will be testing and validating software functionality, but they should also support the Product Owner in understanding what types of tests are required for user acceptance criteria.

Product Owner and Stakeholders

The product owner should interact with stakeholders on a regular basis to ensure that the product backlog is reflective of their needs and priorities. He must also be able to translate these needs into user stories that can be effectively completed by the development team.

Learning the Market and Customer Needs

The product owner is also responsible for learning the market and customer needs. They should be constantly seeking feedback from customers and other stakeholders to help them prioritize new features and changes to the product backlog.

Liaison Between Product and Development Team

The product owner is also the liaison between the development team and other stakeholders. They should be available to answer questions, encourage feedback and ensure that any issues are resolved quickly so as not to impact overall productivity. Product owners can help by providing support in terms of meeting facilitation or team-building activities for the scrum teams.

Learning the Customers’ Need

The product owner should interact with stakeholders on a regular basis to ensure that the product backlog is reflective of their needs and priorities. He must also be able to translate these needs into user stories that can be effectively completed by the development team.

Product owners can help by providing support in terms of meeting facilitation or team-building activities for the scrum teams. They should also ensure that the product backlog is well maintained and can be easily understood by everyone involved in the project, including stakeholders. The tester’s role is to provide feedback on the product, so it moves closer to a releasable state. Their primary responsibility will be testing software functionality, but they should also support the Product Owner in understanding what types of tests are required for user acceptance criteria.

Scroll to top