Learn now what a product owner is and what its benefits are for organizations!

Product Owner is an important concept within the Scrum methodology. Responsible for developing projects and monitoring their results, this professional has the analytical capacity to command actions and decide what will be the best steps for the achievement of the final goal to be achieved.

It is important to understand that the Scrum methodology exists so that the processes within a project can be properly structured, facilitating the construction of its phases and offering various types of benefits to the organization in general.

In the framework Scrum, we have 3 well defined roles that are essential to the success of the project we are working on: Product Owner, Scrum Master and Team Development.

If you follow this blog, you should have seen that we have already covered in general those roles that are part of the Scrum Team, right?

In order for you to understand what the product owner is, his responsibilities and the process of choosing such professionals, we have separated, in this article, topics full of content. Keep up!

• What is a Product Owner?
• Responsibilities of the product owner
• Main functions of a professional product owner

Keep reading!

What is a Product Owner? 

The Product Owner (PO) is the Scrum Team member responsible for directing the project according to the needs of the client and other stakeholders. He is the only person responsible for defining the product, incrementing it according to the progress of the project.

In a Scrum Team, there is only one Product Owner, who makes decisions regarding the product. This happens so that there is no divergence in the definition of the product, which would impair the good progress of the project.

The Product Owner must have a good knowledge of the Scrum framework, and have communication skills and decision-making skills. Since he is responsible for setting the Product Backlog, he must have authority for this, and his decision is considered final.

Thus, the best choice is someone from the organization in charge of the project, who is qualified for such a function. This person will act with balance, seeking to meet the needs of clients and stakeholders, but directing the project according to the interests of their own organization.

The performance evaluation can be defined as the identification and measurement of the actions that the employees of an organization carry out during a certain period. The performance evaluation aims to diagnose and analyze the individual and group performance of employees, promoting personal and professional growth as well as better performance. In addition, it provides human resource management with information for making decisions about salaries, bonuses, promotions, layoffs, training and career planning, providing the growth and development of the person being evaluated.

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Responsibilities of the product owner

No one can tell the Development Team to do anything other than what the PO has defined. You see, this person is not the Scrum Team boss. Only the function of the Product Owner is to make the decisions aiming to maximize the work of all involved in order to obtain the highest possible return for the client.

Because of this, many consider that defining the customer as Product Owner is a good choice.

So, the needs of this client and his organization will be guaranteed, right? Not exactly.

Usually, the customer does not really know what they want or need. In addition, this client does not have the necessary knowledge of Scrum and training would  require an unnecessary effort on the part of the Scrum Master.

There are also other problems with this decision, because this PO ends up not attending all the meetings that must be present, besides not taking the time to make the increases in the Product Backlog.

The problem of this client also starts to charge the team instead of collaborating.

It is good to remember that some projects may have more than one client, and since there can only be one Product Owner, this is another good reason why this person is someone from the Scrum Team responsible for generating the product.

Main functions of a professional product owner 

At this point, some of the Product Owner functions are clear enough, are they not? Still, let's get things straight.

As the only person responsible for managing the Product Backlog, it must ensure that all Scrum Team members are aware of these requirements and priorities. For this, it is necessary that the items of the Product Backlog and the priority of these items are expressed clearly and visible to all.

The Product Owner works in conjunction with the Development Team, participating in Sprint Planning. At this planning meeting, the priorities of the Product Backlog will be defined, which will form the Sprint Backlog.

In addition, a goal will be selected, and the Development Team will commit to performing the selected items at the meeting, presenting them to the Sprint delivery. Once the Sprint Backlog has been defined, it is up to the team to define how they will work to comply.

At the end of Sprint, we have the Sprint Review, a meeting in which the Product Owner and the Development Team present the result to the customer, thus obtaining feedback from this customer and other interested parties regarding the increments that have been made in the product.

Based on this feedback, the Product Owner will define what improvements should be made to the next Sprints.

There is also the Sprint Retrospective meeting where the Product Owner and the Development Team work together with the Scrum Master to check the work done in the last Sprint, highlighting points of improvement and solutions to those points, which should be applied already in the next Sprint.

Remember that the Product Owner is a person, not a committee. That is, although it may represent the desire and willingness of a committee, for any changes to the Product Backlog to be made, it is necessary to convince the Product Owner.

Don’t stop now! 

With the increasingly common adoption of Scrum as an agile methodology for project management in the day to day business, the understanding of the concepts and roles of this framework becomes necessary.

Keep in mind that in Scrum all roles are equally important, and it is the sum of the work of each of these roles that ensures the success of a project. As you might note, the Product Owner is the one who drives and makes the necessary decisions to maximize the team's work and the generation of value for the customer and the stakeholders.

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