What is a Scrum Product Owner?

The Scrum product owner could be thought of as a mini-CEO, responsible for maximizing the product’s benefit derived from the cooperation between members of the Scrum team. They accomplish this by aligning the customer’s requirements with the business to ensure that the development team is meeting the demands of the stakeholders and the end-user.

In Scrum, there are three key roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master, and the development team. The individuals in these roles collaborate to meet each sprint and the overall goal of the project and provide worth to the customers.

The product owner doesn’t work in a group as a development team. Instead, they are a mediator between the different groups.

Scrum product owner responsibilities

The Scrum product owner’s role involves many responsibilities. These include creating and communicating the product’s vision and goals, managing the product backlog development, and ensuring that priorities are clear and well-defined.

They must also be able to know and communicate trends in the market, stakeholder and customer requirements, and business goals and objectives. This article will provide a few more details about the duties of a product’s owner.

Making the product backlog, managing it, and prioritizing the backlog of product ideas

Creating and managing the product backlog is essential for the person responsible for creating the backlog. The backlog is built from the roadmap for the product and functions as a to-do list of customer stories, new features, and fixes to the product that the team can work on in future sprints.

When Sprint Planning, the product manager works alongside the team of developers to determine an objective for the sprint and identify what backlog items are to be addressed. The product backlog is revised when backlog items are finished in the sprint.

Examining the progress of the product

The product owner does not perform a technical function in the process of development. They have the charge of monitoring and communicating developments to the other stakeholders and ensuring that the project is running by the schedule.

Inspection and acceptance of the product

It is the product owner’s responsibility to make sure that the work created in each sprint is consistent with the requirements of the product. They are the ones who can decide whether or not to accept the work created in the course of the event.

Understanding and researching customer needs

The product owner should do the necessary market research, advocate for the user, and guide the development team to provide the best value for the customer.

Product owner vs. Product manager – What are the major differences?

There is a possibility of confusion about the product owner and product manager roles. This is normal.

Suppose you’re in the Product Owner vs. Product Manager dialogue. There’s some overlap. But, there are certain key distinctions between the two roles.

• The first is that the role of the product owner is a Scrum role. This means that a manager of products is an administrative role but is also a possible product owner in the Scrum context. Though this is not always the case
• A product owner is concerned with delivering value to customers through rapid and efficient product development.

• Product managers are accountable for much more than the backlog and the priority of the product’s creation. They will constantly contact marketing, sales, engineering, engineering, and many other departments when they bring the product to the market.

The characteristics of a product owner

The product owner on the successful Scrum team is likely to have both hard and soft abilities to carry out their responsibilities successfully.

While their specific technical abilities will differ from project to one, a successful product owner must be aware of the field of knowledge. Here are a few soft and hard skills that product managers should have.

Soft skills of the product owner:

• Visionary: The scrum person who is in charge of the product is the one who fully understands the product. So, they should be able to communicate and act following this vision.
• Team player: The scrum structure is built on three roles. None of them is superior to one the other. The product owner must work with the other Scrum Team members to ensure maximum value delivery and return on investment.
• Communicator: The product owner is the person who acts as the intermediary between the Scrum development team and the product manager, and the other stakeholders. They must also effectively communicate progress, priorities, and vision unambiguously and transparently.

The hard skills of a product owner:

• Analytical skills: The owner must process and take action on data regarding customer requirements and the larger business environment. This will assist them in determining the best way to handle backlog items and explain they are the reasoning to the team working on development if required.
• Skills in project management: Although Scrum teams don’t have a specific “project manager” role, the tasks of a project manager may overlap with those of a product owner. They are responsible for planning timelines, stakeholder management, and others.