Are you confused about the question “what is the function of a product owner”? Or you are thinking about if I became a product owner, what should I do? The roles of a product owner define in scrum methodology. From this methodology, we know a product owner is a crucial part of the business. Moreover, a critical member of the core business owner team.
Scrum is a software development company, that uses progressive approaches to develop software. The responsibilities of the Product Owner are the features expected to be part of the new product. The Product Owner creates user stories following customer essentiality and then prioritizes these stories in the hands of the developers.
Who Is A Product Owner?
A Scrum Framework is a part of an Agile method that helps teams to communicate and be self-organized. In scrum for the success of a product, a product owner is very much responsible. Moreover, a product owner has the liability to manage and optimize the project,s backlog to make it more valuable in the market.
On the other hand, its the Product Manager that is responsible for product planning and implementation throughout the entire Product Lifecycle, which includes gathering and prioritizing the product and customer needs, setting the product’s vision, and working in conjunction with marketing, engineering, and support teams to ensure that customer satisfaction goals are achieved. The Product Manager is also responsible for ensuring that the product is compatible with the overall strategy of the company and its objectives.
The product manager’s job is more critical as companies embrace business agility. Furthermore, as businesses are becoming more customer-focused, there is an imperative to understand and connect with customers’ needs. Therefore, the need for certification grows, and the perfect certification course is Product Management – Practitioner (ICP PDM).
Product Owner’s Roles & Responsibilities-
A product owner plays the role of an intermediary between various departments within a brand. Therefore, product owners are counted as a significant function in Scrum. They gave updates on the project’s progress to all the departments of the company. In fact, it is the job of the person to interact with business owners and collaborates closely in communication with Scrum teams.
Key Roles Should Have Every Product Owners-
A product owner must ensure that the company gets the most profit to develop the product. Therefore, the product owner should work closely with the developing team to ensure that all product requirements are clearly defined and implemented on time. Moreover, a product owner is an essential member of the Scrum team like other important members Scrum master and the whole development team. However, everyone in the group has different key roles. For instance, Scrum masters and product owners have totally different responsibilities that never can be overlapped.
A product owner’s main key role is to maintain product backlog. Therefore, they should do the following activities as part of important key roles.
- The backlog of products must be identified, and each item should be listed in detail.
- Prioritize and arrange the backlog of products in an accurate way. Therefore, the important works remain at the top of the list.
- Prioritize work tasks and the product backlog, that such a way that gives importance to customers’ aims and goals.
- Assess the work performed by members of the team working on development and give constant feedback.
- The Product Owner has to ensure that their product backlog is communicated to the team members.
- The Scrum Team must have clarity about the requirements for the product as well as the expectations of the users.
Responsibilities Of A Product Owner-
● Defining The Vision-
The lively product owner is the key person in the development team. They used their high-level skills to achieve the targeted goals for growing the projects. Moreover, a product owner communicates directly with the project’s board. In fact, they keep contact with business managers and the developmental team. All of these are done because of a clear vision of growing a business.
A product owner creates a roadmap in the vision of helping the team. The product roadmap should include a high-level strategical summary of outlines. Moreover, the shareholder of the project should know all important information through this roadmap.
● Backlog Management-
The next responsibility of a product owner is controlling the backlog. As it is the must-do work for the development team. Therefore, the product owner should make a backlog chart. And prioritized the backlog depending on the business strategy. The product owner has to point out the project’s information depending on the development of the project.
Moreover, the backlog is not a pen-paper mode of the to-do list. It should update regularly depending on the project’s development and its need. The backlog is presented regularly before stakeholders of the project to enhance the project’s performance.
● Prioritizing Needs-
Another key responsibility of a product owner is to maintain a needs checklist. It is a triangle of scope, budget, and time. The product owners should juggle these and prioritize the whole process before stakeholders.
For instance, if a product is scheduled to launch in six months that means it is under development. As the product evolves, the product owner should calculate which area should maintain and how it should be fixed.
● Overseeing Development-
A product spent a lot of time looking carefully at the product’s actual development with prioritizing the product, vision, and maintaining strategy. The product owner is the one of the main members of every event, planning, review, refinement, and sprint.
Primarily the agile owner of the product meets with stakeholders to define a move to take for the next step. Therefore, they met with each other team and recognise the concerned area for improvement.
● Anticipating Client Needs-
One of the most important steps to be taken. A successful and expert product owner easily understands what is the needs of a client and how to anticipate them and manage them in a very beautiful way.
As the product owner is experienced they used their communication skills and knowledge to anticipate the client’s problem and address them in an accurate way. They kept themselves one step ahead of the client.
● Acting As Primary Alliance-
We already mentioned that a product owner works between the brand’s shareholders and the developing team. Therefore, they should be experts in communication. As they have to listen to all the information and decisions from stakeholders. Thereafter, they can give the team members instructions with proper strategy.
Conclusions-
A product owner should have many hats. Therefore, they can change their roles anytime and quickly adopt the new roles. Moreover, a product owner is responsible for the whole development process and final products.
