Maximize Customer Value with a Product Owner

Who is accountable for maximizing customer value with the development team at your organization? Do you think of multiple people? Do you have trouble answering the question?

If this is not clearly defined at your organization, it can cause a lot of confusion and a product’s quality may suffer. The Scrum Framework clearly defines the owner as, “The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product resulting from work of the Development Team.” This is done through product backlog management. Only one person, the product owner, owns managing the backlog. This makes it very clear who is responsible for each of the customer’s needs.

I recently heard a question at a networking event around product owners that I wanted to share. The question was, “How does one convince leadership that we need a product owner?” My thoughts were that if you need convincing, try the following:

  • Show leadership the definition of a product owner and get alignment on the role
  • Have one of them volunteer to try the position for at least a sprint worth of work
  • Build transparency with data and facts
  • Have a retrospective to review how it went

This will build empathy and ideally show the need through doing the work and capturing some data.

Who is the product owner at your company? What issues have you faced around product ownership and maximizing customer value?

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