Interacting with Customers and Users
The product owner acts on behalf of the product’s customers and users by representing their needs and wants. In order to understand them more, the product owner must discover what those needs and wants are by empathizing with the customers. This can be done through interviews, observations, and feedback gathering sessions with them. Some customers can also be invited to the Sprint Review to see how the product development is going along and give insights on what’s working and what can be improved with the features. It is important for the product owner to be able to use their expertise in translating the customer voices to user stories for the Scrum team to understand.
Interacting with Executives
Aside from representing the end-users, the product owner must also represent the executives and other stakeholders. Executives influence the environment where the Scrum team works and provide the resources needed for the developers to build the product. The product owner is obligated to make the state of the project known to the stakeholders, as requested. This helps the executives plan around the organizational capabilities in making the project happen. Any limitations are communicated to the product owner, and together, they work out solutions and alternatives. The product owner must be able to balance what the customers want with what the organization has, as these have an impact on the product direction the rest of the Scrum Team is following.
As Scrum Teams are self-organizing, product owners are not there to manage the developers. They stand for the customers’ needs and wants. They also interact with everyone on the Scrum Team to clarify requirements, oversee product quality, and make the vision known to everyone.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course:
Course Contents
Section 1: Agile Project Management
Section 2: Using the Agile Manifesto to Deliver Change
Section 3: The 12 Agile Principles
Section 4: The Agile Fundamentals
Section 5: The Declaration of Interdependence
Section 6: Agile Development Frameworks
Section 7: Introduction to Scrum
Section 8: Scrum Projects
Section 9: Scrum Project Roles
Section 10: Meet the Scrum Team
Section 11: Building the Scrum Team
Section 12: Scrum in Projects, Programs & Portfolios
Section 13: How to Manage an Agile Project
Section 14: Leadership Styles
Section 15: The Agile Project Life-cycle
Section 16: Business Justification with Agile
Section 17: Calculating the Benefits With Agile
Section 18: Quality in Agile
Section 19: Acceptance Criteria and the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 20: Quality Management in Scrum
Section 21: Change in Scrum
Section 22: Integrating Change in Scrum
Section 23: Managing Change in Scrum
Section 24: Risk in Scrum
Section 25: Risk Assessment Techniques
Section 26: Initiating an Agile Project
Section 27: Forming the Scrum Team
Section 28: Epics and Personas
Section 29: Creating the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 30: Conduct Release Planning
Section 31: The Project Business Case
Section 32: Planning in Scrum
Section 33: Scrum Boards
Section 34: Sprint Planning
Section 35: User Stories
Section 36: User Stories and Tasks
Section 37: The Sprint Backlog
Section 38: Implementation of Scrum
Section 39: The Daily Scrum
Section 40: The Product Backlog
Section 41: Scrum Charts
Section 42: Review and Retrospective
Section 43: Scrum of Scrums
Section 44: Validating a Sprint
Section 45: Retrospective Sprint
Section 46: Releasing the Product
Section 47: Project Retrospective
Section 48: The Communication Plan
Section 49: Formal Business Sign-off
Section 50: Scaling Scrum
Section 51: Stakeholders
Section 52: Programs and Portfolios