The Product Owner Adding Value to Sprints
At the beginning of each sprint and release, he reminds the team of goals and vision of the product thus making the team aware of the overall roadmap of the product. At the end of each sprint, he examines the progress of the product. He is the person who can accept if a story is done. He defines the acceptance criteria and validates that acceptance test is done and meets the DoD (Definition of Done). Focusing on delivering a functional increment of software required by the customer at the end of each sprint he values working software over comprehensive documentation (second value of Agile manifesto). In this way, he optimizes the return on investment(ROI). He also assures the level of quality of the work. In different Agile ceremonies, he can optionally attend stand-up meetings, but he participates in sprint planning and sprint review meetings.
The Product owner is in direct contact with customers and stakeholders. He builds and maintains a constant relationship with stakeholders. He talks to them to find out what they value and what they expect, fulfilling the fourth value of Agile manifesto (valuing customer collaboration over contract negotiation). The Product owner gets the feedback from customers and creates new requests for the sprint planning sessions. In this way, he assures the continuous improvement of the product regarding the third value of Agile manifesto (valuing responding to change over following a plan). If a strategic change is required, he is the only person that can change the direction of the product at the end of the sprint. He can also terminate a sprint if the current items in the product backlog are not in line with the required change.
To assure the success of the product owner, his decisions should be respected by the entire organization. These decisions are visible and transparent through the product backlog items. In large organizations when different teams work on different related products, for each product, one product owner is assigned. These product owners should talk to each other to organize the teams and backlogs to minimize dependencies. In this case, Chief Product Owner role is introduced to keep the product owners synchronized and avoid any conflict or overhead.
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