What to look for in your Product Owner

It seems now as if the role of Product Owner has always been with us. We constantly hear:

"Let's run that by the Product Owner."

"The Product Owner will need to decide that."

"Let me introduce you to our Product Owner."

Despite the current ubiquity of the role, as far as team roles are concerned, the Product Owner is a relatively recent addition.

The role of Product Owner was established as part of the Scrum framework in the early 1990s. The Scrum framework came about as an approach to find adaptive solutions to complex problems through experimentation and intense collaboration. Like all Agile frameworks, the primary goal of Scrum is to maximize customer value creation, or in the words of the Agile Manifesto, "satisfy the customer".

The inspiration of the Product Owner role was to bring Product Management into direct and ongoing interaction with the team building the product rather than the then common practice of lobbing requirements over the wall to a development group. Instead of acting as an external stakeholder, the Product Owner is a full member of the Scrum Team, in effect, the team's real-time business decision maker.

12 characteristics of effective Product Owners

AN EFFECTIVE PRODUCT OWNER IS EMPOWERED

To be effective, a Product Owner's authority to make business decisions must be respected. In a nutshell, an empowered Product Owner has the organizational authority to resolve any and all conflict related to the product and the ability to unilaterally spend the monies made available to the product.

AN EFFECTIVE PRODUCT OWNER IS A VISIONARY

A Product Owner imagines a future in which, just enough and just in time, the product becomes the thing the customer needs regardless of how those needs shift, changes in available technologies, new laws or regulations, or cultural dynamics.

AN EFFECTIVE PRODUCT OWNER IS A COMMUNICATOR

The Product Owner continuously shares strategic and tactical information, ensuring that the product roadmap and product backlog are visible and understood by all stakeholders at all times.

AN EFFECTIVE PRODUCT OWNER IS AN EMPATHIZER

A Product Owner empathizes with the customer's needs, understanding the customer's job to be done and how the product integrates into and becomes an effective part of the solution for that job to be done.

AN EFFECTIVE PRODUCT OWNER IS AN OPTIMIZER

The Product Owner ensures that the team is always working on the items currently understood to have the greatest value impact for the customer. This optimization balances both short term value creation and long term value sustainability from the customer's perspective.

AN EFFECTIVE PRODUCT OWNER IS A LEADER

The Product Owner establishes product direction by setting a product goal and guiding everyone towards the achievement of that product goal.

AN EFFECTIVE PRODUCT OWNER IS A CRITICAL THINKER

The Product Owner collects, assimilates, and analyzes information and makes product decisions based on what is known.

AN EFFECTIVE PRODUCT OWNER IS FOCUSED

The Product Owner focuses on the most important work deferring attention and action on work with less impact potential and embracing a just enough and just in time mindset.

AN EFFECTIVE PRODUCT OWNER IS ENGAGED

The Product Owner engages with the team in the building of the product. The Product Owner ensures that the team has access at all times to essential business domain expertise to address the business-related questions that inevitably emerge from the act of building.

AN EFFECTIVE PRODUCT OWNER IS A LEARNER

The Product Owner seeks empirical evidence that the product is fit for purpose. The value of items in the product backlog is hypothetical until the items are built and put to a real world test by the customer. The Product Owner actively gathers feedback on the working product from real customers and incorporates new information into future product decisions.

AN EFFECTIVE PRODUCT OWNER IS ADAPTABLE

The Product Owner applies what is learned to improve product direction including product goals and the strategy and tactics to achieve those goals.

AN EFFECTIVE PRODUCT OWNER IS HUMAN

The Product Owner is a human being and as such is subject to human qualities including the making of mistakes. Product Owners will not always make the right decision. The information on which decisions are made is never perfect or complete. Appropriate reaction to and rapid recovery from such mistakes is the measure of an effective Product Owner.