Scrum Product Manager / Product Owner Roles and Responsibilities
By Aaron Sanders
Role Definition of the Scrum Product Manager / Product Owner
- “CEO” of the product
- Vertical – focus on long and short term product vision of a product line
- Represents customer’s interest
- Represents the product to the outside world (Customer)
Responsibilities of the Scrum Product Manager / Product Owner
- Responsible for market, business case, and competitive analysis
- Responsible for long and short term product vision
- Responsible for ROI and Net Profit
- Prioritizes features for releases based upon expected ROI
- Writes Acceptance Criteria
- Writes user stories
- Makes tradeoff decisions between scope (value in Expected ROI) and schedule (higher operating expense in longer release cycles)
Challenges facing the Scrum Product Manager / Product Owner
- Resisting the temptation to “manage” the team. The team may not self-organize in the way you would expect it to. This is especially challenging if some team members request your intervention with issues the team should sort out for itself.
- Resisting the temptation to add more work.
- Being willing to make hard choices during a planning meeting.
- Balancing the interests of competing stakeholders.
Aaron Sanders, always in the search for a better way to do business, has learned of Agile early in this decade, and incorporated its principles in his place of work. Recently, he was involved in pushing the definition of Agile to new levels at Yahoo! He is currently collaborating with organizations to steward the emergence of these Agile values and enable widespread adoption. Aaron Sanders writes extensively about Agile in his blog, constant change.
