What Does an Agile Product Owner Do?

What is an Agile Product Owner?

An agile product owner is a person responsible for maximizing the value of the products that are developed by the agile development team. He plays a vital and central role in the product development process by interacting with several departments and teams including customers and then communicating the same to the development team:

Product Owner

The product owner processes the feedback and prioritizes it (known as product backlog) for the development team. He gathers user stories and communicates these to the team members, and he has to manage the backlog. Understanding customer needs, prioritizing them, and communicating the same to the development team is what an agile product owner does.

In doing so, a product owner has to take on several roles including (but not limited to) market analyst, business analyst, product manager, product designer, project manager, and others:

Different Product Owner Roles

A product owner, in general, can take up to 6 different roles:

1. The agile product owner owns the product completely and does everything it takes to maximize the value it delivers
2. As a feature owner who is responsible for a specific product feature or its capability. For example, managing the checkout process on an eCommerce website
3. A component owner is one who is responsible for overlooking a specific architecture building block
4. The platform owner who is responsible for platform management
5. The SAFe product owner who owns the complete product details
6. The portfolio owner manages a set of products that are mostly related.

The idea is to develop a product that is of a high standard and delivers exceptional value to the end-users.

Scrum Product Owner vs. Agile Product Owner
Is agile product owner and scrum product owner the same?

Short answer: Yes.

Scrum is a subset of the agile framework. It is a lightweight framework that is used to generate value. Scrum framework is a 4-step process:

1. Product owner orders product backlog
2. The scrum team does one task at a time quickly which is known as Sprint
3. The stakeholders along with the scrum team analyze the output and tweak if necessary
Repeat.
4. The Scrum Guide defines the product owner as:

“The product owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the scrum team.”

The product owner, in this case, is called a scrum product owner who owns the product fully (like an agile product owner). The role of a ‘product owner’ in both an agile process and scrum process remains the same: To own the product and maximize its value.

When the organization follows the scrum methodology, the product owner is known as a scrum product owner and in the case of an agile framework, the product owner is known as the agile product owner. The role and duties of the product owner remain the same irrespective of the process organization is following (scrum vs. agile).

You can learn more about the agile product owner role here: https://producthq.org/career/agile-pr...

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