Helping the Product Owner with Automation
According to Scrum Guide at Scrum.org, the Product Owner…
…is one person who represents the organisation and is accountable for effective Product Backlog management, which includes:
- Developing and explicitly communicating the Product Goal;
- Creating and clearly communicating Product Backlog items;
- Ordering Product Backlog items; and,
- Ensuring that the Product Backlog is transparent, visible and understood.
According to the Scaled Agile Framework:
The Product Owner (PO) is a member of the Agile Team responsible for defining Stories and prioritizing the Team Backlog to streamline the execution of program priorities while maintaining the conceptual and technical integrity of the Features or components for the team.
© Scaled Agile, Inc.
Our own definition of role reminds us of the overall responsibility of the PO:
The responsibility of the product owner is to communicate the business and users’ goals and needs so that the team can work efficiently on value-prioritised capability delivery.
Automate the tedious tasks
ScopeMaster automates many of the Product Owner's more tedious tasks
PO responsibilities breakdown
Straying from the SAFe and Scrum definitions slightly, we acknowledge that the role of the BA and the Product Owner often overlap. Here is our (noncomprehensive) list of product owner responsibilities to ensure that…
- …there is a clear, measurable high-level goal (project managers share this responsibility).
- …the team understands the capabilities required to meet the goal.
- …the backlog of Epic, user stories and tasks is maintained.
- …the value and priority of each backlog item is articulated.
- …adequate detail of each backlog item is sufficiently analysed and documented early enough to minimise rework (shift left philosophy).
- …functional backlog items are maintained as concise, clear, consistent user stories.
- …Epics are broken down into user stories early enough to avoid rework and waste (again, as above, shift left).
The Product Owner must ensure that User Stories are:
ScopeMaster will help the PO achieve high standards on nine out of ten of the above quality attributes, in a fraction of the time of doing so manually. It’s like Grammarly for user stories. Request a demo of ScopeMaster here:
Value of a great PO
When the product owner performs their job well, the team is able to understand the value of what they are doing, which directly fuels motivation. The team acquires sufficient detail in a timely manner to avoid rework and waste, which reduces delay and frustration, and the team always has a justifiable reason why they are working on any particular item. The product owner ensures that acceptable understanding of quality (the definition of “done”) is clearly understood.
Impact of a poor PO
The product owner (a role occasionally performed by a business analyst) is absolutely essential to ensure that the users get what they need. The PO has the strongest influence on what work the team should prioritise and is essential in ensuring that the team does the right work, the right way, the first time. Incorrect priorities can sometimes impact outcome, but they are usually corrected by the next planning session. However, if articulation of user needs lacks clarity, lacks consistency, and lacks detail, then the team will be doing the wrong work, the wrong way, and will waste time on a rework. This has a significant negative impact on both team productivity and overall morale.
Be a 10x Product Owner.
Doing the work to maintain a backlog of quality requirements (Epics, user stories, tasks, etc.) can be challenging and requires a high attention to detail. Thanks to ScopeMaster, much of this work is made easier, faster, and more thorough. This saves a product owner the most precious resource of all: time.
A truly adept user story contains ten key characteristics—ScopeMaster can consistently improve nine. That’s nine out of ten categories where ScopeMaster can help POs achieve better user stories. That’s a 10x return on refinement work. With ScopeMaster, you can spend your time where it matters most: value.
