Scrum Product Owner & Efficiency

When it comes to scrum, a product owner is just one of the many different certifications and jobs that you can have in the agile framework known as scrum. It goes by many names depending on location, and a PO is one of the many acronyms that a scrum product owner goes by as well. In this guide, we’ll tell you a little bit about what a scrum product owner is, and how what their purposeful role in the scrum framework actually entails.

What Does a Product Owner Do?

The main thing that a product owner does is tries to maximize the overall efficiency of the work of teams that are in the development process. Basically, the scrum master has power over what exactly is being developed because they have all of the answers and research knowledge to know inside and out what needs to be done. A product owner needs to utilize numerous tools in order to get the best efficiency and productivity for the future work projects, like a backlog (one of the primary tools that a scrum PO will use).

What is a Product Backlog?

The backlog basically lists all things that are going to be worked on in the future. It’s not only a list of current projects and future projects, but it also has some things that have been already done, so the company will only work on things that are in the backlog, and not just taking other stakeholder requests. Of course, they still get ahold of their stakeholders in order to find out what wishes they can do to better their product in development, but this list is also available for every stakeholder so they know the team cannot go out of this scope of development.

Discipline and Authority are Key

When it comes to a successful product owner position, having an authoritative role is the most prominent feature that a product owner will have. Their job is to tell the development team what to do basically. Of course, this doesn’t mean that they cannot listen to anyone that provides ideas, because if they were totalitarian, then it would basically destroy the creative and development process.

Product owners also have supervisors just like any other position in the development process. Some people misunderstand the necessity of a product owner and think that their role is to just boss people around, but this is not the case. A good product owner is not a power tripper by any means, but at the same time, it’s imperative that they do maintain authority so they don’t get walked all over, which can destroy the development team and projects at hand.

Conclusion

Becoming a product owner can literally be a position in which someone is brought in in an agile coaching team, or in other scenarios, it can literally be a position of authority like a CEO or a CFO of a company that is licensed and trained in the ways of scrum. By using a course catalog like that at Agile Coach, you can get professional scrum training for numerous areas and build the networking relationships that you were meant to obtain.