The Power of a Good Product Owner

The whole nature of a good Agile team means that no one is more important than anyone else. Still, I feel there is a role that often goes underappreciated and, in the worst cases, often overlooked completely.

And that role is the Product Owner.

You see, everyone in a team knows what everyone else does, at a high level. Business Analysts analyse. Developers develop. Testers test. Even the Scrum Master, as diverse as the role can be, most people have a firm grip.

The Product Owner? What do they do? Get priorities from the business? Go to meetings?

Sadly, there is a lot more to it than that. You see, much like the Scrum Master, the Product Owner is a shield to protect the team from some of the more... chaotic aspects of working in Change.

Have you ever had an instance where someone from outside of the team has your details, and you get the request for a favour here or a quick change there? Has that ever started to snowball, so you end up doing more and more favours?

Enter the Product Owner. This glorious being's job is to nip that in the bud by being the conduit through which work gets to the team.

It may indeed be a small change to something, but what if the longer-term strategic plan is to replace the system being changed? Is that favour now counterproductive? That is an extreme example, but you get the gist.

It is just this kind of strategic interface that makes the Product Owner so very, very important. If the priorities change, the Product Owner is there to manage the stakeholders' expectations. There will be a limited capacity, so there will have to be a trade-off.

At its' worst, I have seen teams without a product owner having more and more "high priority" work thrown their way, until everything starts to pile up and nothing anyone wants gets delivered on time or to the expected level of quality.

So, in short: love your Product Owner. And if you don't have one, find one. They are a godsend!