15 things a Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) actually does
- The Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) is an Entrepreneur – a value Maximizer & Optimizer
- The PSPO sets a solid vision to help the Scrum Team keep laser sharped focus and direction that helps with incremental progress at the end of each sprint
- 1 Product == 1 Product Backlog == 1 Product Owner. Having one PSPO for the product helps with the clarity & focus, ensures quick decision making, and single person accountability for the success of the product.
- To validate the idea the PSPO frequently releases the increment of software to market to gain real customer insights
- The PSPO has the final say on the order of the Product Backlog. The PSPO orders the PBIs in the product backlog by keeping the Value of the PBI, the dependencies between PBIs and the dependencies on the other products in mind.
- The PSPO ensures that most valuable functionality is generated all times by the Development Team.
- The PSPO accounts for the Return on Investment and Total Cost of Ownership before a feature is built.
- The PSPO ensures that all work done by the Development Team originate from the single Product Backlog – a single source of truth.
- To determine the value of the product being delivered the PSPO might use metrics like time to market (cycle time / lead time), percentage of the functionality in the released product used by the customers & the overall customer satisfaction
- The PSPO is accountable for Interacting and engaging with the Stakeholders.
- The PSPO comes to the Sprint planning with a clear business objective in mind and works with the Development Team to craft a sprint goal based upon the forecast
- During the actual Sprint the PSPO is accountable for the Product Backlog Refinement, but may delegate the work to the Development Team.
- The PSPO is the only one who can abnormally terminate the Sprint in case the Sprint goal becomes obsolete.
- The PSPO Is just one person and not a committee
- The PSPO builds trust by closely working with Development Teams. He is not hesitant to delegate the work of writing user stories / Product Backlog items to the Development Team.