Comments on: Who Should Be a Product Owner?

By: Roger L. Cauvin

Roger L. Cauvin — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 03:30:00 +0000

The most important attribute of a good product owner or manager is the ability to learn a market. Often, prior knowledge of a product is actually a liability. In September 2007, I wrote:

But "learning" means acquiring knowledge, not having it already. A product manager who is knowledgeable about an industry solely as a result of lengthy prior experience is much less capable - and much less valuable - than a product manager who can quickly master a market and domain. After all, markets change. New competitors enter the landscape, and user and buyer psychographics evolve. Don't you want a product manager who knows how to keep abreast of, or anticipate, these changes rather than relying on the way things used to be? Thus we see that prior domain experience, while helpful, can be a crutch. An insistence on prior industry knowledge amounts to a concession that product managers are not capable of performing their primary learning function.

So I would look for a candidate who has a demonstrated ability to interview prospective customers, analyze a market, and communicate market understanding to the Scrum team.

By: Paul Lear

Paul Lear — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:32:44 +0000

I’m confused. Why do you ‘want to start a Scrum team’ if you don’t have anyone who cares enough about the product to be the owner?

By: jane

jane — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:43:48 +0000

Pick a person who would like to become the product owner and work with a Scrum team.
Local or remote, knowledgeable or clueless, whenever there is a will, there is a way.

By: Jim Ward

Jim Ward — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:22:53 +0000

So you want to start a SCRUM team. This is the wrong project. Think again. I want to start a volleyball team, but I don’t have the players, the net or the ball.

I recall a wise person once say something like don’t make a decision until you have at least three choices. Then don’t decide until you can think of at least three things that could go wrong with each choice. This sounds like a perfect situation to apply that aphorism.

By: Chet Frame

Chet Frame — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:33:37 +0000

I would go with the person who is interested and knows the product. We can use technology to overcome the time zones and telecommunications.

By: Thierry Thelliez

Thierry Thelliez — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:50:28 +0000

Where are most of the customers and power users located? Locally or 10 times zones away? The product owner should be able to have regular face to face meetings with the customers, I think.

If the remote person really knows the market/product/customers, absolutely keep this person! If this person really knows the market, the added value to the project/team will be orders of magnitude more than a local person without any knowledge.

Is this person valuable mostly because of his/her knowledge (more like an expert/consultant)? Or can s/he really drive a value driven prioritization? For my point of view, this is different. For example, having a deep knowledge about airline companies and flight reservations is different than being able to drive priorities for (an sometimes against) the customers and for the company benefit (ROI, competition,…) while implementing an on-line reservation system.

I like Joshua’s suggestion to use both, if practical.

By: Aleh Matus

Aleh Matus — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:01:48 +0000

In this case, I would like to see the Product Owner emerge from within the team.

By: joapen

joapen — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 23:15:20 +0000

I would get the person located 10 times zones away. He knows the customer and they will be more confortable.

By: rick

rick — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:03:05 +0000

Sigh. I’d not go scrum in that case. And I’d look at why the only person who knows your product well enough to be the owner is 10 time zones away. This just reeks of poor management.

If someone forced me, at the point of a gun, to choose I’d choose the local resource. Then I’d start looking at firing the director who oversees this mess.

By: Joshua Hoover

Joshua Hoover — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 21:56:42 +0000

How about you use both? One trains the other in the areas he/she needs to get up to speed on. One will serve as the product owner (local would be my suggestion) and the other a business analyst (10 time zones away). If the person 10 time zones away knows the customers, then is it safe to say that the customers are also distributed globally? If so, having both a PO and BA is likely a good long term solution.