The Product Owner represents the voice of the business/customer within the agile team, serving as a bridge between thew traditionally separate technology and business departments. Arguably the most important role in agile practice, the PO is critical to the success of cross-functional teams.
To be effective, the Product Owner must be available daily to meet with the team to clarify and validate User Stories and the business value and objectives associated with them.
Typical Product Owner responsibilities
- Owns the team’s product backlog
- Defines success criteria by which business value is assessed, such as user adoption and feedback
- Ensures alignment of user stories with the expected business value or objectives
- Sets priority of user stories in the team’s product backlog based on business value, stakeholder and business owner input
- Regularly refines and sizes user stories in the product backlog with team collaboration
- Defines acceptance criteria for each user story
- Accepts completed user stories during each sprint that meet the team’s definition of done and specific acceptance criteria defined for that user story
- Monitors team progress by tracking success criteria and delivered business value