What are the Responsibilities and Roles of a Product Owner?

 Do you ever wonder what are the roles and responsibilities of a product owner (PO)?

What do professionals do when they become Certified Scrum Product Owner? This blog article will highly help you to understand the essential tasks played by a product owner. PO has an important role to play in every stage of the software development process.

Who is a Product Owner?

In the initial phases of the product development, the agile product owner is a leader responsible to maximize the value of the products created by the scrum development team.

Key Responsibilities of Certified Scrum Product Owner

(1.) Creating a Vision

Defining a product vision is the responsibility of the Product Owner who creates a vision and manages it through the entire stages of the product development. Hence, PO makes the development team visualize the expected outcome by the users.

The Certified Scrum Product Owner interacts with users to understand their requirements so that they can communicate the same to the team. Also, it is equally important to communicate with the stakeholders to have a clear-cut understanding of the outcome.

The Certified Scrum Product Owner has to be very passionate about the product vision. He/she creates a roadmap for the product vision. A roadmap is nothing but a visual summary to define the future state of the products.

(2.) Manage Product Backlogs

The product owner creates a list of backlog items to prioritize them based on business objectives.

The product backlogs are updated on a day to day basis that tells about the project needs throughout the entire development cycle. With frequent development in backlogs, the certified scrum product owner makes a list of accessible items that’s available for stakeholders to optimize the performance as well as the outcomes of the project.

(3.) Prioritize the Needs

PO prioritizes the needs as per the scope, budget, and time required for project execution.

For example, if there is a deadline for a project to launch within a certain time frame then a certified scrum product owner will define the crucial needs for project development. As Product Owners, they need to cater to the needs of the project and understand the iterations for product elements.

(4.) Understanding the Client Needs

In today’s competitive world it is important to understand the requirements of the clients. Then, it is easy for you to understand the features that need to be implemented in the products.

(5.) Evaluating product progress at each iteration

The product owner is responsible to evaluate product increment whether it is developed as per the vision created for the product or not. If not the development team may revise them in later versions.

The pending tasks can be completed or rescheduled for later stages of development. The Product Owner ensures that the development team delivers the expected outcomes as per the pre-defined strategies. Thus, a Product Owner has multiple roles to play throughout the entire stages of development.

The Final Thoughts

Certified Scrum Product Owner plays a crucial role to deliver the products as per the stakeholder’s requirements. The product owner certification allows you to handle various types of challenges during the development phase. In simple, Product Owners are the owner of the product and a business strategic role. To become a skilful product owner in your team, join a CSPO course and climb the corporate ladder successfully.