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The Product Owner in a Nexus

Last post 10:35 am December 30, 2019 by Olivier Ledru
6 replies
04:42 pm December 19, 2019

Hi All,

The Product owner of a Nexus integration team ensures that the product backlog is sufficiently refined and thereafter PBIs are are added to the Nexus Sprint Backlog during the Nexus Sprint Planning. My question is in two parts, as I could not find a definitive answer in the Nexus guide - a) I presume there are individual product owners within each scrum teams that are part of the Nexus right? If yes, then b) What role do product owners within various scrum teams play, if holisitically, from a high level, PBIs are already prescribed to the teams? Being a product owner, a visionary is one of the preferred stances, but in this case, the PO within scrum teams is reduced to merely a scribe.


04:59 pm December 19, 2019

Hi @Vaibhav,

 

A) There is one Product Owner per Product.  So in the Nexus assuming the Scrum Teams are building a single integrated product, there is one Product Owner.

B) The Product Owner as in Scrum (Nexus is just Scrum) can delegate work, but is ultimately responsible for their role.  Owning the Product Backlog and the PBIs within it is one of the many roles/stances of the Product Owner and this doesn't change at scale.


05:03 pm December 19, 2019

Ah, thanks Eric - Your answer to a, automatically answers b for me; surely delegation would have to be made w.r.t the scale at which the PO works in the Nexus.


05:08 pm December 19, 2019

I presume there are individual product owners within each scrum teams that are part of the Nexus right?

Each team should work with whoever truly owns the product, and that person should be the Product Owner for each team.


04:03 pm December 20, 2019

 I could not find a definitive answer in the Nexus guide

The Nexus Guide states it very plainly that there is only 1 PO in a Nexus. There is no need for a dedicated PO for each Scrum Team because the Scrum Teams are working off a Single Product Backlog. 

A Nexus works off a single Product Backlog, and as described in the Scrum framework, a Product Backlog has a single Product Owner who has the final say on its contents. (Nexus Guide)


08:01 pm December 29, 2019

What do you think about the case when there are 7 Scrum Teams and they generate 1 single product. Is it mandatory to have only one PO for all teams or it is possible to have PO in each team?


10:35 am December 30, 2019

Imagine you are the PO, and 15 dev team members are working on your product.

Do you really care about the number of Dev Team (probably between 1 and 5)?

Does the number of Dev Team really affect your role, as a Value Maximizer?


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