In the market, Product Owners are most often referred to as product or business analysts who write requirements and are responsible for part of the product: loyalty programs, CRM, online channels, or parts of the customer journey. But this is not how the role of the Product Owner was envisioned by Scrum creator Ken Schwaber.
In no way did I envision the Product Owner becoming a business analyst that was responsible for requirements engineering (Ken Schwaber).
For more information, see Product Owner not proxies. In my experience, if you have correctly defined the product (or product family), the Product Owner inevitably becomes someone at the Board−1 or Board−2 level (in the worst case).
Examples of real products:
- Lending (bank)
- Furniture and home goods (retailer)
- Daily banking and savings (bank)
- Online movie streaming (telecom)
- Payment systems (fintech)
- Tools and equipment (retailer)
A true Product Owner defines the vision and strategy for the product, and their success is measured by business outcomes. They should be responsible for PnL (profits and losses) and ROI. These powers lie at the top of the organization, and delegating them downward often doesn't work well. Business analysts lack the necessary competencies and experience to make such strategic decisions.
But now that you have a real Product Owner on board, a new problem arises: this person is incredibly busy. How can you relieve their workload? Through delegation. And delegation can be done either to the teams or by creating a Product Owner Team.
Delegating to teams
The Product Owners delegate a lot to the teams, leaving only the most critical tasks for themselves. There is no universal list of what exactly to delegate — it depends on the product's scale, the number of teams, and their maturity. Over time, teams learn and can take on more product-related activities.
What the Product Owners usually do themselves:
- Product vision and strategy
- Business value metrics
- High-level ordering of items in the Product Backlog
- Managing expectations of critical stakeholders
- Release decisions
What can be usually delegated:
- Product roadmap
- Creating features / stories and writing requirements
- Validating business hypotheses
- Clarifying requirements with teams
- Industry analysis
The Product Owner delegates these activities primarily to teams that have expertise in product management. However, each team should have this expertise to achieve high adaptability and quality on a product level and avoid creating bottlenecks.
For example, in one company, teams conducted hallway interviews with clients because their members included developers with the necessary skills. (Just to clarify, a developer is a specialist with any product-related skill set: testing, marketing, sales, procurement, risk management.)
Delegating to a Product Owner Team
Another option for delegation is creating a Product Owner Team that acts as an "extension." This team usually includes product managers and representatives from various departments: risk, legal, security, and sales.
Here’s how the Product Owner Team looked like in a fintech company PashaPay.
Disadvantages of the Product Owner's team:
- It is a proxy structure between the Product Owner and the teams, which may cause information to be distorted.
- If the Product Owner Team takes on the task of validating hypotheses and other product-related activities, it removes that responsibility from the teams and leaves them with the role of "feature factories." Therefore, a Product Owner’s team should only be used if the maturity of the other teams is still at a relatively low level, and it’s too early to delegate product activities to them. It is recommended to immediately set a plan and timeline for transferring product competencies to the teams so that this dysfunctional structure does not become the status quo.
Key takeaways:
- If you have correctly defined the product, the Product Owner inevitably becomes someone at the Board−1 or Board−2 level.
- The Product Owner defines the product vision and strategy, and is responsible for PnL/ROI.
- The Product Owner delegates a lot to the teams.
- A second option for delegation is to create a Product Owner Team that acts as an "extension."