Agile scrum roles are simple and clear. However, at Cegeka we have to tune them and add roles to be able to work efficiently.
In Agile, only Scrum (not Kanban or XP) defines roles: the Product Owner, the Scrum Master and the Team.
The Product Owner has the vision for the product, sets the priorities and shields the team from interference and confusion about the scope of the project. He makes sure that the project will generate business value and guards the ROI and budget. To achieve that, this person consults all stakeholders and sees to it that there is common understanding of the requirements. He also gives feedback on the product delivered on every iteration in the demo and by (exploratory) testing. The Product Owner has the final say on the ‘what’ of the project. The ‘how’ is for the team. He is also responsible for change management and the deployment of the product.
The Scrum Master guards the (scrum) process and removes impediments which cannot be removed by the team itself. He also shields the team from interference and he challenges the team to improve.
The Team does all the rest: decide on how to build the product, build the product, guard the quality and deliver a deployable product on every iteration.
Simple, isn’t it? This should certainly work for small or in-house applications. However, reality at Cegeka and in many companies is that you often work on larger – even huge – projects or for different customers at the same time. Many IT companies, including Cegeka, work as an external supplier for a customer.
In this post I want to focus on the Product Owner as this is an important role to question when working in larger projects or for several clients.
The Product Owner is a role for the customer
Since the Product Owner should know the business from inside out, it is a role that nearly always should be taken on by the customer. Sometimes a supplier has a long-standing relationship with the customer. This supplier can know the business of the customer very well and therefore he could assume the Product Owner role for the customer. But even then, you have to make sure that the final decision is made by the customer because he knows exactly what generates business value and what not.
On the other hand, Product Ownership for agile projects requires skills and time from the customer who is nearly never available (enough). Often, the customer appoints a group of Product Owners. That is why some people even state that it’s a bad practice to say this is a role for the customer. However, when taking over the role of Product Owner from the customer, you run the risk of building the wrong product… unless you know the customer’s business from inside out.
The Customer Proxy assists the Product Owner
To avoid these problems, we created the role of the Customer Proxy to assist the Product Owner and to make sure the delivered products match the needs of the customer. Is the Customer Proxy then also Product Owner Proxy? Beware of that trap: vision, prioritizing, final decisions, … should remain with the Product Owner (of the customer). Customer Proxies should always be aware that their role is to help a Product Owner.
Since the Product Owner will never be able to do all the work all by himself in large projects, the Customer Proxy helps the Product Owner to detail user stories, to write acceptance criteria, to nail down the definition of done and to test what has been delivered.
When the Product Owner does not have the necessary skills or time, the Customer Proxy helps the Product Owner to create a vision and to promote it, to set the priorities and to define the minimal marketable features and the minimal viable product, to define releases,… However, the Product Owner should have the final say. As a supplier, you must never decide for him.
The Customer Proxy should always be aware that in an ideal situation he is superfluous. We want as little stadia between the end user and the developers as possible to make sure we really deliver the right business value. The more roles we create in between, the more chance we will develop the wrong product.
Conclusion
So we discussed the problems that can arise with Product Owners and we talked about the Customer Proxy role as an additional member in the traditional Scrum team. The main tasks of the Customer Proxy are to assist the Product Owner and to make sure the delivered products match the needs of the customer.
In my next post I will focus on the changing role of the Scrum Master when working in large projects or working for several clients.
The post The Scrum Roles: Part 1 – The Product Owner appeared first on Cegeka Blog.