What does a Product Owner do? The Roles & Responsibilities

Every software development cycle revolves around product owners.
The ideation, structure, collaboration and shipping.

But have you ever wondered what a Product Owner actually does?

In scrum methodologies, a “Product Owner” is described as someone who is a member of the business or key user team. Scrum is a software development process that takes a step-by-step approach to development.

The Product Owner’s roles and responsibilities include determining which features will be included in the product release. The Product Owner prioritizes the user stories for the development team based on client requirements.

Thus the understanding of the role is particularly important, considering how remote development teams, and hiring remote developers is the new and predominant trend in the software industry.

To understand more in detail about Product Owner, let’s have a look at how the role contributes to a software product and channels the product progress in a distributed remote development team —

Product Owner in Software Development

The user’s perspective on development is represented by product owners. They are in charge of creating the product’s vision as well as the strategy to realize it. And it’s their responsibility to make sure that the result of each development cycle matches those goals.

In the Scrum Guide, Ken Schwaber provides a succinct definition:

The Product Owner is responsible for optimizing the product’s value resulting from the work of the Development Team. Depending on the Scrum Team, Organization, and Individual, development can be done in many ways.

Though the activities and functions of a product owner vary depending on the situation, they often have a variety of roles and responsibilities. They can participate in a variety of development activities, including business strategy and product design.

They also engage with project stakeholders regularly, providing developments from the team and vice versa.

Role & Responsibilities of a Product Owner in Software product Development

Let’s look at the roles and responsibilities of a product owner for better understanding;

1. Creating a Vision

The agile product owner is a member of the product development team who defines goals and creates a vision for development projects utilizing their high-level viewpoint. He is in charge of communication with all stakeholders, including customers, business managers, and the development team, across the board.

Despite the flexible and often fast-paced nature of agile product development, a product owner must have a clear vision of business objectives to ensure that the team maintains a cohesive vision. For a project to be successful, everyone involved must be on the same page.

2. Communication & Leadership Skills

To deliver the vision of business goals to other team members, the Product Owner must have good communication and leadership skills. Furthermore, because one of the key objectives of the function is to communicate with a variety of stakeholders, it is critical to be able to persuade team members to achieve the desired outcome.
The collaboration is particularly important when it comes to availing product development services, or hiring dedicated remote product development teams.

3. Must Possess Good Attributes

The entire process of establishing and maintaining customized software necessitates a high level of dedication and confidence on both parties. Empathy, considering the customer as a partner, and acting as his representation to the scrum team are all good Product Owner attributes.

They understand the client’s needs and desire to meet them, but that doesn’t imply they don’t value the input of the team. Knowing all of the advantages and disadvantages, as well as the desired outcome, they find solutions that are in the best interests of the company. As a result, it all boils down to effective communication and collaboration between the parties, with the Product Owner at the helm.

4. Development Strategy

The product owner is regarded as the customer or user expert in a development team. They must gather all the important data about the market, including market trends, preferences, and other pertinent data. This will assist them in developing a development strategy and deciding which product backlogs to prioritize.

New features and functionalities are added in each sprint depending on the needs of the users, with an emphasis on the user experience. The product owner will direct and help the engineering team in adhering to the established criteria and standards.

5. Keep Track of the Product Backlog

The product owner’s job is to compile a list of backlog items and prioritize them based on the company’s overall strategy and goals. In addition, the product owner will need to map out project dependencies to determine the proper development sequence.

Because the product backlog is constantly changing, the PO must make the list accessible to all stakeholders to achieve optimal performance and project outcomes. The product backlog is a living document that should be updated regularly as the project’s requirements change.

6. Acquire Great User Experience

The product owner is regarded as the customer, or user expert, in a development team. All of the user’s insights must be gathered by product owners. By compiling all market data, including trends, preferences, and other pertinent data. This will assist them in developing a development strategy and deciding which product backlogs to prioritize.

New features and functionalities are added in each sprint based on the needs of the users. The product owner is responsible for guiding and assisting the engineering team in adhering to the development strategy and product backlog while considering the user experience.

7. Make Decisions Confidently

The Product Owner’s assertiveness and confidence are other strategic aspects determining the project’s success. Projects are frequently complex, need careful planning. The PO, on the other hand, is the one who makes a difference in terms of efficiency.

The Scrum Product Owner guarantees information flow and is essential for connecting development teams to the business. This is to ensure that the business side can maintain track of the project’s progress even if they are not meeting with the team every day in the office.

8. Must-Have Technical Knowledge

It’s worth noting that when we have a project idea, we sometimes don’t know what technical areas to focus on or don’t have any technical skills at all. Fears that we will not comprehend the development team will assist us in denying the existence of the Product Owner function.

PO is a person who is well-versed in all of our business needs and handles their implementation, as well as explaining all project development processes to you if necessary and assisting in communication with these IT people. There’s no need to be concerned about possible misunderstandings; PO will handle everything.

Hire a Product Owner At Netsmartz

Netsmartz has been building remote development teams, and providing staff augmentation services for over 20+ years now. So, its natural that we understand how important the role of a product owner is.

At Netsmartz, we provide a dedicated team of remote developers, complete with a project manager/product owner at no additional costs.
Not only is our dedicated development team skilled, they collaborate with the product owner we offer to offer you seamless updates, ideations, and mapping of a project.
Essentially taking care of the True north of the software project.

With Remote Development teams at Netsmartz, you have an entire resource set – not just single-handed developers offering sweatshop like services.

On that note, Netsmartz can assist you in finding, hiring, and managing the best software development team members to scale and build your project.
We’ll take care of the time-consuming aspects of hiring & managing while you can be the compass and the captain of the project.

Connect with Netsmartz to learn more!