Product owners must be able to understand the project and make decisions. They should also be able to follow deadlines and determine the priorities of the work being done by the team. Here are the essential activities that must perform to maintain a productive team of skillful safe product owners:
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- Prioritizes product backlog according to ROI.
- Maintain, create and maintain the product backlog. This is visible to all team members as well as stakeholders.
- Participate daily in Sprint Planning Meetings, Sprint Reviews, and Sprint Reviews. Retrospectives are conducted to clarify the development team's understanding.
- Accepts and terminates work results during the sprint
- In agreement with the development team, creates a definition for done.
- As the voice of the customer communicates the Vision and Goals with the team
- Assists team in the translation of Epics, Themes, and Features into user stories. Helps the team communicate exactly what they need
- Responsible for product profitability (ROI).
- Pragmatic approach to concurrent projects
Collaboration between the Global Product Owner and Local Product Owner
An agile development process will produce better results if the product owner is present with the agile team. In practice, virtual teams can be spread across continents and time zones. These situations could lead to a global owner on-site, and a local owner offshore. This would be in addition to the product development team.
Product owners are also part of the scrum team. They need to work with the scrum masters and the development team. Below are some of the techniques and tools that can be used to facilitate collaboration between them:
Video conferencing is a powerful communication tool that can be used to collaborate with both the traditional team and the agile one. Chat tools such as Skype and instant messaging can be used to quickly clarify any doubts or share information.