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Product Owner

The product owner (PO) is a team member responsible for defining and prioritizing epics and features in the backlogs as well as securing the quality of resulting deliverables.

Description​

The product owners assess the impact of new developments on the overall system. Additionally, they synchronize priorities from various stakeholders to streamline execution while maintaining the conceptual and technical integrity of features and the components the team is responsible for. The product owner is responsible for the quality of the deliveries, including internal and external documentation.

The role extends beyond the local team, involving participation in product management activities, stream planning, and coordination between streams. Ideally, the product owner is collocated with the development team, sharing management, incentives, and culture. Across streams, the product owner collaborates with other teams’ product owners and the assigned product manager for overall coordination.

On a system level, the product owner ensures that system epics are broken down into epics and assigned to the streams. They also make sure the resulting deliverables from the streams can be integrated and tested in system tests.

Responsibilities​

  • Collaborate with product management and other stakeholders to ensure clarity and detail of system requirements and to represent customer/user perspective.
  • Create change requests on system requirements (DFN), and when approved, update epics, features, and stories (ADO).
  • Conduct feasibility and implementation proposals for the system requirement.
  • Ensure epics and features are prepared (defintion of ready (DoR) fulfilled) before the increment planning starts.
  • Provide "acceptance criteria" for epics and features reviewed with test engineers
  • Prioritize and manage the stream (epics) and team (features, stories) backlogs.
  • Accept or reject deliverables by checking that definition of done (DoD) is met for epics, features, and bugs.
  • Manage bugs (scope bugs, test bugs, L4 bugs, etc.) and escalate to the change control board (CCB) if needed.
  • Identify risks and dependencies to other teams and streams.
  • Confirm team commitment to scope and priorities before each sprint.
  • Accountable for the deliverables during development and maintenance.
  • Verify hardware components meet quality, cost, and yield goals.