Agile Product Owner Career Profile

As businesses and the technology that powers them have become increasingly intertwined, the historic practice of pitting the business side against the information technology (IT) department has been transformed by the introduction of the Agile Product Owner role. Agile Product Owners help bridge the gap between business and IT product development.

What is a Product Owner’s Role in Agile?

Fred Mastropasqua, PMI-ACP, CSP, CSM, CSPO, MCSE, and one of Villanova University’s Applications of Agile Principles course instructors, teaches that the Product Owner role should come from the business side (as opposed to the IT department) and own the responsibility for the product’s outputs, outcomes and value from planning to release.

Although Product Owners may have a business mindset, they must collaborate successfully with the IT product development team to ensure the final product meets the needs of the business and the customer.

The Agile Product Owner role is distinct from the Agile Scrum Master. Mastropasqua advises against putting one person in charge of these two roles because it could create a conflict of interest, and lead to sacrifices in product quality and team efficiency.  

Agile teams strive to develop products through shorter development cycles, called Sprints, that deliver value. In an Agile environment, development teams cycle through defining, building, testing and deploying a product, while making iterative adjustments based on stakeholder feedback. The Product Owner is critical to this process to ensure quality control, as the bridge between IT and the business, and to ensure backlog is prioritized well.

Agile Product Owner Job Responsibilities

Mastropasqua summarizes project ownership in this way: an Agile team is responsible for how the product is developed, but the Product Owner is responsible for what is actually developed. This means the Product Owner possesses the authority to ensure the product is developed correctly, and also has the responsibility to ensure the product’s output creates value and provides a tangible return on the business investment.

Overseeing the project development process from inception to release generally requires a number of tasks from the Product Owner, who essentially serves as proxy for the customer.

Typical job responsibilities of an Agile Product Owner include:

• Gathering information from stakeholders, customers and users to understand functional goals
• Prioritizing product features based on what is feasible to do and what is desired
• Leading Sprint planning meetings
• Receiving and providing feedback during Sprints
• Making decisions to solve problems (team backlog) that occur during development
• Accepting user stories
• Assessing developing versions of the product to recommend adjustments
• Collaborating with the development team throughout the process
• Overseeing product-related market research, sales and marketing for the product

Skills and Education

An Agile Product Owner’s goal is to deliver a quality product that users will quickly learn to operate and achieve value from. According to Mastropasqua in the Foundations of Agile Methodology course, the Product Owner owns the release plan and release date and is the person directly responsible for the output and/or outcome of the product. Thus, it is the Product Owner’s duty to collaborate with the Agile Scrum Master and the product team to answer their questions and verify all the acceptance criteria has been met before deploying the final product.

A successful Product Owner must be able to bridge the technical perspective of IT with the business lens of customers and organizations. Key skills that equip the Product Owner to accomplish this are decision-making, time management, listening, communication and leadership.

Education programs that can help professionals prepare to become Agile Product Owners, like Villanova University’s Agile program, align with the requirements for process improvement leadership as defined by Scrum.org and the Project Management Institute (PMI).

Villanova’s Certificate in Agile program helps equip professionals to earn industry certifications including PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® from PMI and Professional Scrum Master^TM (PSM) from Scrum.org. Participants who successfully complete the three-course certificate program and a separate certification exam will also earn Villanova’s Professional Certification in Agile & Scrum (PCAS) credential.

As organizations increasingly need educated, experienced leaders at the helm of complex process improvement efforts, Agile Product Owners should consider advanced training to help increase their competitive edge and the likelihood of successful, valuable product deployments.

PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner and PMI-ACP are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.