An Investigation Into Product Owner Practices in Scrum Implementations

Abstract

The utilization of the Scrum methodology delineates a separation of roles for a product team, with the Product Owner being responsible for identifying and describing product backlog items and making decisions regarding the priority of these items, ensuring business requirements are being met, and providing feedback throughout the project to the team to ensure that there is success in the deployment of the IT solution. Despite the importance of this role, there is scant research to examine the effectiveness of the Product Owner in the outcomes of the Scrum effort. In this chapter, the authors study and empirically evaluate the efficacy of the Product Owner and the practices and procedures that are inherent to the Scrum methodology, as well as the intervening effects of the challenges of the development process and the changing requirements. They conclude by presenting the results of the analysis and the implications of the findings for future work in Scrum, as well as what the research means for Product Owners within organizations that are employing the Scrum methodology.