Six Types of “Product” Owners
Nearly 20 years after the publication of the first Scrum book, the product owner role is still riddled with misunderstandings. It’s not uncommon for me to meet someone who refers to her- or himself as a product owner, only to discover that the person owns a feature or the product details but not the entire product. Other times, I meet people who say they are product owners but who manage a whole product portfolio. This article helps you reflect on and improve the way the product owner role is applied at your workplace. It describes six common types of “product” owners. It shows how the roles differ and relate to each other, and it explains how you can effectively apply them.
You can listen to the audio version of this article here: https://www.romanpichler.com/romans-podcasts/six-types-of-product-owners/
Overview
The term product owner is commonly used to refer to six different product roles in my experience. These are:
- The original Scrum product owner who owns a product in its entirety and is responsible for maximising the value it creates.
- A feature owner who manages a major capability with which end users interact like search and navigation on an online retailer’s website.
- A component owner who owns an architecture building block like the persistence layer.
- A platform owner who manages a platform as a collection of shared software assets.
- The SAFe product owner who owns the product details.
- A portfolio owner who manages a group of (related) products.
Each of the roles above is a product management role; anybody playing one of the roles takes on product ownership; and each role can be exciting and rewarding. None is per se better or worse. But as indicated, the ownership scope significantly differs and with it, the empowerment and skills required to succeed.
The following pictures provides an overview of the six roles, which I describe in more detail in the sections below.
Note that some of the roles above can be combined. For example, you could be a product and a feature owner on a larger product, or you could be a portfolio owner and at the same time, manage one of the products in the portfolio, assuming that this neither leads to biased product decisions nor sacrifices sustainable pace.
Scrum Product Owner
As its name suggests, a product owner in Scrum is in charge of a product. Note that the choice of the name is intentional. The role is not called product administrator, feature broker, product backlog manager, user story writer, or project manager — even though that’s sometimes how it is interpreted. It is also not called “product manager” primarily to indicate the level of empowerment and respect product owners require to succeed in their job. But you can think of the product owner as an agile product manager, as I explain in the article “Product Manager vs. Product Owner”.
If the product owner owns a product and is responsible for maximising its value, then it is important to understand what a product is. I regard a (digital) product as an asset that creates value for a group of users and for the business. For example, I am writing this article using Microsoft Word. When I need to take a break from writing, I save the document. Word is the product. But the ability to save the document is a feature, a part of the overall product.
If someone is referred to as product owner, then the individual should own the product in its entirety — like Word in the example — and not just a product part — such as the ability to save a document. Referring to people as product owners who do not manage a product and do not exercise the right ownership is wrong in my mind: It creates confusion and it sets wrong expectations: Someone who owns a product part cannot take on the responsibility of maximising the product’s value and achieving product success. Additionally, the individual does not need the corresponding decision-making authority and does not require the same skills.
A product like Microsoft Word is, of course, likely to be too big to be managed by a single individual: It requires several product people to collaborate. But even in this case, I would suggest that there should only be one product owner. The other product people involved should have roles whose names correctly reflect their scope of ownership, as I discuss below.
To get a more complete picture of the Scrum product owner role, take a look at my product owner guide:
Feature Owner and Component Owner
A feature owner is an individual who owns a capability end users can interact with, for example, the ability to persist a Word document or to edit it. A component owner owns an architecture building block like a user-interface layer or a payment service. Component owners typically require in-depth technical skills. For example, the owner of a persistence service has to be able to describe its interfaces or APIs and converse with the users — the development team members who use the service.
Feature and component owners are responsible for maximising the value their features and components create while ensuring that this does not compromise the product’s overall value creation. This includes describing their functionality, interacting with development teams, participating in product discovery and strategy work, and helping evaluate feedback and data.
I regard feature and component owners as members of a product team, a group of product people who collaboratively manage a larger product. The product team is led by a Scrum product owner who ensures that the right product decisions are made, that a valid product strategy and an actionable roadmap are available, who prioritises the product backlog, and who engages the stakeholders. The feature and component owners own the decisions for their assets, describe, prioritise, and validate their features and components, work with the development teams, and contribute to the product discovery and strategy work, as the picture below illustrates.
Note that the Scrum product owner in the picture above is sometimes also referred to as Chief Product Owner, particularly when feature and component owners are called “product owners”. While I have applied this approach in the past, I now consider it not helpful, as a Scrum product owner should own a product in its entirety.
Read On …
To read the rest of this article and access the remaining tips, please head over to my website: https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/six-types-of-product-owners/
Learn More
You can learn more about effectively applying the product owner role by attending my Product Owner Masterclass and by reading my books “How to Lead in Product Management” and “Agile Product Management with Scrum”.
Source: https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/six-types-of-product-owners/
