A few weeks ago, I was teaching an executive
Leading SAFe class, and our
Business Owners were clearly very new to Agile, SAFe and Scrum. As I started the lesson on
Team and Technical Agility, I noticed them leaning in to try and better understand the role of the
SAFe Product Owner. We had begun
ART design prior to the class, and the subject of identifying
Product Owners had already been tabled. After I rattled off my view and answered the many questions that followed, my co-teach said to me,
“That would make an excellent blog”. Today, I am testing that theory. :)
What is the role of the Product Owner in SAFe?
The Product Owner is the empowered voice of the customer for the
Agile Team. Ideally, they come from the part of the organisation that uses the
solution/product
or the part of the organisation that defines solutions/products for
external customers. They need to be subject matter experts in your
business and the solution/product in development. Given that a Product
Owner needs to know your business, sourcing suitable Product Owners
externally is challenging. (Unless, of course, you steal from the
competition!)
SAFe Product Owners are the content authority for the Agile Team.
Which means they are the source of the work and the authority on what is
required and what is acceptable. They perform this role by
collaborating with organisational stakeholders and the Agile Teams to
co-create the
stories that fill the
team backlog.
On a day-to-day basis, the Product Owner is a member of the agile team.
They answer questions about the work from the agile team and provide
feedback on the work that has been delivered. Part of their role is to
confirm that the team has met the acceptance criteria for the work.
It is critical that the Product Owner is empowered. Agile does not
work without empowered Product Owners. Specifically, the SAFe Product
Owner must be empowered to accept user stories for the team and provide
guidance on the scope of the
features in partnership with
Product Management.
As illustrated above, the Product Owner significantly influences the
team's backlog and priorities. If the Product Owner is not empowered and
their decisions are constantly overruled, then the team’s outputs will
be wasted. This is both costly to the organisation and demoralising to
the team.
When it comes to empowering Product Owners,
SAFe Principle #9 provides excellent guidance on the pre-conditions to enable decentralised decision-making. As per David Marquet’s
Turn the Ship Around,
in order to “give control”, the people you are empowering must have the
technical competence to make the right decisions and clarity on the
organisation’s purpose. This requires alignment with the ART’s Business
Owners,
Product Managers and other stakeholders.
One of the ways the SAFe Product Owner maintains alignment between
themselves, the team and their stakeholders is by ensuring all parties
are actively involved in
Iteration Reviews and
System Demos.
Some stakeholders will need some “encouragement” to protect these
events in their busy calendars. A good Product Owner will be comfortable
playing the role of
“Jiminy Cricket” and reminding truant Business Owners that their participation in System Demos is a critical
guardrail.
Does the SAFe Product Owner have to be a full-time role?
Full-time Product Owners are ideal, especially for new teams and new
Product Owners. They will need time to both learn the role and do the
role. Over time, a full-time Product Owner might begin to lose business
context; a typical pattern for addressing this is to rotate Product
Owners back into business roles after about 12 months. Another approach
one client uses is to have Product Owners spend approximately 20% of
time participating in “the business”, attending regular meetings,
offsites, etc.
When it comes to asking for a full-time Product Owner for every agile
team, I always say be careful what you ask for. If the delivery
organisation insists on full-time Product Owners, there are two ways to
deliver this outcome without actually meeting the needs of the agile
team: 1) Find someone on your team that you can live without and offer
them to the delivery organisation or 2) hire an external contractor to
fill the role. In both cases, the agile team has a Product Owner in name
only. This is not going to go well.
An alternative approach is to request less time from the right people
in order to avoid getting lots of time from the wrong people! Part-time
Product Owners tend to be either part-time in the role or part-time
across two teams.
If the Product Owner is part-time and has another responsibility in
the business that keeps them connected to the business, this might be a
good option. To make this work, the Product Owner has to prioritise the
needs of the agile team first. They need to participate in all Team and
ART events and be accessible to the team to resolve questions that
arise during development to provide feedback quickly. If you are going
to use this approach, you should assume the Product Owner role will
consume at least 50% of the person's time.
If the Product Owner is to be split across two teams on an Agile
Release Train, it places significant additional coordination effort on
the
Scrum Masters. They will need to roster the Product Owner's time during
PI Planning and
PI Execution
so that both teams are equally supported. This approach will only work
in an environment where the Product Managers are committed to investing
in feature refinement prior to PI Planning that is inclusive of the
Agile Teams. (We call this
Disco). This approach makes the most sense when a Product Owner is supporting teams that commonly share features,
e.g. a stream-aligned team and a related platform or complicated subsystem team.
The other scenario where a shared PO model can work is when the teams
are in different time zones, as there is less contention with the
morning team events like Team Syncs and
Iteration Planning.
It is also important to note that shared Product Owners are a disaster
when either the Product Owner or the Team is new to the organisation or
solution.
Can the SAFe Product Owner also be the Scrum Master?
No! Please, do not do this! The Product Owner and the Scrum Master
have different remits that should not be intertwined. As we covered in
our
previous
post, the Scrum Master focuses on coaching, facilitating planning, and
delivering. They are not usually subject matter experts on your
solution. Their expertise lies in Agile, Scrum and SAFe. Therefore, they
are unlikely to make good Product Owners. Conversely, if I have Product
Owners who are subject matter experts, I want them to work with Agile
Teams to ensure we are delivering valuable solutions to our customers.
This is a much better investment of their time.
Does a SAFe Product Owner have to come from the Business?
Technically, a Product Owner could come from technology. (In fact, up
until SAFe 4.6, they did!) This is one of the situations in which you
need to consider the context. Some teams have very technical backlogs
that are not business or customer-facing. In this case, a technology
Product Owner might be the most competent choice. For example, we have a
client that builds cyber-physical systems in a highly regulated
environment, and they use System Engineers as Product Owners for some of
their teams. Another example is a technology business analyst who is
considered a subject matter expert and completely and wholly trusted by
Product Management.
While some SAFe Product Owners do come from Technology, tread
carefully here. Often, one of the challenges we are trying to address
with SAFe is the “lack of trust” between “business” and “technology”.
Product Owners from technology will only work if the Business Owners and
Product Management are 100% on board with delegating their authority to
the Product Owner. It will also be essential to ensure that these
Product owners have sufficient clarity on the organisation's purpose to
fulfil the role.
Can the Team Lead/Manager be the SAFe Product Owner?
As a rule, Team Leaders or Managers do not make good Product Owners.
This has a tendency to create imbalance in the Agile Team, and Scrum
Masters often end up being undermined, especially when the Product Owner
is more senior than the Scrum Master. It can be difficult for a new
agile team to become self-organising and self-managing when their
priorities and acceptance of work as completed both still come from
their line manager. As with any rule, there are exceptions; generally,
when the team is more technical, the team’s manager is a specialist in
that technology, and they behave as a servant leader.
So why do Agile Teams need Product Owners?
Product Owners are a critical ingredient to successful,
high-performing agile teams. Agile is all about balance, and the Product
Owner’s role is to ensure the team is focused on delivering the right
value to the right customers at the right time. It is quite simply an
investment in getting good outcomes from your agile teams.