Responsibilities of Product Owner with respect to Project Manager

Project manager lead the team for all aspect of the project (scope, schedule, cost, quality, human resources, communication, risk and procurement and their appropriate integration) while Product Owner lead the team for the product scope to ensure value is delivered to the business.

Project Manager is defined as integrator for all the aspects and balances the competing demands of all the pieces or aspects of project. A Product Owner serves to the Project Manager and plays a partner role with Project Manager in product scope where product scope is defined for both ‘Fitness for Purpose’ and ‘Fitness for Use’.

Project Manager is accountable for ensuring that the product is delivered to the customer on time and within budget. The Product Owner is accountable for ensuring that the product is built according to the requirements and is built correctly. This difference in focus is the reason that having both roles on the team is critical. The product will be built correctly, according to requirements, on time and within budget!

Product Owner responsibilities which incorporate both PMP and Agile processes: Product Owner is agile process role, but agile does not address all the processes of project management, so if we follow all the good practices of agile and PMP, following responsibilities can be identified for Product Owner.

1.     Project Initiation: When responsibility is delegated to Project Manager by Project Sponsor.

a.      Assist Project Manager to identify quantifiable product scope statement from procurement documents, development related extracts from project contract and Business Case.

b.      Contribute to identify product requirement related risks.

c.      Help to Identify requirements related communication needs

d.      Help to Identify estimates in PO related activities based on scope and complexity of product requirements.

e.      Support to identify estimates based on identified product scope and risk involved in product and included in project scope with identifying activities of project scope and other risk involved by the Project Manager

f.        Help to identify business stakeholders and to identify timing and level of involvement of stakeholders in defining and completing product scope.

g.      Assist Project Manager to identify ‘Fitness for Use’ for product that contributes to project success criteria.

h.      Identify Product Approval requirements with Project Manager

i.         Help Project Manager to identify resource needs with needed knowledge and skills.

j.         Work with Project Manager to identify schedule milestones.

2.     Project Planning:

a.    Release Planning:

                                                               i.      Involve cross functional stakeholders to brainstorm customer needs.

                                                             ii.      Development of QFD to objectively sort the product requirements to be included in identified project scope. Goals are set to achieve product scope.

                                                            iii.      Identify acceptance criteria and include in title, short description form associated with stories at this stage.

                                                           iv.      Complete development of Product Backlog and accountable any changes in product backlog.

b.      Sprint Planning Meeting: Work with team to fetch stories to be included in sprint backlog as per priorities set using QFD to ensure value is delivered to the business.

c.      Help Project Manager to develop and identify definite schedule, budget, revise resource needs, revise communication needs and uncertainties related to requirements for the current sprint.

d.      Help Project Manager to include identified product impediments as part of backlog with the intent to make sure structured attention of all stakeholders involved in the project.

3.     Design & Construction Interleaved (Planning and Execution)

a.      Define ‘Definition of Done’ of stories of sprints

b.      After preliminary design involve developers to identify unit test cases for the included stories of sprints.

c.      Develop detailed acceptance steps of acceptance criteria’s of stories

d.      Identify complete flow of stories in case of complex process flow involved.

e.      Develop static structure of stories involved in sprint. detailed acceptance steps of acceptance criteria’s of stories

f.        Identify Message flow within stories.

g.      Identify components and associated dependencies involved.

h.      Drive the team to produce product deliverables as per ‘Definition of Done’

i.         Make sure continuous integration

j.         Drive the development team to ensure vale is delivered to the business:

                                                               i.      Make sure ‘Fitness of Purpose ‘and ‘Fitness for Use’ of requirements of stories.

                                                             ii.      Drive the team to complete storied as per Definition of Done

                                                            iii.      Identify Vital Few  using analysis of documented results of causes of poor product quality

4.     Monitoring & Controlling:

a.      Involved in Daily Stand Up meeting  with Project Manager to identify:

                                                               i.      Technical blocks.

                                                             ii.      Requirement related risks.

                                                            iii.      Product Quality issues

b.      Work with Project Manager in requirement related changes control procedures. Involve in change procedure if change to project charter is initiated after sprint planning meeting.

c.      Continuously monitor requirement related risks.

d.      Involved to identify causes of poor Product Quality

                                                               i.      Make sure Development and Acceptance TDD and make sure recording of  causes of poor product quality.

                                                             ii.      Make sure Development and Acceptance TDD for a story before moving to another story by team to ensure visible project progress.

e.      Help project manager for status reporting in terms of Burn down chart and EVM system.

f.        Help Project Manager to forecast to update current cost and current schedule information.

g.      Monitoring implementation of requirement related changes.

h.      Involve in verify scope in which completed stories are demonstrated to customer to formalize acceptance of completed stories as per established ‘Definition of Done’

5.     Phase (Sprint) Close and Next phase Initiation:

a.       Involve with Project Manager in Sprint retrospective meeting and involve in development of repository of lesson learned and templates for similar projects i.e. WBS, risk register.

b.      Revise business stakeholder involvement with Project Manager

c.      Work with Project Manager and other stakeholders (i.e. Project Sponsor) to identify whether project is on track to deliver business benefits.

6.     Project Close

a.      Involvement with Project Manager in lesson Learned.

b.      Involve in final project completion meeting to identify project success to capture Business Need of project.

Seema Sonkiya