Is the Product Owner the Most Important Role in Government Agile Development?
In the federal arena, the concept of Agile development is fully coming to life – where agencies are embracing the flexibility, IT development speed, and delivery success that comes with this shift. Though there are emerging challenges for agencies to move from traditional methodologies—such as, waterfall, spiral, or iterative—to Agile for developing software solutions, they are not necessarily technical in nature. For example, buy-ins from the internal chain of command and cultures that resist change are coming into the forefront, which lead to cost and time overruns, and higher risks with the technology due to a lack of testing, to the detriment of the project.
This is why agencies need to have designated product owners to best manage the entire Agile development process. The product owner is the most vital person in the entire pantheon of Agile development as they represent the voice of the customer and the vision for the project.
Role of the Product Owner as Part of the Scrum Team
The Product Owner (PO) takes the vision and breaks it down into incremental action items (i.e., user stories) that the scrum team then works on. Furthermore, the Product Owner defines the team backlog, prioritizes features and user stories, and oversees completion of the user stories as part of the sprint cycle. The PO must act as the voice of the stakeholders on the team level and be empowered to make decentralized decisions in order to quickly adapt to change. In addition, the product owners ensure that the business unit is incorporated into the Agile framework process in a completely transparent way that provides value to the project. This empowers the chain of command to be an integral part of the overall process.
The product owner also helps build the Agile mindset by quickly providing demonstrable value through a well prioritized backlog. This includes facilitating the team level backlog refinement meetings and being an active participant in the project backlog refinement sessions. This allows the teams to produce value, drive innovation, embrace change and pivot to a new priority as needed on a sprint-to- sprint basis.
Characteristics of an Ideal Agile Product Owner
The ideal product owners in Agile development have a wide range of skills for effective project management, which include:
A vision for the overall product, and ability to anticipate future events.
The ability to break down the vision and communication for the team into small incremental and workable items.
Being engaged, with a deep knowledge of the roadmap of the project.
Being accessible to the team and having an outgoing personality; attending all team-level meetings and actively running backlog refinement.
Being fully aligned with the scrum master throughout the project.
The ability to communicate effectively between teams and the chain of command.
The potential to educate all internal stakeholders on the process.
An understanding of technical knowledge regarding innovations and processes.
Empowering the Agile Product Owner
The Product Owner is the most important person in the Agile process as they are crucial in maintaining a prioritized backlog and creating the user stories that show value. By acting as a bridge between upper management’s vision and the team, Product Owners ensure that maximum value is provided in every sprint.
With the chain of command often creating challenges by slowing down the decision-making processes, an empowered agile product owner can create a culture of trust to keep everything streamlined. This includes decentralizing all decision-making and allowing the teams to make “15-minute decisions” on the fly. If a manager is out or unavailable, they can still make rapid decisions without waiting and slowing down the process.
While, in a perfect world, POs would be dedicated to a single scrum team full-time, we know that federal Product Owners often have other responsibilities that can distract them from their roles in the agile process. As such, product owners and scrum masters must work together closely to maintain (and increase) team velocity and facilitate highly effective scrum ceremonies. Without a strong Product Owner’s presence, teams tend to meander and lose focus on the overall vision.
Ultimately, the ideal Agile product owner can demonstrate value to an agency through an efficient and cost-effective development and implementation of innovation. In the end, this will allow agencies to enhance their overall IT modernization efforts more effectively, and let technology be the driving force for a successful mission
Utilizing Agile methods like Scrum, Kanban, and Lean development, Makpar’s Agile practice minimizes communication gaps between Development and Operations teams by expanding DevOps-based automation to the entire development lifecycle.
Please contact us here for more information about how our Agile capabilities can help your agency get on the path to streamlined software development.