Agile – Scrum: Is it okay for the development manager to be the Product Owner

agileproduct-ownerscrum

My company is going through an agile rollout and is currently considering options for what that means.

The ScrumMaster role is somewhat straightforward, but Product Owner has many candidates: Product Managers, UX, Software Analysts. The favored candidate for the moment is for each development manager to be the team Product Owner.

However, using development managers as product owners seems like it will discourage self-organization. What's the "right" way to select product managers in an Agile way?

Best Answer

Generally speaking, the person who knows the most about the application requirements or has the responsibility for interfacing with the client is the one who should be the Product Owner.

If the development managers in your organization have the best knowledge of the product's requirements, then they ought to by the Product Owner. Developers need to be able to go to the Product Owner in order to clarify requirements and make sure that what they're developing is actually meeting the requirements.

As far as self-organization is concerned, I don't believe it should have an effect unless the developers report the development managers.

If the developers do report to the individual development managers, then the developer's performance metrics should be adjusted so they are not penalized if they work on other manager's requirements. Likewise, rules need to be put in place so a particular development manager doesn't leverage their employees to gain priority for their product development at the expense of other requirements.

You may consider enhancing the scope of the ScrumMaster in order to make sure that the development managers don't exert undue pressure on the developers in order to change previously agreed upon priorities for the user stories.