Translation of the business needs- Product owner as the Chief Navigator and Negotiator

Translation of the business needs- Product owner as the Chief Navigator and Negotiator

Key tenet of scrum is to create value for the customer quickly and iteratively. It is the responsibility of the Product Owner (PO) to understand the business needs and translate them into user stories.

However, it is not as straightforward as it sounds. The PO, when meeting with business stakeholders, is accepting their new stories and then prioritizing them all together. These individual negotiations across the stakeholder groups are evolving the product backlog, the vision, and the direction of the team.

However, the team members are the experts in how to get it done. The team works with the PO every day. They're sharing technical, or non-functional stories. This is how architecture and technical standards are introduced to the product. This means that while the PO is negotiating with stakeholders to prioritize all the functionality, they're also influencing the stakeholders on the need to deliver non-functional aspects too.

Of course, Scrum master has the priority of making sure that the team is not stretched too much with the focus on delivering the user stories and adequate focus is given to the scrum processes/ceremonies. This priority also needs to be made understood to the stakeholders and the PO has to take this up.

In essence, the PO is the chief navigator and negotiator and the success of the project depends on the PO to large extent.