Roles and Responsibilities of Product Owners in Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
Overview
SAFe Product Owner: Manages the team backlog and is part of an Agile team working in time-boxed iterations to deliver incremental value.
Primary Responsibility: Provide small, incremental user requirements that can be developed in two weeks to add value and learn about customer behavior and market segments.
Key Responsibilities
1. Understanding and Connecting with Customers
Know Customer Needs: Product Owners must understand customer expectations and communicate them to the Agile team.
Customer Personas: Have empathy for customers, understand their pain points, gains, and the problems they are trying to solve.
Market and Competition: Understand the market segment, competition, and compliance environment to meet customer expectations.
2. Contributing to Vision and Roadmap
Collaborate with Product Management: Work closely with product management to create high-level requirements (features) in the ART backlog.
Refinement Process: Contribute to vision and roadmap by providing detailed implementation information and realistic roadmaps.
Feature Refinement: Collaborate with product management, business owners, and system architects to refine features and enablers.
3. Managing the Team Backlog
PI Planning: Facilitate explanation, refinement, and slicing of backlog items during PI planning meetings.
User Stories: Responsible for identifying, prioritizing, and adding acceptance criteria to user stories in the team backlog.
Enabler Items: Work with the team or system architect to prioritize and judge the completion of technical items (enablers).
4. Supporting Delivery of Value
Clarifying User Stories: Continuously clarify user stories to the team and participate in various interactions and PO sync meetings.
Boundary and Dependency Issues: Facilitate the resolution of boundary issues and dependencies related to user stories and requirements.
Demos and Meetings: Participate in iteration reviews, system demos, and other sync meetings to ensure the right information is available to the team.
5. Getting and Applying Feedback
Iteration Reviews: Ensure the right business people are present in iteration reviews and facilitate feedback discussions.
System Demos: Participate in system demos at the ART level to understand feedback and its impact on the team.
One-on-One Feedback: Collect feedback from stakeholders on a one-on-one basis and validate the benefit hypothesis of delivered features.
6. PI Planning Preparation and Participation
Pre-PI Planning: Facilitate workshops related to features expected to be planned in the PI planning meeting.
Breakout Sessions: Work with the team during breakout sessions to clarify requirements and resolve dependencies.
PI Objectives: Help the team draft and communicate PI objectives and understand the business value given by stakeholders.
Conclusion
Additional Resources: For more information, check the Scaled Agile Framework links and videos related to the Product Owner role.