Let's discuss roles and responsibilities of Product Owner in Scaled Agile Framework. I am assuming that you have some understanding of Scaled Agile Framework when I am explaining the role of Product Owner. If you don't have it, I recommend you check some of our videos which helps you in developing basic understanding of Scaled Agile Framework. The Product Owner role in Scaled Agile Framework is associated with managing something called team backlog. The Product Owner is a member of Agile team, Agile Team a small team which is working in time box iteration, delivering incremental value, needs to know what is customer expectation. They need to get the requirement in small, small pieces. And the Product Owner is the role who is responsible of providing those small, small slices of incremental user requirements which can be developed in two weeks time, which adds value to the end user, which also help us in learning about the customer behavior and the market segment. So that's the primary responsibility of SAFe Product Owner. But before we get there, let's understand the overall perspective in various areas in which the SAFe Product Owner is expected to work. Now, before I as a Product Owner, explain what customer really need, what is customer expectation? And I am the go to person for my developers and people who are doing the work. I should know what the customer really need. So my first responsibility is knowing the customer or connecting with the customer. Now in the Scaled Agile Framework space, yes, we might be developing a complex solution. We may have a team who is working together to find out what customer needs and expectations are. We have different different Product Owner for different teams. Agile teams were working collaboratively, but still each and every individual who is working towards customer goals to help the customer achieve their objectives should understand what customer really need. And the Product Owner role is expected to know it far more because you are also communicating those needs and expectation on a day to day basis to the Agile team. So as a Product Owner, you should have good understanding of your target customer personas. You should have good empathy with your customers. You understand their pains gains. The alternative the problem that your customers are trying to solve. You should understand the overall market segment in which you are targeting your product. You might also need to understand the competition, the alternatives which are available to the end customer. You may also need to understand the other people other than customer who may play a role in ensuring the value getting delivered. Maybe you need to understand the compliance environment. Maybe you need to understand the overall regulatory Framework so that we understand how can we meet our customer expectation. So here, connecting and understanding customer need is one of the primary responsibility of SAFe Product Owner. Now after you have it, as I said, it's a large application. Multiple people are working to convert those customer needs into manageable chunks of incremental requirements. And in a SAFe context, we have a product management, which is a group which keeps working closely with the customers and other business stakeholders and create high level requirements or a needs we call them features. And those features are put in to ART backlog. So the product management another role is the primary responsible of maintaining the Agile Release Train backlog. But at the same time, the Product Owners work as an extended member of product management team and they contribute their understanding of the customer, the understanding of execution because the Product Owners are working with the teams to get things done while we are making or refining Release Train backlog or ART backlog. And that's where the second roles, second categories of roles and responsibility comes in to contributing to vision and the roadmap. So after understanding what customer needs, what customer expectations are, the Product Owner is expected to work closely with the product management group and help them or contribute in coming up with the vision and the roadmap to solve customer problem or to help customer in exploiting opportunities. Now, product management might be leading that initiating visioning the roadmap But the Product Owner may provide the detail implementation information because they have more hands on experience with the day to day execution of the work. They help us in creating realistic roadmap because they have more connection. The Product Owners which are working with the team, have a more connection with the day to day reality of the work. After understanding and contributing to roadmap and vision, the Product Owners plays a critical role in coming up with the Agile Release Train backlog items. We call them features and enabler refinement of these items, which are happening as a collaborative activity between product management, Product Owners, business owners and system architect. The Product Owners plays a role to explain the their understanding related to the business value of a proposed feature. Yeah, what could be the business benefit in their perspective? The customer get the shared that do also play a critical role to talk about the complexity attached with that particular feature which help us in coming up with the size of that feature which is needed for the prioritization purpose. They also help us in sharing the solution alternative because they have a detailed solution prospective for various requirements. Some of the features which are getting discussed here, maybe those are or similar features might have been delivered by the Product Owners team before then. Those Product Owners plays a critical role in adding acceptance criteria and other refinement details to those particular features. So since it's a long video, I keep summarizing again. So we discussed two high level roles of Product Owner till now. We spoke about that Product Owners are expected to understand and connect with the customers and then we explored the Product Owners are expected to contribute to the vision and roadmap which help us in solving customer problem. And we learned that Product Owners plays a contributing role in the Agile Realease Train backlog refinement process. Product management might be driving it, but Product Owner helps them in adding acceptance criteria to the features, helping them in identifying cost of delay, helping them in identifying size of the feature so that prioritization of the features can be done. This is like high level thing. Now let's come to the primary responsibility of Product Owner managing the team backlog. So in a SAFe world but we do these Agile Release Train backlog items, features and enablers get discussed in a PI planning meeting. And based on that, the teams pick up a particular set of features. Yeah, we call them PI objectives. A particular team picks up and Product Owner and the team come back and they prepare their detailed backlog, which is like expansion of the Agile release train backlog item feature or enabler, but those small, small items get put in to the team backlog. So Product Owner is expected to facilitate that explanation, refinement and slicing of those backlog item, team backlog item. And this activity of refinement should be done continuously. Yeah. So on a weekly basis, when we are running our iterations, we need to keep adding acceptance criterias and details to the user stories which are identified inside the team backlog. So say, when we are doing PI planning meeting, we may end up identifying some set of user stories for achieving the goal of a feature. Now those user stories may also get estimated and get planned another Iteration We want to do as we start our planning interval well that that the PI we need to come up with the details and put them in to the team backlog. So all those user stories which got planned in the PI planning meeting during the planning interval, the PI, we need to execute them incrementally. We put them all into the team backlog. Now it's not necessary that all the user stories which are there in the team backlog are very refined. Yeah. And it is not expected because we are not working one time in the upcoming week alone. We will work on them as we go in our planning intervel so continuously on a iterative basis. We need to keep refining our team backlog and the Product Owner is expected to lead that process. Many time people ask who writes user story now Scaled agile gives an answer. Anyone can discover a user story, anyone can add a user story in the team backlog. Even team member can do it. The Product Owner should ensure that, yes, this story is really adding value. This is story should have this this priority. So overall taking care of team backlog, even if user story can be written and explored by anyone. But overall management of team backlog, it's done by the Product Owner. So identifying user stories, prioritizing user stories, adding acceptance criteria as to the user stories. Working with the team to ensure that we have right definition of done which ensures the completion of that particular user story, is the Product Owner under category of responsibility. They're also expected to work on enablers, the technical items which might not add direct business value, but they may not be having skills to take care of enablers on their own. So Product Owners may work with the team or system architect, too, to ensure the right prioritization and judging the completion of the enabler type of product or team backlog item. So that's managing the team backlog. Now, once we have a team backlog here supporting the delivery of value we need to continuously support. So what does it mean? It means that, yes, we have a team backlog team wants to work on it, but we are confused. They need some help. They have a confusion related to what others are doing. They may have a boundary issues which is which needs to be clarified. Is this story false in your boundary to somebody else boundary? So Product Owners are expected to support the delivery of value by way of continuously clarifying user story to the team, by way of participating in various interactions which are happening at the multiple Product Owner level. So you say that different different Product Owners are expected to participate and discuss what is happening in their area. We call it PO Sync Meeting. So the Product Owners are expected to effectively utilize the product or a Product Owner sync meeting to identify what is happening in other team and how those things are impacting our work when it comes to requirement and acceptance criteria. They also facilitate in finding out the boundary level issues, boundary level dependencies when it comes to user stories or requirement. The Product Owners are expected to play a critical role in various demos and other sync meetings to ensure that we have right information available to the development or an agile team that is working on this particular iteration. Yeah. So taking care of a team backlog and supporting the execution of of the team backlog items. Now extension to it again at a team level, getting and applying feedbacks. So as we learned in the Agile way of working, we need to continuously inspect and adapt as we learned that in Agile way of working or or a SAFe Scrum of working at the end of iteration, we are expected to have iteration review. Each team is doing their iteration review. The Product Owners are the key members who ensures the right business. People are present in those iteration reviews. They are expected to facilitate conversation on the review of the increment and take those conversation to the next level to identify what adaption we need to do based on the review. So in order to take a feedback, the Product Owner should be managing effectively or running the iteration review meeting. Now as we learn in a SAFe scrum these. Iteration reviews are expected to get integrated and we are expected to have a system demo at an Agile Release Train level. So Product Owners are expected to ensure the feedback on system demo is understood well by the Agile team first. At first they need to understand it. So Product Owner set expected to critically participate in a system demo, especially when your feature is also getting demos during the system demo. The feature, which is developed by your team, they are expected to understand the feedback coming on other features also and see how it impacts us and those impacts they need to consider when they are doing their team backlog refinement for upcoming iterations. They also need to communicate back the intend the feedback so that team can deliver the value in a batter manner. So the iteration review. One Feedback System Demo. Now the third dimension of getting and applying feedback is working with stakeholders one on one in a SAFe we do expect Product Owner should talk to the customers and stakeholder who may not be available during iteration review or it might be too late to wait till iteration review. You have built something. You may not have to wait for two weeks to take a feedback. The Product Owner should be going on a one-on-one basis depending upon the criticality, and find out how things are working. So collecting feedback on a one-on-one basis is also one of the critical role of the Product Owner once the feature is delivered to the customer. Yeah, so the feature is integrated and released and the customer is using it. Then how the feature is working. The Product Owner should also do the validation of the benefit hypothesis, which is made here by understanding the overall implementation and uses of that feature. Now this part might be done by product management as well Product Owner might be contributing there, but it is expected that Product Owner should also have that level of feedback understanding because that will help them in taking care of their team backlog refinement and communicating with the team in a better way. So you are also expected to do that level of feedback here you help the team to identify the right, the features or the right user stories by way of communicating the intent of these various feedback on a regular basis. So from a Scaled Agile material perspective, these are the five categories they have discussed for explaining the role of a Product Owner. I have an additional category to explain. I call it PI planning indirectly. It got covered some bit here and there, but I do want to talk about the role of a Product Owner for preparation for the planning meeting and during the PI planning meeting. So we understand PI is a planning interval. It could be a ten week duration, it could be 8 to 12 in total. So as we understand, the innovation and planning iteration is something which it is, which is happens before the planning meeting. Now Product Owners are expected to ensure the teams spend enough time and have a sufficient understanding of those features which are expected to get planned in the PI planning meeting. So say one week before the PI planning meeting, then the team is in innovation and planning iteration Product Owner should facilitate various workshops related to those features which are expected to get allocated to the team in the upcoming planning interval or an upcoming planning meeting. The Product Owner should work with the team to divide or split those features into user stories, help them in understanding the overall prospective of the feature. Help them define technical dependency, functional dependency, so that they can try out and have sufficient understanding of what they are expected to do before they come to the planning meeting. So as a Product Owner, my responsibility is that I ensure my team is not entering blank in the PI planning meeting when they see the presentation, then to see these are the features expected to come, they have sufficient background about it and especially those features which are expected to be done by them. They should have story level detailing for it and they must have done some amount of estimation for those user stories. So that's a preparation for PI planning, meeting, working with the team, the Product Owner. Is any of you working with with the the group who is continuously refining the Agile Release Train backlog, the product management group with the help of ART KANBAN system. But they should also work with the team now during the PI planning meeting. The teams might be getting into a breakout session. There could be some confusion related to the requirement for clarifies it. Product Owner also works with other Product Owner to ensure the dependencies are resolved and we have a consistent understanding of the whole feature. Yeah. Another role the Product Owner is expected to play during the planning meeting is helping the team in drafting the PI objective. the PI objective which communicates the business outcome. Which team is expected to target in the upcoming planning interval? The Product Owner plays a leading role in drafting and communicating those PI Planning, PI objective. The Product Owner also plays a critical role when the teams are presenting these objectives for the business stakeholder so that the business value which is given by the stakeholder is understood well and be. We can have a discussion and we know why these business values are given to a particular PI objective. I know lots of information. If you want to know a little more, you can check the Scaled agile Framework link related to the Product Owner role overall understanding of the Framework. And then watching this video can help you in identifying what is expected from Product Owner in the scale that a Framework.