Want know more about the Product Owner role and maximize the value of your product? Check the E-Book "8 Stances of a Product Owner" and create more valuable products. The Product Owner as a Leader, Communicator, Negotiator, Scientist, Entrepreneur, Manager, Business Analyst and Facilitator. This E-Book is a personal perspective from from Antonio Costa - Professional Scrum Trainer from Scrum.org about the Role of the Product Owner. Translated to English by me and Daniele Fontainha

1. Product
Owner
8
Stances of a
A N T O N I O C O S T A
CREATINGHIGHVALUEPRODUCTS
T r a n s l a t e d b y D a n i e l e F o n t a i n h a a n d G u i l h e r m e C o r r e i a

2. 8
Stances of a
Product
Owner

3. This is
important...
The Product Owner can self evaluate based on the stances of PO, so
they can identify improvements and grow their career and create better
products.
TO PRODUCT OWNER
One of the goals of the Scrum Master is to serve the Product Owner, and
this can occur several ways, such as: “Make sure that goals, scope and
product domain are understood by every participant part of the Scrum Team
the best way possible.”
Understand the 8 Stances of the PO is important for the Scrum Master
to coach the Product Owner on the creation of the product.
TO SCRUM MASTER
In Scrum, there is no Manager Role, but it’s known that outside the
Scrum Team there are stakeholders, interested on the value of the
project in order to achieve success. If you are one of those people,
leaders inside the organization, this E-book will help you to better
orientate the Product Owner, aiming to maximize the value of the
product.
TO MANAGERS AND LEARDERS

4. PURPOSE GENERATOR
Leader
Product Owner is the
person that has the
Vision of the Product,
Sprint Goals and
manages the backlog,
generating purpose to
the team.
He is a leader when defines the vision of the product or works
with shareholders on the vision, communicates this vision the
clearest way possible for the people involved, engaging everyone
for a common purpose.
He is the owner of the Sprint Goal, generating purpose for the
Scrum Team during the Sprint
In addition, he creates and manages the Product Backlog, working
on the Product Backlog Items, prioritization, details and refinements
required. This is what will guide the entire development of the
Product.
All this generates a purpose for the project, and consequently for
the people involved..
This can give meaning and purpose to people working on the
Product.

5. Communicator
GUARANTEES
COMMUNICATION FLOW
Communicator with
the team,
stakeholders, using
the best
communication tools
Product owner as Communicator need to be able to slice a
subject into smaller pieces and transfer this idea to someone else,
checking with there was an understanding. It´s not only speak to
someone else, but making sure that the effective
communication really happened.
Communication with Scrum Team:
Communicates a purpose, a backlog item, requisites, a goal, and
so on.
Communication with the Organization:
Stakeholders of the project want to have a clear view of the
progress of the Product creation. If they are too far away, it is a
normal behavior to think that everything is a mess.
Communication with Users:
to understand if the needs are been covered, map avatars and
validate hypothesis of the services provided to the users.

6. Negotiator
WORK WITH ALL INVOLVED
PEOPLE
There are always
expectations of the
involved people that
need alignment.
On the product creation, there are always involved people: the
Product Owner as a Negotiator is able to understand that there are
sponsors of the project, users, employees, shareholders, and so
on.
The Product Owner needs to map and understand who are the
stakeholders, understand your expectations and know how to
deal/manage them by relying on the communication.
It´s always needed to create agreements with the stakeholders:
they create demands and the Product Owner needs to manage
that, targeting the Vision of the Product and management of the
Product Backlog
In this path, he/she needs to negotiate with all involved people...

7. Scientist
EXPERIMENTS ON TARGETING
THE MAXIMUM VALUE
Validating hypothesis
of problems to be
solved and how the
Product solves the
needs of the avatar.
The Product Owner plays a role as a scientist when organizes
experiments to prove or invalidate hypothesis about a problem or
solution that the Product has.
Besides that, he/she acts as a scientist when go in the field (meet
the costumer) to better understand the user, the avatar,
understand the pains and services that need to be developed.
It´s important to reinforce that, depending on the Product,
Company, Market, Need of Innovation, Product Life Cycle and
Complexity in general, we might have bigger or smaller centainty
regarding what needs to be developed. I some scenarios, more
experiments are needed, in some others, less.
One concept that is quite often used is “Build, Measure and Learn”,
that it´s objective is to learn the fastest way possible about a
problem, with few investment.
As a scientist, the Product Owner also need to rely on data for the
decision making.

8. Entrepreneur
WORK AS AN INVESTOR
OF THE PRODUCT
Mindset of
entrepreneur,
investor and business
administration
Ideally, the Product Owner should be responsible for the profits
and losses of the Product.
That said, he/she needs to act as a Entrepreneur
In the Entrepreneur role, she/he brings the economist vision, the
investor and business administration.
He/She has to understand if the vision set up is going as expected,
specially with numbers. Understand the impact the solution in the
market. Understand if the Product is profitable or is not
economically viable.
Uses economy information to determine if the Product is a success
or not, and what is the Return of Investment (ROI)

9. Manager
PO AS A MANAGEMENT
ROLE
Manage Product
Backlog aiming a good
development cycle
Product Owner is not a people manager, but he/she is in a
management role. And reinforcing that he/she is no one´s boss
(please take into consideration the way your organization works)
The Product Owner as a Manager manages the Product Backlog.
He/she has to gather the Vison of the Product and map it in the
Product Backlog.
In this process of backlog management, he/she needs to be a good
STP (Slice into smaller pieces, Trash what is not needed and
Prioritize what is more important)
We also reinforce some topics related to this stance:
- Know how to conduct refinement sessions.
-Define what needs to be developed now x what to do later
- Able to transform the product backlog and development cycle
interactive and incremental way, generating constant value
- Have autonomy for decision making.

10. Business
Analyst
MARKET
KNOWLEDGEABLE
Understand the value
chain, market, users-
finally, an authority in
the subject.
Product Owner as Business Analyst, need to understand the
Product value chain, user journeys, understand well the users
and market that will apply.
The Product Owner that does not know the area he/she works, in
short time will have a bigger challenge to maximize the value.
However, day by day, reading news about the market,
understanding more about the solution and users, he/she will
improve the Business Analyst hat.
In this scenario of low performer as a Business Analyst, is quite
usual for Product Owner to use the other stances to fulfill some
specific needs, for example, be more Facilitator to use the group
intelligence on the product creation.
Some moments the Product Owner have the authority of the
method, some moments on the subject. In this stance, the Product
Owner has the authority on the subject/matter

11. Facilitator
USE THE COLLECTIVE
INTELLIGENCE
Where the
Product Owner
has the authority
of the method.
If the Product Owner as a Business Analyst had the authority of the
subject/ matter, here the Product Owner as a facilitator has the
authority of the method.
He/she facilitates some dynamics, meetings, discussions,
brainstorms, to reach consensus and extract the maximum of the
involved people.
The main objective is to use the collective/ group intelligence to
create amazing products, and in addition support all other stances
(example: facilitator support the scientist hat, manager, etc)

13. 8
Stances of a
Product
Owner

14. ABOUT ANTONIO COSTA
ABOUT AGILE SCHOOL
T r a n s f o r m y o u r c a r r e a r , y o u r a r e a a n d y o u r
c o m p a n y
w w w , a g i l e s c h o o l . c o m . b r
l i n k e d i n . c o m / c o m p a n y / a g i l e - s c h o o l - b r a s i l
l i n k e d i n . c o m / i n / a n t o n i o - c o s t a - n e t o /
Professional Scrum Trainer from
Scrum.org, acts in the brazilian
community on the creation of producst
atht bring more value as possible.
Entrepreneur that loves to work on agile
transformation in organizational level.
Company that was born agile already
and has it´s agile shapped structure (
the agile is part of our DNA).
Assists people to grow professionally
and companies to be more agile.