Product Owner

Learn the attributes of a successful Product Owner and the T-shirt sizing method of requirements prioritization.

ABOUT THIS CHAPTER   One of the key emphases of Agile development is to sequence delivery of functionality from highest business priority to lowest. Highest-priority stories move toward the top of the backlog for additional refinement and implementation in the near-term sprints. Prioritization is also used decide which stories to implement and which stories not to.

Prioritizing requirements has always been useful, but for Agile projects requirements prioritization becomes a more prominent focus. A few really effective techniques have been developed to support this. But first let’s take a look at the role most responsible for prioritizing requirements in Agile projects.

Product Owner

As I described in the “More Effective Agile Beginnings: Scrum” chapter, one of the most common failure modes in Scrum is an ineffective Product Owner (PO). In my company’s experience, an effective PO has the following attributes:

Domain area expertise: An effective PO is an expert in the application, industry, and customers their application serves. Their understanding of the industry provides a ...