If you've been listening to our Meta-casts lately, Josh and I have been talking about the role of the Product Owner quite a bit.

We've been discussing questions like:

  • Do you need one?
  • If you do, what is the 'profile' of an excellent Product Owner?
  • What do they do all day?
  • Etc.

We've then been talking about a view I have about the role and the four key areas that you need to cover in order to do the role justice. I talked about them in my Scrum Product Owner book:

  1. the role is part Product Management
  2. part Project Management
  3. part Leadership
  4. and finally, part Business Analyst

I wish I would have come up with the "quadrants" notion when I was working on the 2'nd edition of the book...but, I didn't. But now I AM talking about the nuances of the role from a quadrants perspective.

To that end, I've written up a description of The 4 Quadrants of Product Ownership here. Please read it and comment here on your reactions to it. Also listen to our podcasts on the topic as well. I hope the article and the podcasts provide some value.

Thanks for listening,

Bob.