Agile Product Owner


The Product Owner role is perhaps the most important role on any Agile team. Business Analysts, Product Managers, Customers and End users can all be asked to fill the role on occasions.

The course opens with a description of Product Owner role and responsibilities before teaching the skills and knowledge needed to fill the role.

Special attention is given to how Business Analysts and Product Managers fill the Product Owner role for corporate IT and independent software vendors respectively.

Who should attend?


This course is designed for Product Owners (including Business Analysts and Product Managers) and those who need to work closely with Product Owners.
Project Managers, Software Testers, Senior Developers, Architects and Software Designers will all benefit from a better understanding of the Product Owner role and requirements processes.

What will I learn?


At the end of this workshop attendees will understand how to undertake product development in a flexible, responsive way to meet market needs.

What subjects are covered?

  • The role played by Product Owner
  • What the Product Owner does on Agile teams
  • How Scrum defines the Product Owner role
  • Who fills the Product Owner role
  • The difference between Business Analysts and Product Managers, and how both can work as Product Owners
  • How to create and manage the Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog
  • How to prioritize items in the backlog
  • How to break down large backlog items
  • To identify business value and guide development to maximize value delivery
  • How to manage and address risk
  • To understand your customers, product and competitors
  • To understand how your product adds value
  • How to discover and communicate requirements
  • The typical activities undertaken by Product Owners during iterations
  • The difference between stakeholders, user roles and personas and the part played by each in successful development
  • A 10-step process to set development objectives, product vision; identify stakeholders, roles and personas; and manage business value delivery
  • How to write functional and non-functional requirements using User Stories and other methods
  • To specify acceptance criteria and tests
  • How to plan each iteration (Sprint) with the development team
  • Longer term planning using release plans and roadmaps
  • How to use Strategic and Tactical Product Owners on larger teams and complex projects
  • Multi-project portfolio management techniques

Agenda and details

  1. Product Owner role in an Agile team
  2. Understanding your customers, products and competitive advantage
  3. 10 step requirements process (including User Stories)
  4. Organization and strategy for growth
Duration: 2-days
Delivery method: Lecture with slides, team and individual exercises
Prerequisites: Completion of Agile Introduction course or experience working on an Agile team.
Options: A three day version of this course is available including an introduction to Agile software development. This covers: Agile values, Scrum in detail, artifacts, roles, routines, engineering practices and quality management.
Limits: Class size is limited to 16 participants

Workshop leader


This workshop is led by Allan Kelly, an experience software engineer and manager who has successfully managed multiple Agile projects. He is the author of the book Changing Software Development: Learning to be Agile (2008), he holds BSc and MBA degrees and is PRINCE2 Practitioner certified.

Fore more details please contact Software Strategy.