ARTICLE | AGILE TEAMS
Product Owner, Explained
Making sense of the product owner, product manager, business analyst, and project manager roles
BY PUNITA DAVE
Scrum defines three roles that make up a scrum team: a product owner, a scrum master and the development
team. Many organizations, however, include more than these three roles in their organizational charts. Because
of this, common questions arise regarding what the difference is between a product owner and a business
analyst, a product owner and a product manager, and a product owner and a project manager.
The roles of product owner, product manager, and business analyst have multiple similarities, in fact,
some Certified Scrum Product Owners actually work as product managers or business analysts and many
project managers transition to the role of product owner as they adapt an agile way of working. In this article I
will dive into how the product owner seves the scrum team as well as what the differences are between these
job titles and roles.
As a management & strategy consultant and an agile transformation coach, I often get questions like:
1. “Should we plan on hiring a product manager to manage product owners?”
2. “How many product owners can a product manager manage?”
3. “Should we not have a business analyst in the scrum team to write user stories?”
4. “If we do not have a business analyst on a scrum team, does the scrum master write user stories?”
5. “So product owner is the same product manager and scrum master is the same as project manager,
right?”
6. “Can a product owner and project manager be the same person?”
7. “Since the project manager manages the team, doesn’t the product owner report to the project
manager?”
The primary reasons for these questions, in my experience, are:
1. The desire to do the right thing exists. And there is a genuine lack of awareness and knowledge.
2. Design or structure of the organization and assignment of responsibilities is hybrid or partial. While
scrum tries to place the responsibility with the right accountability, the shadow of hybrid or traditional
approach continues to lurk in the dark.
3. Scrum and agile are viewed as something that the team does, and it is assumed that it does not impact
the rest of the organization.
4. “Becoming agile” is viewed as a “project” and a “budget” is allocated for its adoption rather than a
mindset and a cultural shift. The budget sometimes is less than the annual salary of a developer. So
there isn’t enough training and coaching in the organization of what the roles or accountabilities really
are.
Rather than answering the above questions individually, let's take a very high-level view of these roles in a
traditional versus agile environment since that’s where the confusion usually starts.
Traditional Approach vs. Agile Approach
Product Management in Traditional Environment (Figure 1)
Product Ownership in Agile Environment (Figure 2)
The following table compares a few attributes/characteristics of the four roles – Product Owner, Product
Manager, Business Analyst & Project Manager.
No. Attribute Product Owner (PO) Product Manager (PM) Business Analyst Project Manager
(BA) (PJM)
1 Presence Present in agile, partially Present in partially agile, Present in partially Present in partially
agile or hybrid Hybrid or traditional agile, hybrid or agile, hybrid or
organizations organizations traditional traditional
organizations organizations
2 Agile Each PO has end-to-end No PM in an agile No BA in an agile No PjM in an agile
Organization ownership of their area of organization organization organization
(Figure 2) product & collaborates
with other POs. There
might be an area/chief PO
for each group of POs.
3 Partially Responsibilities similar to Responsibilities similar to Responsibilities of May not be
Agile/Hybrid the Internal PM of a the external PM of a BA as described for present. If present,
Organization traditional organization traditional organization traditional responsible for
(Figure 1). (Figure 1). organization (Figure status tracking and
Directly/Indirectly reports Directly/Indirectly reports 1). Reports to a PO reporting. Outside
to the PM. May manage a to senior management. of product
team of BA May manage team(s) of management
POs & PMs function
4 Traditional No PO in Traditional 2 types – Internal PM and Responsibilities of Plans, tracks,
Organization Organization External PM. BA as described for monitors work.
(Figure 1) Responsibilities as traditional Manages people as
described earlier for organization (Figure resources for the
traditional organization 1). Reports to a PM project
(Figure 1). Internal PM
reports to external PM
5 Skills in Agile Understand users & N/A N/A N/A
Organization customers. Manage and
(Figure 2) engage stakeholders
Work as a scrum team
member,
create & maintain vision,
roadmap, product
backlog, product goal,
release plan, etc.
6 Skill in Confusion between skills Confusion between skills Confusion between Confusion between
Partially required in traditional required in traditional skills required in skills required in
Agile/Hybrid environment and in agile environment and in agile traditional traditional
Organization environment environment environment and in environment and in
agile environment agile environment
7 Skills in N/A As described in Figure 1 As described in Planning, tracking,
Traditional Figure 1 monitoring work.
Organization Assigning work to
(Figure 1) team
The questions above arise only if your organization has not completely embraced agile/scrum or is using hybrid
scaling approaches. Trying to blend agile and traditional approaches is confusing to the organization, product,
and teams. That’s why becoming agile is a Boolean – True or False. Based on this, try and answer the seven
questions at the beginning of the article yourself. If your organization is unable to embrace agile, then remain
traditional. Do not confuse the two.