Part 1 of 3

Bob Galen noticed in his consulting & agile work that the Scrum Product Owner or XP Customer roles are some of the least understood in agile teams. First, you almost universally hear the complaint that teams don't get enough time from them—that they’re preoccupied and disconnected from the team.

On the other hand, the depth and the breadth of their roles require them to be more than Backlog writers, feeding their teams User Stories and answering questions. There are also the business demands the Product Owner needs to contend with. So the role has a lot of breadth, responsibility and yes, tension.

Finally, if you look into the agile community, he feels there is insufficient focus and help refining the role of a "Great" Product Owner and providing guidance to that end. In response to this gap, he's written a book that he completed in April 2009. This talk focused on some of the lessons from the book.

This was also an interactive session as he looked to mine lessons, both good and bad, from the audience to include in his research & sharing.

meetup.com/agileRTP/calendar/11625180/