So PO needs to shift focus to focus on return on investment and creating business value. And you should prove that your technical idea actually delivers value. Either in decreased support cost, more productivity down the line etc.

For example I have examples where I had problems to convince the PO that switching to subversion from cvs was a good choice, or that choosing a specific automated web framework was the way to go than the other semi-automatic inefficient testing framework the company was using so far.

However I believe that these are R&D matters and since the company decided to adopt scrum it should be up to the team to decide the specific tools to use and follow development practices that are compliant to agile process.
From my view point the PO should be worried about the features and requirements and the state of the product in terms of customer and thus market satisfaction.

Have I misunderstood something in the product owner role and his responsibilities or he can really intervene to R&D and have the final say to whether stuff like test driven development , continuous integration etc should or should not be followed by the team?

Thanks,
Max

The first one is that the Product Owner role is a hybrid that requires a breadth of qualifications and knowledge but most organizations tend to encourage specialization of their employees. This situation is worsened by the fact that traditional development processes separate the definition of requirements from their implementation. Customer, product managers and marketers are hence not used to collaborating with development teams. Take a look at standard product management and marketing books: It is shocking how little these books talk about the actual creation of products and the necessary collaboration.

Secondly, Scrum projects differ a lot. A new product development Scrum project that delivers a commercial product is different to an in-hose IT project that provides a maintenance release or product update. Who is the right Product Owner hence depends on the nature and importance of the project. This will also determine the Product Owner’s actual day-to-ay work, e.g., if and how much the PO has to align with stakeholders such as marketing, sales and service to prepare market introduction.

The Product Owner does play a key part in Scrum. Scrum would not be Scrum without the Product Owner role filled properly. I know that is a challenge but nobody said it would be easy. Heads up: Toyota has employed their version of a Product Owner role, called the Chief Engineer, successfully for half a decade. And the Chief Engineer’s responsibilities are even greater than the Scrum Product Owner’s.

Roman Pichler