Product Owner Salary and Insights for 2025

The Accountabilities of the Product Owner

As described in the Scrum Guide: “The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Development Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.”

On the Scrum Team, the Product Owner helps the rest of the Scrum Team understand what is valuable, so those individuals make the best possible choices as to how that value can be delivered. All Product Backlog items derive from, and contribute to, the Product Goal. The Product Goal defines why the product exists, and is a compelling statement to guide every decision made during a product’s lifecycle. Ultimately, the Product Owner identifies value, quantifies it and maximizes it for stakeholders, both inside and outside the organization, and the end users as well.

What does a Product Owner do?

The Product Owner is accountable for effective Product Backlog management, which includes:

• Developing and explicitly communicating the Product Goal
• Creating and clearly communicating Product Backlog Items
• Ordering Product Backlog Items
• Ensuring that the Product Backlog is transparent, visible and understood

The Product Owner might do this work or delegate it to others on the Scrum Team. However, the Product Owner is responsible and accountable for this work being done and for the resulting value.

Beyond Product Backlog management, it is vital for Scrum Product Owner to gain full respect from the entire organization and thus get support for all the decisions they take. This is what it takes for a Product Owner to succeed. A Product Owner’s decisions need to be transparent through the Product Backlog and the Increment of work shared at the Sprint Review.

Product Owner Stances

Product Owner Stances There is also a set of stances that are preferred by the Product Owner to ensure that they meet their ultimate goal of maximizing value. The preferred stances are the Visionary, the Collaborator, the Customer Representative, the Decision Maker, the Experimenter and the Influencer. For instance, the Product Owner plays the Visionary role when communicating the product vision, strategy, business goals and objectives to all relevant stakeholders; the Collaborator role when they work with the Scrum Team to define objectives; and the Decision Maker role because they are making decisions of all kinds on a daily basis.The Product Owner’s Accountabilities can also be misinterpreted and there are a number of little-understood standpoints that could be considered anti-patterns – these are those things that are seen in organizations and that you can be aware of so that you can watch out for them: Product Owner being seen as the Story Writer, Project Manager, Subject Matter Expert, Clerk, Gatekeeper or Manager.