The Product Owner doesn't have to be one person.#6

I believe we don’t need the “one pair of vocal cords” to work with Scrum. The Product Owner accountability could be shared by multiple people. In practice this already happens a lot. Are these people not using Scrum because they work towards adding value as a group?

All of the activities of the Product Owner can be delegated. The Produxt Owner however remains acountable.

If I am commissioning work and giving someone spending power then I hold them axcountable. It’s up to them how they fulfill that accountability .

@Martin already said it:

“The Product Owner may do the above work or may delegate the responsibility to others. Regardless, the Product Owner remains accountable.”

It’s important to distinguish responsibility from accountability. It may be a good thing that others in a Scrum Team can also act as a vocal cord when interacting with Stakeholders, for example: individuals with a background in UX in a Scrum Team.

I understand the activities can be delegated. But why aren’t teams with multiple POs not doing Scrum? That is my point here.

In practice, there is hardly ever a single product owner for multiple teams and complicated (corporate) products. While scaling agile is notoriously hard, I do not believe there is something inherently wrong with dividing a large product in smaller single-team products. As long as each of those teams still has a single PO. Having multiple POs working with the same team of developers is never a good idea i.m.o.

Willem-Jan Ageling I think the reasons for why multiple PO for one Product is not Scrum, is that, the way I see it, the power of Scrum is to have team(s) focussed on a single product, with a clear goal and owner of that product to give the team clear direction. With one person owning the product, that person is ultimatly fully accountable and therefore committed.

The Scrum Teams will not waste in efforts engaging with whimsy (steering) commitees or bureaucratic conclaves. When you have multiple owners this increases the chance that the various owners will send the team in conflicting directions or multiple directions at the same time.

When you have multiple owners, this equals a stakeholder commitee as multiple indiduals (a commitee) ‘hold’ a ‘stake’ in the product. I doubt developers have good experiences taking directions from stakeholder commitees. In most cases this commitee would take the spirit out of the game of Scrum.

Many POs for one product means unclear ownership. Afterall, it means the POs will likely play blame and powergames as their ego’s engage each other. It counters I’divide et impera’ creating powerstruggels and portfolio hierarchy games like we see in SAFe.

A single PO provides transparency enabling empiricism.

Agree @Sjoerd Nijland . Multiple PO just look like project sponsors. :D

Sounds like too many cooks in the kitchen. The team should have one PO to go to, numerous POs will create unnecessary confusion.