Experiences in Scaling the Product Owner Role in Large-Scale Globally Distributed Scrum

Abstract

The Product Owner in Scrum is a crucial role responsible for managing customer requirements in the form of prioritized backlog items and communicating them to the Scrum team. When scaling Scrum to large projects consisting of tens of teams, one Product Owner is not able to work with all the teams; thus the role needs to be scaled. While the literature suggests different scaling approaches, e.g. the use of Area Product Owners, reported experiences of scaling this role are scarce. Based on 58 semi-structured interviews, we report experiences of scaling the Product Owner role in two large globally distributed projects, each with 20 or more Scrum teams. Lessons learned include having local product owner representatives at each site, forming a product owner team, relying on frequent communication between the Product Owner representatives and the Scrum teams, as well as keeping and communicating clear priorities of the backlog to all stakeholders.