Abstract
As agile software development methods are spreading through the industry, they are no longer sufficient in their original design. With the increasing adoption by various types and sizes of organizations, these methods are scaled and tailored. The most popular framework for scaling Agile is the Scaled Agile Framework®, registered trademark of Scaled Agile, Inc. Boulder, USA. Some roles originating from the agile methods, such as Product Owner, are part of the framework and are impacted by scaling and tailoring. A Product Owner role is critical to the success of projects in agile environments. This paper aims to describe and discuss the evolution of and changes in Product Owner activities since Agile started to spread in the industry until the current concept of the Product Owner role in the Scaled Agile Framework. By identifying the activities typical of Product Owners outside of the Scaled Agile Framework context and mapping these activities to the Product Owner role description in Scaled Agile Framework, the changes in Product Owner role with respect to time and role specifics in the Scaled Agile Framework are revealed. It was identified that some of the activities previously described for Product Owner are distributed between various roles in the Scaled Agile Framework. In fact, the Product Owner loses the real product ownership in Scaled Agile Framework. The loss of ownership seems connected with the fact that, in the large environments that the Scaled Agile Framework is designed for, it is impossible to cover all required activities by one role using the hierarchical structures with a top-down approach in the Scaled Agile Framework.
Highlights
Agile as an approach to software development has become common practice
As we decided to reveal the specifics of the Product Owner role in Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe), our research addresses the following research question (RQ): Which Product Owner activities described so far are prescribed for Product Owners in SAFe? An activity is understood as the work of a person, group, or organization to achieve something [21]
In the third column, we provide information of the presence in SAFe with the following possible values: “No”—activity or similar was not identified as part of the Product Owner role in SAFe; “Yes”—activity was identified as prescribed for Product Owners in SAFe; “Partially”—some similarity to the identified activity was discovered; the activity’s full scope from the generic concept of Product Owner activities is not fulfilled by the Product Owner in SAFe
Summary
Agile as an approach to software development has become common practice. According to previous research, 73% of organizations use agile practices at least sometimes [1]. Agile is incremental and iterative software development done by closely collaborating teams [2]. Available online: http://jeffsutherland.com/scrum/RootsofScrumJAOO28Sep2005.pdf (accessed on 8 June 2020). Sutherland and Schwaber [4] discussed the new process for software development called Scrum at the 1995 OOPSLA conference for the first time. Three roles were defined within the process: Product Owner (PO), Development Team, and Scrum Master. The Product Owner closely collaborates with (1) the Development Team, which is self-organized and works independently during the Sprints, ending each Sprint with a demonstration of a potentially releasable increment, and (2) the Scrum Master, whose role is to eliminate any emerging impediment and enforce the Scrum Process [37]
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