There are situations where an organization decides to assign two Product Owners to a Scrum Team. Two people should therefore share the responsibility and, for example, manage the product backlog together and carry out the Scrum events together with the Scrum team – although the Scrum Guide definitely describes it differently: A team should have exactly one product owner (“The product owner is one person, not a committee”) and a product backlog.
Reasons and obstacles for multiple product owners
But in real life you see things differently. How does this come about and is it even possible? In this podcast episode, product workers Tim Klein and Dominique Winter give the reasons why organizations choose more than one product owner. They then discuss the risks and weaknesses of such a situation – especially against the background of their own experiences with such constellations.
For example, Tim Klein reports on an attempt to install four product owners for a team. However, the attempt failed rather quickly. Of course, the two also show solutions to overcome the situation and reduce this “organizational debt”. How can it be possible to reduce the whole thing to just one product owner? Finally, the two discuss what would have to happen or what must be given in order to (if necessary) work with more than one product owner.
Further topics
These podcast episodes are related to the topic or were mentioned: Ad The current edition of the podcast is also available in the blog of the product workers: “One Scrum Team – Two Product Owners”. (may) Home
