Tailoring product ownership in large-scale agile

Bass, J; Haxby, A

Abstract

In large-scale agile projects, product owners undertake a range of challenging and varied activities beyond those conventionally associated with that role. Using in-depth research interviews from 93 practitioners working in cross-border teams, from 21 organisations, our rich empirical data offers a unique international perspective into product owner activities.


We found that the leaders of large-scale agile projects create product owner teams. Product owner team members undertake sponsor, intermediary and release plan master activities to manage scale. They undertake communicator and traveller activities to manage distance and technical architect, governor and risk assessor activities to manage governance. Based on our findings, we describe product owner behaviors that are valued by experienced product owners and their line managers.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 3, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Feb 21, 2019
• Publication Date: Feb 21, 2019
• Deposit Date: Dec 7, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 7, 2018
• Journal: IEEE Software
• Print ISSN: 0740-7459
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Volume: 36
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 58-63
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/MS.2018.2885524
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/MS.2018.2885524
• Additional Information: Additional Information : ©2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.