On the Tasks and Characteristics of Product Owners: A Case Study in the Oil and Gas Industry

Abstract

Product owners in the Scrum framework -respectively the on-site customer when applying eXtreme Programming -have an important role in the development process. They are responsible for the requirements and backlog deciding about the next steps within the development process. However, many companies face the difficulty of defining the tasks and the responsibilities of a product owner on their way towards an agile work environment. While literature addresses the tailoring of the product owner's role in general, research does not particularly consider the specifics of this role in the context of a systems development as we find for example in the oil and gas industry. Consequently, the question arises whether there are any differences between these two areas. In order to answer this question, we investigated on the current state of characteristics and tasks of product owners at Baker Hughes, a GE company (BHGE). In this position paper, we present initial results based on an online survey with answers of ten active product owners within the technical software department of BHGE. The results indicate that current product owners at BHGE primarily act as a nexus between all ends. While technical tasks are performed scarcely, communication skills seem even more important for product owners in a system development organization. However, to obtain more reliable results additional research in this area is required.

Are Product Owners communicators? A multi‐method research approach to provide a more comprehensive picture of Product Owners in practice

“…The most frequently named activity of Product Owners is Communication. 15‐18,21‐24,46 An overview of all identified activities and the references is presented in Table 6. Takeaway: Product Owner role is a communicator role. Leadership/Management.…”

“…When researchers explicitly compared a Product Owner role to the description of another publication or analyzed real‐world scenarios against theoretical definitions regarding the Product Owner role, we categorize this as “theory vs. practice.” With regard to the topic of functions, challenges, & responsibilities , for example, Bass et al 17 compared their own findings of the Product Owner role in large enterprise settings 15 to the Product Owner role in small companies. Unger‐Windeler and Klünder 18 compared the tasks described by Bass et al 15 to the tasks of Product Owners in a system development environment. Sverrisdottir et al 24 compared general descriptions of the Product Owner role to actual role description in industry.…”

“…Several researcher identified communication to be of particular importance in the development process (cf. previous studies [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] ). However, we did not find a publication investigating the communication of Product Owners in detail.…”

“…However, the roles and hierarchical structures within the Product Owner teams differ. [15][16][17][18][21][22][23][24]46 An overview of all identified activities and the references is presented in Table 6. 23,39,57 or a Subject Matter Expert, 45,54 on-site is considered as the main differentiator when it comes to clearly communicate responsibilities 39,44 and priorities.…”

“… 15 In 2016, Bass et al 17 compared the identified functions to actual tasks and activities of Product Owners in smaller companies and identified some differences which indicates that the Product Owner role is impacted by the company size. Unger‐Windeler and Klünder 18 conducted a case study in the oil and gas industry to check whether these nine functions of Product Owners are also present in this domain. Preliminary results indicate that the tasks differ and that not only the size of the company, but the organizational structure might have an impact on the Product Owner role as well.…”