Agile method tailoring in distributed enterprises: product owner teams.

Bass, Julian M.

Abstract

This paper explores practitioner descriptions of agile method tailoring in large-scale offshore or outsourced enterprise projects. Specifically, tailoring of the product owner role is discussed. The product owner identifies and prioritizes customer requirements. But in globalized projects, the product owner must reconcile large numbers competing business interests and generate prioritized requirements for many development teams. The study comprises 8 international companies in London, Bangalore and Delhi. Interviews with 46 practitioners were conducted between February 2010 and May 2012. A grounded theory approach was used to identify that product owner teams comprise nine roles: Groom, Prioritizer, Release Master, Technical Architect, Governor, Communicator, Traveler, Intermediary and Risk Assessor. These product owner roles arbitrate between conflicting customer requirements, approve release schedules, make architectural design decisions, provide technical governance and disseminate information across teams. Understanding these roles will help agile coaches guide large scale agile teams.

Citation

BASS, J.M. 2013. Agile method tailoring in distributed enterprises: product owner teams. In Proceedings of the 8th IEEE international conference on global software engineering (ICGSE 2013), 26-29 August 2013, Bari, Italy. Los Alamitos: IEEE Computer Society [online], article number 6613080, pages 154-163. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICGSE.2013.27

• Conference Name: 8th IEEE international conference on global software engineering (ICGSE 2013)
• Conference Location: Bari, Italy
• Start Date: Aug 26, 2013
• End Date: Aug 29, 2013
• Acceptance Date: Aug 29, 2013
• Online Publication Date: Aug 29, 2013
• Publication Date: Sep 30, 2013
• Deposit Date: Sep 4, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 4, 2014
• Publisher: IEEE Computer Society
• Article Number: 6613080
• Pages: 154-163
• Series Title: Proceedings of the international conference on global software engineering
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICGSE.2013.27
• Keywords: Agile software development; Enterprise systems; Product owner
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/1047