Originally written in French. Translated by AI — the meaning has been preserved, not the prose.
Short definition
A role placed between a product design and a development team, responsible for feeding and prioritizing the backlog, writing the requests and ensuring liaison between the business and the developers.
Full definition
In its normative definition, from the agile frameworks, the Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the product's value: they carry the vision, arbitrate contradictory priorities and decide the order of the work. That definition grants them a power of decision.
In the field usage attested by job postings, the content is narrower: feed the backlog, write the user stories, act as the interface between the business and the developers, run the ceremonies. The mandate to arbitrate is rarely mentioned there.
In the articles on this blog, the term designates the role as it is recruited, not as the framework defines it: an interface function between a design done upstream and a team that ships, endowed with product responsibility without the corresponding decision mandate.
Usage in the field
The term comes into play in discussions of product organization, job descriptions, debates about the border between product and development, and in examining what an organization judges separable.
Synonyms and variants
PO. Proxy product owner. Product business analyst, in some organizations. "Transmission belt", used as a critical designation of the function.
Not to be confused with
- Product Manager — a job that carries responsibility for a product from understanding the market through to follow-up after release, with the corresponding mandate to arbitrate.
- Scrum Master — a role centred on how the team functions and how the framework runs, with no responsibility for the product's content.
- Business analyst — a role centred on formalizing business rules and processes, with no responsibility for the product's value.
Examples
"Open the job postings: feed the backlog, write the user stories, act as the interface between the business and the devs, run the ceremonies." — the recruited usage of the term.
On regulated health software with an old code base, a Product Owner position kept but redefined: the developer carries part of the vision, the Product Owner does the design.
Ambiguities / debates
The ambiguity is constitutive: depending on the definition retained, the term designates either a role equivalent to Product Manager, or an interface function with no mandate. Many disagreements about the role are in fact disagreements about which of the two definitions is in use. This glossary retains the second, the job market's, without denying that the first exists.