Role of a Product Owner? Hire from inside or outside?

As Agile software development as a methodology is becoming increasingly popular so are questions about how to fill the role’s on a Scrum or Agile team.  Here are the typical roles on a team:

1) Product Owner
2) Scrum Master (Project Manager)
3) Developer
4) Quality Assurance

Here is one source that attempts to describe the roles.  While they take a decent stab their Product Owner description is off base.  In a newsletter from Pragmaticsw.com they define the roles as the following:

• Product Owner – This is the person that identifies and prioritizes the features that will appear in a sprint.  This is normally the CEO, CTO, or some other high level stakeholder that ultimately is responsible for shaping the roadmap of their product.
• Scrum Master – The Scrum Master is akin to the Proejct Manager in Waterfall environments, but does not manage the team deliverables at a micro level.  Instead, this person is responsible for ensuring that the sprint stays on course, no new features are added to the sprint, code inspection, and ensuring everyone plays by the rules.
• The Team – Each team member is empowered and expected to self-manage themselves and to participate in all duties needed to deliver a feature.  This includes analysis, design, coding, testing and documentation.

Given the Product Owner description above, how do you hire a Product Owner that is not a CEO, CTO or any other management level position?

One of the failures in the implementation of Agile is a Product Owner who is not 100% committed in time to the projects and the team.  A Product Owner is part of the team in Agile and should be as available and engaged as the other team members.  While this isn’t always possible, especially early in the implementation of Agile in your shop, this needs to be a goal and part of the implementation plan.

Roman Pichler writes on the Scrum Alliance website about the role that a Product Owner plays.  The article talks about the importance of being engaged and in the drivers seat for the project at all times.  This means a PO could have other responsibilities at a organization but their primary responsibility should be the team.

A Product Owner should have a deep understanding of software development, be well versed in Agile and have enough time to dedicate to the role and job as Product Owner.  It is also good for the Product Owner to be versed in the business at hand and familiar with core business functions.  The decision about hiring from inside or outside should be based on finding someone that fits the above criteria.