What Does A Product Owner Do?

WHAT DOES A PRODUCT OWNER DO?

Published: Dec 09, 2025 - The Product Owner drives product vision and strategy by aligning stakeholder goals with customer needs and measurable business outcomes. This role translates priorities into a clear roadmap and well-defined backlog, ensuring user stories and acceptance criteria are ready for efficient Agile delivery. The owner also monitors performance metrics and user feedback to continuously optimize features, improve user experience, and maximize product value.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Product Owner

1. Ecommerce Product Owner Duties

Digital Coordination: Coordinate to develop and implement an e-commerce/digital application and solution operation plan that can improve the digital experience
Stakeholder Alignment: Align, follow, and coordinate with different stakeholders and implement the company's strategic plans related to the e-commerce website/digital applications
Demand Management: Follow the Digital demand process to ensure the implementation is executed as planned and well-coordinated
System Testing: Conduct any required system/solution testing, User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
Risk Mitigation: Update the implementation progress, define any risks/barriers that can impact the plan and propose mitigation
Solution Monitoring: Coordinate to manage, monitor and plan to upgrade the digitalized solutions and applications
User Research: Collaborate with, support team to conduct research/survey with the Customer to understand their behaviours, insights, pain points and needs
Strategic Planning: Support team doing e-commerce strategic planning by discussing and proposing ideas that are aligned with the company's e-commerce strategic plan and based on user research and best practice learning
Performance Analysis: Execute the digital / ecommerce solution and application performance analysis and enhancement
UX Oversight: Lead and supervise to ensure an effective working process with internal stakeholders for content collecting and uploading as well as ensure good UI/UX, website performance and experience
Content Planning: Work with uplines, internal stakeholders to define ideas and plan to enhance Content Hub, maximizing benefits and experience for the user
Change Management: Support team to do Change Management/Communication to drive user penetration, behaviours and achieve KPIs

2. Digital Product Owner Details

Career Progression: Outstanding opportunity to progress career leading this highly engaged team
Customer Outcomes: Use passion and expertise to drive positive outcomes for customers
Domain Transformation: Make a mark on a transformational journey in the Home Ownership Domain
Experience Design: Design compelling experiences for customers and colleagues to drive improvement of the homeownership scorecard and strategy
Delivery Coordination: Coordinate delivery and interdependencies across the domain
Product Strategy: Develop the strategy, build out a vision for the product and deliver initiatives at pace and safely into the channels
Backlog Grooming: Prioritize and groom backlog to achieve Customer Episode measures
Backlog Sequencing: Ensure squad backlog and sequencing are coordinated with the overall Customer Episode and Domain strategy
Team Leadership: Provide leadership and support to wider Customer Episode teams
Culture Building: Part of the senior subdomain leadership team, ensuring focus on people and practices, whilst maintaining a high-performing team with a great culture

3. Product Owner Responsibilities

Application Ownership: Responsibility for B2C applications, starting from new development, technical support, incident management, bug sorting, up to further development and new implementations
Backlog Management: Manage the product backlog
Stakeholder Liaison: Contact person for service owners and information partner for stakeholders
Requirements Definition: Elicitate requirements, elaboration and definition of epics, user stories, tasks and definition of acceptance criteria
Priority Innovation: Apply innovation methods for prioritization of requirements
Team Collaboration: Close collaboration with development and QA teams
UX Collaboration: Exchange and collaborate with the designer and the UX team to ensure the highest quality user experience
Release Planning: Release planning, progress monitoring and organization of user acceptance tests
Performance Ownership: Take ownership of the usability and performance of the websites
Continuous Delivery: Primarily responsible for the timely delivery and continuous improvement of the application

4. Product Owner Job Summary

Roadmap Input: Work closely with the Product Manager to provide input into the product roadmaps and refine the team backlog
Sprint Coordination: Coordinate the implementation teams to support the delivery of the sprint goals and resolution of issues
Performance Tracking: Track team performance, highlighting successful processes or areas of concern
Delivery Expectations: Work closely with the Product Manager to set internal and external delivery expectations based on estimations
Developer Support: Provide support to the software developers to ensure that the software is developed in line with the specifications
Dependency Management: Collaborative definition, coordination, and scheduling of work with external teams, to unblock dependencies
QA Support: Assist the QA in developing test scenarios for products and otherwise support the QA process
Escalation Handling: Take responsibility for all third-level escalations of customer and developer partner support and delegate tasks
Vendor Liaison: Liaise with third-party software developers and product managers
Marketing Support: Assist Marketing in marketing collateral (print and online), media releases, blogs, etc.
Product Representation: Represent products at internal presentations
Status Reporting: Keep the Product Manager informed, on a regular and timely basis, of the status of all activities
Task Delegation: Delegate tasks to team members to achieve desired outcomes
Release Documentation: Ensure release documentation is accurate, complete and communicated to internal and external stakeholders

5. Product Owner Accountabilities

Backlog Refinement: Managing and refining the product backlog
Value Prioritization: Clearly expressing and prioritizing product backlog items to best achieve goals and deliver value
Engineering Collaboration: Working closely with a team of Software Engineers and a QA Engineer
Roadmap Translation: Working closely with the Product Manager to understand the roadmap and translate roadmap items into user stories
Agile Ceremonies: Participating in Refinement sessions, Sprint planning meetings, Sprint Reviews and Retrospectives
Vision Alignment: Understanding and internalizing the product vision, and being available and approachable for the team at all times
Release Quality: Ensuring the quality of the releases by testing, validating, and accepting the work done

6. Product Owner Functions

Learning Products: Lead the creation of scalable, effective learning and performance-improvement products using appropriate methodologies, tools, and platforms
L&D Ownership: Act as a product owner for selected L&D solutions
Solution Lifecycle: Design, setting the solution up for sustainable and scalable deployment, iterating and improving, and sunsetting the solution
Enterprise Tooling: Leverage enterprise tools, licenses, platforms, preferred suppliers, measurement methodologies, and standards in the development of solutions
Stakeholder Alignment: Ensure excellent communication, teamwork, and alignment with key stakeholders, developing a curriculum and acting as a trusted partner
Requirement Translation: Spar actively with team members and stakeholders to define and translate business requirements into actions, and ensure design
Cost Optimization: Develop and implement effective, cost-conscious learning solutions that embed required changes and capabilities and deliver on business results
PPO Partnership: Work closely with colleagues in the People Partnering Organization (PPO), representing the delivery team for many L&D initiatives
Deployment Monitoring: Starting with the design of solutions, the ongoing monitoring of how the solution is working in practice, and process improvement in the deployment
Value Measurement: Drive clear measurement, value realization and optimization of solutions, continuously monitoring progress and tracking benefit realization and delivery of intended results
Input Evaluation: Proactively pull and evaluate input from the organisation and stakeholders to achieve end-to-end benefits and optimization
Trend Monitoring: Keep up to date on relevant trends and innovations, to continue to push how to design, develop, implement, and evaluate learning and development solutions

7. Product Owner Job Description

Product Vision: Define the product vision and identify growth opportunities to deliver on the customer value proposition
Customer Insights: Conclude customer insights to develop innovative product feature requirements and enhancements
OKR Planning: Draft key objectives and results as well as apply data related to the product for business decisions
Epic Definition: Take charge of defining solution epics, user stories and specific business acceptance criteria with a cross-functional development team
UX Collaboration: Collaborate with designers for best-in-class front-end user journeys, wireframes and overall user experience
Tradeoff Analysis: Solve product-related problems and complete trade-off analysis to stay on track with committed deliverables
Launch Planning: Oversee tasks related to product launches and co-create high-impact marketing plans for go-to-market implementation
Trend Analysis: Analyze new technology opportunities and other new market trends
Security Requirements: Drive end-to-end implementation of business requirements, add security and business contingency requirements in collaboration with security experts
P&L Accountability: Take accountability for business efficiency, profit and loss for the product/solution offerings
Agile Practices: Adopt and embrace Agile/Scrum practices during the product development process/life cycle

8. Product Owner Overview

Agile Leadership: Lead the Agile/Scrum product development teams, set, prioritize and evaluate product features backlog
Product Vision: Provide vision and direction to the development team and stakeholders throughout the project and create requirements
Release Planning: Lead product planning, release plans and set the expectation for the delivery of new functionalities
Agile Cadence: Strengthen the Agile working rhythm (daily stand-ups, iteration, sprint reviews and retrospectives)
Roadblock Removal: Resolve people problems and project roadblocks, conduct post-mortem and root cause analysis to improve Agile/Scrum practices for maximum productivity
Lean Startup: Strengthen understanding of Agile practices and Lean Startup
User Representation: Represent the product development team with stakeholders and customers/users
Concept Development: Collaborate with stakeholders during the visioning and concept development of a product
Executive Alignment: Drive alignment between product management and senior management teams to create a product that fits the company's portfolio
Stakeholder Bridging: Bridge the gap between stakeholders and the delivery team with the support of a scrum master

9. Peripherals Product Owner Details and Accountabilities

Sales Operations: Manages the processes part of Sales Operations activities, enabling the Peripherals business in collaboration with business teams
Process Visibility: Offer visibility, transparency and insights into process progress, risks, issues, help required and mitigation plans
Process Improvement: Represents the needs of the business, functions on an ongoing basis to drive process improvements, provides feedback, and conducts regular retrospectives
Quality Delivery: Achieve a high level of performance and quality across the end-to-end setup
Partner Onboarding: Partner onboarding, data migration and quality, Pricing enablement and other activities
Change Management: Ensures proper Change management is in place for the teams involved
Requirements Gathering: Collaborates with stakeholders to gather business requirements, supporting the design of new or improved processes, and understanding business/customer impact

10. Product Owner Tasks

Roadmap Integration: Incorporate feature requests into the product roadmap with the supervision of the product manager
Backlog Prioritization: Update and prioritize backlog
User Storywriting: Develop user stories and define acceptance criteria
Sprint Goals: Set sprint goals and write acceptance tests
Design Coordination: Coordinate with UX/UI designers for the mockup development
Tech Collaboration: Work closely with the tech team for the product development
Release Planning: Plan releases and upgrades
Issue Resolution: Follow the progress of work and address production issues during sprints
User Analysis: Analyze preferences and requests of end users
Agile Refinement: Refine agile methodology based on results and stakeholders’ feedback
Trend Tracking: Keep track of industry trends

11. Product Owner Roles

Product Vision: Set an ambitious and clear product vision and communicate the vision effectively to stakeholders, the team, and the organization
Strategy Alignment: Collaborate with stakeholders to ensure digital vision and products align with team strategy and requirements
Value Messaging: Work closely with business leaders to establish each product’s business value, and support messaging, communication and customer outreach
Backlog Management: Prioritize and manage items in the backlog and maintain a backlog 3 to 4 sprints ahead of the team
Story Definition: Utilize market and industry knowledge to translate user needs into user stories and acceptance criteria for their team
Delivery Strategy: Determine end-to-end team output strategy from inception to production
Release Demos: Facilitate release planning with stakeholders as well as weekly demos
Usability Research: Integrate usability studies and research into product requirements to enhance user satisfaction and ensure customer-driven design
OKR Ownership: Accountable for product-specific OKRs and communicating progress to stakeholders

12. Product Owner Additional Details

Service Reform: Liaise with key stakeholders to identify and develop service reform opportunities to improve services for Victorian citizens
Value Balancing: Represent and balance the needs of customers together with business requirements to provide vision and direction to the delivery team that enables them to deliver the highest value product suite
Portfolio Analysis: Analyse customer feedback and the overall performance of the product portfolio from a business, agency and client perspective to identify and prioritise enhancements to improve Service Victoria's products and the experience for customers
Portfolio Planning: Support the portfolio planning process to ensure alignment and clarity on the short and mid-term direction of the product portfolio
Agile Leadership: Participate in all agile ceremonies, providing leadership to build the team's capability in Agile methodologies and capacity to deliver
Requirement Clarity: Work closely with internal stakeholders to ensure scope, requirements and stories are clearly understood, documented and approved
Stakeholder Demos: Regularly liaise with representatives from Victorian Government agencies and departments to demonstrate the latest product iterations to customers (pre-release) and gather feedback
Feedback Prioritization: Prioritise and communicate this feedback to the team
UAT Support: Support the User Acceptance Testing for products and work with internal business areas to ensure smooth market introduction

13. Product Owner Essential Functions

Product Vision: Set product vision, drive team iteration and executions, communicate story to stakeholders and teams and create business requirement documents and plans
Customer Insights: Conclude customers' insights to develop innovative product feature requirements and enhancement plans
Sprint Facilitation: Guide daily stand-ups, iteration planning, sprint reviews, and drive sprints together with the Scrum Master
Delivery Management: Develop product requirements and manage end-to-end product delivery
Squad Coordination: Oversee daily scrums, prioritizing product backlog, holding product iteration sessions, reviewing requirement documentation, and unblocking barriers to keep 3+ squads moving
Continuous Improvement: Lead efforts of multiple teams in continuous improvement, define and implement improvement stories to increase the velocity and quality of programs
Impediment Removal: Lead task execution, placing new processes to remove task impediments to allow squads to focus on product delivery fully
Launch Execution: Oversee tasks related to product launches (roll out to user groups, locations, etc)
Marketing Coordination: Co-create high-impact marketing interventions with different teams and lead their implementation
Conflict Management: Manage project conflicts, challenges, and dynamic business requirements to keep operations running at high performance
Root Cause: Work with team leads to resolve people problems and project roadblocks, conduct post-mortem and root cause analysis to help squads continuously improve their practices to ensure maximum productivity

14. Product Owner Role Purpose

Vision Definition: Define and communicate the overall vision, objectives and goals of the Articulate minimum viable product needs
Backlog Prioritization: Create, refine, socialize and prioritize the Product backlog
Team Maturity: Contribute to the maturity, performance and growth of the Agile team
Story Grooming: Work daily with scrum teams to refine, groom, and accept stories and bugs for implementation
UAT Management: Create UAT test cases, organize and facilitate UAT testing, track test results, and work with the scrum master and agile team to resolve issues
External Alignment: Represents the team to external stakeholders, leaders and other teams to ensure alignment and understanding progress of the team
Agile Standards: Support the Agile Program and ensure the team follows enterprise Agile standards
Process Feedback: Provide feedback to the program on enhancements for the Agile process
Change Leadership: Champions change and effectively manage the implementation of new ideas
Team Motivation: Align and motivate a team to achieve objectives

15. Product Owner General Responsibilities

Process Optimization: Identify opportunities for process optimization and redesign that will allow to accomplishment of objectives more quickly and with a higher level of probability
Team Coaching: Work one-on-one with each team member to ensure their growth and accountability to the team are achieved
Clear Communication: Effectively communicates relevant information to all levels of the organization
Workflow Definition: Partner with cross-functional teams to build, prioritize and define workflows and requirements
Team Reinforcement: Reinforces team approach throughout organization both on client projects and internal initiatives
Input Solicitation: Supports and solicits input from team members at all levels within the organization
Team Collaboration: Create a dynamic and a dynamic spirit of teamwork and collaboration
Quality Partnership: Complement the broader team with high-quality and partnership
Solution Evaluation: Communicates effectively with internal stakeholders to identify needs and evaluate alternative business solutions and strategies
Customer Satisfaction: Continually defines ways to increase customer satisfaction and deepen business relationships

16. Product Owner Key Accountabilities

Vision Support: Partner with management to support the delivery of a product vision
Backlog Ownership: Create and maintain a product backlog and continuously re-prioritize user stories that will provide the most customer or end user value
Roadmap Alignment: Continuously align with senior management on the product delivery roadmap, defined Minimum Marketable Features or Minimum Viable Products and release cadence
Analytics Review: Review performance analytics, recommend and champion strategies to enhance the customer or end user product experience
Agile Participation: Participate in scrum or Kanban events (e.g., stand-ups, retrospectives), express new ideas for improving product value or delivery efficiency, and share with leadership
Change Readiness: Proactively engage established business process partners to ensure customers or end users are prepared for application changes and establish Day 2 processes
Value Backlog: Create a value-focused product backlog and continuously iterate, ensuring there are user stories scoped and prioritized
Story Oversight: Provide user story design, development and completion oversight
Story Acceptance: Accepting/rejecting user stories based on the agreed-upon Definition of Done and Acceptance Criteria
Initiative Management: Manage delivery initiatives and oversee the development team (pod) backlogs
Impediment Raising: Proactively raise issues that impede the efficient delivery of customer-focused increments

17. Product Owner Roles and Details

Defect Management: Responsible for defect management and prioritization
Framework Adherence: Adhere to enterprise frameworks or methodologies that relate to activities for own business area/journey
Strategic Alignment: Ensure ongoing strategic alignment with senior management, providing feedback
Backlog Facilitation: Consider development team and stakeholder feedback in backlog management, facilitating conversations with multiple stakeholders representing competing priorities
Environment Awareness: Understand the internal business and technical environment, proactively defining, aligning or integrating with relevant stakeholders, shared services control groups
QBR Leadership: Lead the submission and discussion on the Quarterly Business Review, with respect to their product
Stakeholder Management: Proactively manage business stakeholders to obtain the inputs needed for product development promptly
Regulatory Monitoring: Monitor the regulatory environment and partner with the senior management to consider changes to product strategy
Testing Coordination: Actively coordinate and engage in risk, quality and/or business testing management
Delivery Decisions: Empowered to make product delivery decisions, escalating to senior management

18. Product Owner Responsibilities and Key Tasks

Stakeholder Communication: Actively communicate with business, technology and senior management regarding product changes and backlog priorities
Escalation Ownership: Single point of escalation for the development team, providing guidance and decisioning
Agile Reinforcement: Work cohesively with peers to reinforce Agile processes
Metrics Reporting: Compile performance metrics and share with relevant stakeholders
OKR Definition: Define the OKRs in partnership with numerous stakeholders across the organization
Risk Management: Protect the interests of the organization- identify and manage risks, and escalate non-standard, high-risk activities
Trend Monitoring: Keep abreast of emerging issues, trends, and evolving regulatory requirements and assess potential impacts
Control Culture: Maintain a culture of risk management and control, supported by effective processes in alignment with risk appetite
Team Support: Participate fully as a member of the team, support a positive work environment that promotes service to the business, quality, innovation, and teamwork, and ensure timely communication of issues/ points of interest
Thought Leadership: Provide thought leadership and/ or industry knowledge for own area of expertise in own area and participate in knowledge transfer within the team and business unit

19. Product Owner Duties and Roles

Trend Awareness: Keep current on emerging trends/ developments and grow knowledge of the business, related tools and techniques
Skill Development: Participate in personal performance management and development activities, including cross-training within own team
Status Updates: Keep others informed and up-to-date about the status/progress of projects and/or all relevant or useful information related to day-to-day activities
Team Mentorship: Contribute to team development of skills and capabilities through mentorship of others, by sharing knowledge and experiences and leveraging best practices
Partner Leadership: Lead, motivate and develop relationships with internal and external business partners/stakeholders to develop productive working relationships
Inclusive Culture: Contribute to a fair, positive and equitable environment that supports a diverse workforce
Brand Ambassador: Act as a brand ambassador for the business area/function and the bank, both internally and/or externally
SME Expertise: Key subject matter expert professional role requiring substantial knowledge/expertise in a complex field and knowledge of broader related areas
Agile Support: Accountable for specialized product development support based on sound product expertise and knowledge of Agile/Scrum processes, roles and practices
Strategy Integration: Integrate knowledge of the enterprise sub-function’s or business line’s overarching strategy in developing solutions across multiple functions or operations

20. Product Owner Roles and Responsibilities

Business Analysis: Interpret internal/external business challenges and the industry environment, recommend a course of action and best practices to improve products, processes or services
Cross-Functional Leadership: Lead and integrate cross-functional understanding within their own field of specialty, and /or projects with significant resource requirements, risk and/or complexity
Solution Development: Leads efforts or partners with others to develop new solutions
Analytical Judgment: Use sophisticated analytical thought to exercise judgment and identify solutions
Objective Impact: Impact the achievement of sub-function or business line objectives within the area they are accountable for
Business Advisory: Converts information into a compelling business context and advice
Senior Alignment: Influences and gains alignment across increasingly senior stakeholders
Autonomous Leadership: Work autonomously as the lead and guide others within the area of expertise

Relevant Information

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