Product Owner

As a PO you have content authority for your team’s backlog. As the content authority, you are expected to build, edit and maintain the team backlog. This includes the following:

- Exercise just-in-time user story elaboration. Work with your team, Product Managers and Architects to regularly elaborate user stories, providing the needed context, detail, acceptance criteria, acceptance tests, etc. needed for the team to successfully execute the story in a given iteration.
- Maintain a consistent volume of fully elaborated user stories for the team to consume (usually two iterations worth), to maintain the continuous flow of work for the team.
- Maintain the priority order of the team's backlog to assure delivery of the most economically important work first. You must assure that the team backlog is properly aligned with the team’s and the ART’s PI objectives and satisfies any identified dependencies.
- Demonstrate mastery of business content of the backlog, being the authority for the team on any customer/business-related questions
- Demonstrate the ability to maintain the technical integrity of the solutions your team is building by understanding the technical content of the backlog (typically enabler stories), collaborating with architecture and engineering, and getting fast feedback on technical decisions/direction taken by the team.
- Be able to articulate to any audience how your backlog delivers on committed features and/or PI objectives and aligns with the stated business priorities of our organization.
- Maintain the accuracy of the backlog and each backlog item within TFS, assuring the accuracy and timely data entry into TFS, following established guidelines and best practices.
- Be primarily responsible for demonstrating working software to business owners and other stakeholders in system demos
**User Story and Bug Acceptance**

As a PO, you are responsible for accepting user stories and bugs as done. You must assure timely review and acceptance/rejection of user stories to prevent your team from being blocked in delivering against its committed iteration goals. In accepting a user story or bug as done you must ensure the following:

- The user story fully complies with all its acceptance criteria
- The user story or bug complies fully with the Definition of Done (DoD)
- There is an appropriate level of testing completed for this user story
- There are no open P1 or P2 defects, and any open P3 and P4 defects you deem as deferrable are documented appropriately in TFS and act as the escalation point for their team
- The user story has followed accepted development best practices including peer coding, code reviews, acceptance test-driven development (ATDD), etc.
- All artifacts, including test cases, changesets, related documentation, etc. are properly linked to the user story in TFS
- Assure the user story meets level of quality where it is determined by you to be “fit for use” ie customer-ready

**Program Backlog Management**

As a PO participate in elaborating and prioritizing features in the program backlog in advance of each Program Increment (PI) planning.
- Assume shared ownership of the Program Backlog through attendance in relevant Product Management meetings about planning and Program Backlog/Vision refinement.
- Understand the scope of the upcoming enabler work and collaborate with Architecture to participate in decision-making and prioritization of infrastructure work.
- Work with other POs, Product Managers and Architects to regularly elaborate features, providing the needed context, detail, acceptance criteria, acceptance tests, etc. needed for a team to successfully execute the feature in a given PI.
- Work with other POs, Product Managers, and Architects to regularly prioritize the program backlog using Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) process to maintain a continually prioritized feature backlog.