Many software development projects fail due to problems in requirements, scope, and collaboration. This paper presents a case study of the mismatch between the expectations of Product Owners and the outcome of the development in a large distributed Scrum organization. The data was collected in retrospective meetings involving a team of Product Owners and two software development teams. A focused root cause analysis of the problem “Why the expectations of Product Owners do not meet the outcome of development teams?” was conducted. The analysis aimed at explaining why the problem occurred and how the causes were related to one another. The outcomes were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Our results illustrate the challenges of implementing the Product Owner role in the context of complex, high-variability requirements and distributed development. We highlight the importance of true collaboration, effective requirements specification activities, and sufficient resources for the Product Owner role.

Timo O.A. Lehtinen, Risto Virtanen, Ville T. Heikkilä, Juha Itkonen (Aalto University): Why the Development Outcome Does Not Meet the Product Owners’ Expectations?

Presented at 16th International Conference, XP 2015, Helsinki, Finland, May 25-29, 2015, Proceedings. Published in Agile Processes, in Software Engineering, and Extreme Programming

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-18612-2_8