I read a post by Carl Adamson today titled “Can I invite the Product Owner to the Daily Scrum.” In the post, Carl points out that while in the past, having the Product Owner participate in the Daily Scrum was considered a no-no, in the new version of the Scrum Guide, Scrum Masters and Product Owners are allowed to work on backlog items as developers, and that if they do so, they can participate in the Daily Scrum.
Ever seeking the counterpoint to any argument, I posted a reply to him as follows:
“‘Development’ is explicitly mentioned as being not just software development but “anyone who gets value from scrum.” An argument can be made that a PO develops the backlog items, they develop knowledge and relationship with stakeholders and clients, they develop theories and experiments and the product and so on. And so, it can be argued that even when a PO is not actively working on a pbi, they are still doing development work on the product.’
To be fair, as I wrote to Carl, I am not sure that I would indeed make this argument for PO participation. But it’s a topic worth exploring (in the hope that Carl doesn’t mind too much that I’m stealing his topic): Can a Product Owner (who is not developing) participate or interrupt in a Daily Scrum?
Before we start the discussion, a quick reminder of what terms mean in Scrum:
To Attend – To be present and listen, but not talk. POs are always welcome to attend meetings, so long as they remain quiet.
To Participate – To actively be part of the meeting. To talk, ask questions, make comments or suggestions, bring up your own topics.
To interrupt – To speak, comment, or ask a question about someone else’s topic, especially when you are not “supposed” to do that.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about having POs in the Daily Scrum. The guide has this to say about the Daily Scrum:
The purpose of the Daily Scrum is to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary, adjusting the upcoming planned work.
https://www.scrumguides.org/
I think the key term here is “Sprint Goal”. My argument to Carl was that the work POs do can be considered ‘development’ work even if they are not writing code, but is it work towards the Sprint Goal? I would imagine probably not.
A PO’s work is centered around what the new guide calls the “Product Goal.” That is, their work is mostly outside of the scope of the sprint, and involves looking forward to future sprints and bigger product goals. The PO contributes to the current sprint in two ways: by having done work previous to the sprint start to make sure that the Stories and PBIs are ready to be consumed by the team during the sprint, and by making themselves available to developers during the sprint for clarification and domain expertise. Neither one of these actions necessitates the PO’s participation during the Daily Scrum. And so I would argue (against myself 
) that the PO should not participate in the daily.
Does that mean that the PO shouldn’t be there? Not at all. The PO can benefit greatly from listening to the developers and learning about how they are addressing the PBIs they’ve chosen during the sprint. This knowledge may contribute to the PO’s own activities, and after hearing a developer mention an issue during the meeting, he or she can choose to engage that developer in further conversation in order to clarify future tasks that the PO might be working on (the PO may not, however, interrupt the meeting for that). But by and large, it seems to me that unless they are actively working on a PBI, a PO should remain silent during the daily.
Except in one situation: the PO has the responsibility for the overall Product Goal, and as a result they are responsible for the Sprint Goal and how it moves the product towards the Product Goal. In the (hopefully rare) event that the PO listens to the Daily Scrum and perceives that the development effort is straying away from the Sprint Goal, or that the Sprint Goal may have been rendered obsolete by external events, then they do have the right and duty to interrupt. In other words, the PO may not interrupt the meeting for their own sake, but they may and should do so if the interruption would benefit the team. At the conclusion of the meeting the PO may also mention if they have brought chocolate for the team and where it is. This part is not in the guide, but I doubt if even the purest of agilists will argue against it.
Want to talk more about the role of the Product Owner or anything else in the agile sphere? Drop me a line at boaz@makecodebetter.com, or through my linkedin page!