The Product Owner role in Scrum - A literature review and case study on Software Development
Authors
Nielsen, Jonas ; Jirickova, Marie
Term
4. Term
Publication year
2019
Submitted on
2019-06-07
Abstract
Denne kandidatafhandling undersøger, hvad Product Owner-rollen i Scrum indebærer i softwareudvikling, og i hvilken grad beskrivelser i litteraturen stemmer overens med praksis. Arbejdet består af to dele: et litteraturstudie og et casestudie. Først gennemgås tre centrale bøger om Product Owner-rollen og 30 forskningsartikler, hvoraf 14 vurderes relevante. Synthesen identificerer fem hovedaspekter ved rollen og opstiller 40 udfordringer fordelt på otte kategorier og tre områder, hvilket tilsammen giver en mere nuanceret beskrivelse end Scrum Guiden og peger på mangler i den eksisterende litteratur. Dernæst præsenteres et casestudie baseret på ni semistrukturerede interviews med praktikere, analyseret med Grounded Theory, som kortlægger centrale opgaver og kompetencer for Product Owners. Samlet set viser sammenligningen, at litteraturen i store træk stemmer overens med praksis, men at nogle aspekter af rollen ikke er fuldt dækket af de tilgængelige kilder. Afhandlingen bidrager med en struktureret oversigt over udfordringer, opgaver og kompetencer samt peger på områder for videre forskning.
This master’s thesis examines what the Scrum Product Owner role entails in software development and to what extent published descriptions align with real-world practice. The work comprises two parts: a literature review and a case study. First, it reviews three key guideline books on the Product Owner role and 30 research articles, 14 of which were deemed relevant. The synthesis identifies five main aspects of the role and compiles 40 challenges organized into eight categories and three areas, offering a richer characterization than the Scrum Guide and highlighting gaps in existing literature. Second, a practitioner case study based on nine semi-structured interviews is analyzed using Grounded Theory to identify core tasks and competencies of Product Owners. Overall, the comparison indicates that literature broadly aligns with practice, while some aspects of the role remain insufficiently covered. The thesis contributes a structured map of challenges, tasks, and competencies and points to areas for future research.
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