You should insist your client to take up the Product Owner role

I just read an article posted in Scrum Alliance, by Patrick who thinks otherwise. However, I strongly disagree with his point. Perhaps due to both of us working in a similar environment (development efforts provider) provide me an opportunity to better understand where he is coming from.

I have coached a few Scrum team, all of them are very new to Scrum Framework, some may have individual member who have previous Scrum experience but not the entire team. In each team, I have always insisted the Product Owner role to be played by the client side. Preferably from the same person, who sponsored the project, however this is always difficult because the project sponsor are always too busy to commit themselves into this role.

I always use the metaphor that if you want to buy something that is highly customized, and you are paying it, would you want someone to decide every single detail on your behalf? Or you would like to be able to make every single design decision by yourself? Who can know what you want better than you? If you are too busy to make all those decisions by yourself, won't you entrust someone who you know better on that role than let the supplier decide?

In my cases, I experience the following benefits when Product Owner role is played by my client representative. I focus on coaching the person to be a good Product Owner (CRACK)

C: Committed (to the team, the project and the business)
R: Reliable (has time and is available when needed)
A: Authorized (can have the final decision and can have it fast)
C: Communicative (knows how to bring the message across)
K: Knowledgeable (needs to know what it is all about)

Benefits:
1. Client feels that they own the project
This is one of the key reasons why Scrum advocates the user to play the role of PO. They should not throw the responsibility of the project over the wall. With the PO create and maintain the product backlog, direct the team on what to build on each Sprint, decide on the product backlog priority, it give them the feeling of ownership of the project. It also make the communication of the project status and certain decision making reason easier in the client organization.

2. Client enjoy the transparency and hence difficult project decision are made easier
Having the PO from the client side also encourage transparency, hence there should not have many surprises when a challenges (technical / non-technical) pops up. Should a particular user story needs more efforts that could impact the project budget and schedule, that decision was made easier with the PO having full information and visibility to it.

3. Better team spirit
You really want to eliminate the feeling of vendor vs supplier within a project team. The project team (PO, Scrum Master and Dev Team) has only one goal, i.e. to make progress to the project. Having PO from the client side will eliminate a lot of unnecessary political red tape along the way. Make all them temporary forget which company they draw their salary from will encourage them to make decision that benefit the project.