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ABSTRACT
The product owner role is one of three key roles in the Scrum software development process. Industry demand for product owners is growing exponentially, and educators need effective techniques for teaching students the knowledge, skills, and competencies required to be effective product owners. To address this need, this Teaching Tip describes how SimAgile, an experiential learning simulation, may be used as one part of a series of Scrum-based assignments to help students better understand the product owner role and the competencies required to be an effective product owner. Results from a graduate class on agile project management indicate that when SimAgile is combined with complementary Scrum workflow assignments students report high levels of active learning, relevance, and utility and closely mirrors real world product-owner experiences. Furthermore, students are able to successfully identify product-owner competency requirements upon completion of assignments. With minor modifications, the simulation and Scrum workflow assignments may also be used for undergraduate students. Using the simulation in combination with supplemental Scrum workflow assignments appears to be an approach well suited for teaching students about the product owner role in a classroom setting and will help educators meet the growing demand for product owners in industry.
Keywords: Product owner, Agile, Scrum, Experiential learning & education, Competency, SimAgile
1. INTRODUCTION
The product owner (PO) is one of three primary roles in projects employing the Scrum process (Schwaber & Beedle, 2002). Eighty-seven percent of organizations using agile practices are using Scrum (Digital. AI, 2022). Given the ubiquity of Scrum in organizational software development processes, demand for POs is soaring (Digital.AI, 2021). With an annual growth rate of 24%, industry demands for POs are expected to double every 3 years (LinkedIn, 2020). To meet these growing industry demands there exists significant need for educational programs focused on the PO role.
POs require a broad range of skills and competencies from domains including data analytics, user experience design, business analysis, and technology development (Gnanasambandam et al., 2018). The PO role requires the acquisition, integration, application, and synthesis of knowledge from these diverse domains making traditional pedagogical approaches challenging.
Experiential learning is a proven approach for creating educational experiences that replicate practice-based settings (Clem et al., 2014; Danko, 2019; Thouin & Hefley, 2020). Prior studies exploring experiential...