Parallel LIVE! Part 2. APM Project Roles in the 7th Edition of the APM BoK

This week Parallel’s Matt Bolton and Jan Underdown discussed the roles in the 7th edition of the Body of Knowlege from the Association for Project Management.

This includes the new role of the Product Owner. The role of the product owner is to represent the views of the users in the project. They bring the voice of the users into the project and express those things that are important to the users. As such the Product owner act as a counterweight to the sponsor and project manager.

This is a new role added to the 7th Editions of the Body of Knowlege as part of the move to include agile approaches.

The product owner acts as the following functions

1. They have a key role in collating the user’s requirements early in the project. Often they will use a MOSCOW approach to classify these requirements.
   1. Must have features those features essential for the operation of the business, such as the ability to process data securely.
   2. Should have features thing than the product can live without but will need some adaptation by the users. Such as a sales system automticaly posting data into an accounts package without manual entry.
   3. Could have requirements things that are nice to have, they will bring benefit but the benefit is marginal. Such as integration between the sales system and social media marketing.
   4. Won’t have features that are excluded from the scope, They support the testing and any piloting of these requirements. Remote support for invoicing via a mobile app.
2. They play a key role in understanding how the products will be used in practice by the users.
3. They need to review the proposed changes from users to understand if they are essential.
4. They have a key role in organising user acceptance, feedback and testing.

This is a formalisation of the role that was often referred to as the senior users in PRINCE2.

Learn more about the latest changes to the 7th Edition of the APM Body of Knowledge and the updates to the APM Project Management Course including the APM PFQ and APM PMQ  (previously known as APMP) at Parallel Project Training.