Product Owners vs Business Analysts – MOSTly different roles?

The MOST acronym (Mission, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics) can be used to describe the main differences between the Product Owner and Business Analyst roles on a project.

Mission

• This is the vision statement for the product. It should be concise and value driven.
• This will provide answers to the following questions: What is the intention and long term direction of the product? Who is the user-base/target market? What is the business benefit?
• Example: “We want to deliver the most popular Sports app in the World – with unparalleled journalist content”
• Responsibility of the Product Owner.

Objectives

• These are derived from the product mission. These are targets that will translate the product mission into reality.
• These will provide answers to the following questions: What goals will lead us to achieve our mission? What will need to be created? What will need to be changed? What will need to be acquired?
• Example: “We need to deliver live video streaming in the iOS app“
• Responsibility of the Business Analyst.

Strategy

• This is a description of how success will be achieved. This should describe the features and their prioritisation.
• This will provide answers to the following questions: How will the product scope be delivered across iterations? What is the Minimum Viable Product for release 1.0/launch? Which features are nice-to-haves?
• Example: “Pundit analysis, live video & match statistics are required for the first release – personalisation will be delivered in the second release of the app” 
• Responsibility of the Product Owner.

Tactics

• These are derived from the product strategy. These are the deliverables that will be provided by the development team.
• These will provide answers to the following questions: How can we achieve tangible benefits in the next Sprints? What tasks need to be completed? How can work be grouped together logically & in terms of delivery?
• Example: “Provide live streaming of our CMS videos using Media Player”
• Responsibility of the Business Analyst.

Summary

Within MOST there are 2 definition activities (Mission and Objectives) and 2 planning activities (Strategy and Tactics).

• The Mission (high level product definition) is done by the Product Owner.
• The Objectives (detailed product definition) is done by the Business Analyst.
• The Strategy (high level product planning) is done by the Product Owner.
• The Tactics (detailed product planning) is done by the Business Analyst.

Tags: Agile, Business Analysis, MOST, Product Owner, quality assurance team, scrum, software, technology