US Digital Services Playbook Play 6

#Play 6: Assign One Leader and Hold that Person Accountable There must be a single product owner who has the authority and responsibility to assign tasks and work elements; make business, product, and technical decisions; and be accountable for the success or failure of the overall service. This product owner is ultimately responsible for how well the service meets needs of its users, which is how a service should be evaluated. The product owner is responsible for ensuring that features are built and managing the feature and bug backlogs.

##Checklist

• 1. A product owner has been identified

Ben Rogers was identified as our team's Product Owner.

• 2. All stakeholders agree that the product owner has the authority to assign tasks and make decisions about features and technical implementation details

Product Owner Ben Rogers has full authority to assign tasks and make decisions about features and technical details.

• 3. The product owner has a product management background with technical experience to assess alternatives and weigh tradeoffs

Ben Rogers is an experienced consultant and certified scrum master (CSM) with experience as a business analyst, developer, solution architect, and more.

• 4. The product owner has a work plan that includes budget estimates and identifies funding sources

Not applicable for this prototype.

• 5. The product owner has a strong relationship with the contracting officer

Not applicable for this prototype.

##Key Questions

1. Who is the product owner?

Ben Rogers was identified as our team's Product Owner.

2. What organizational changes have been made to ensure the product owner has sufficient authority over and support for the project?

For the purposes of this prototype no organizational changes were required.

3. What does it take for the product owner to add or remove a feature from the service?

The Product Owner creates a new issue on the Github Issues board then works with the development team to assign it to a sprint based on priority and complexity.

#US Digital Services Playbook

1. Play 1 Understand what people need
2. Play 2 Address the whole experience, from start to finish
3. Play 3 Make it simple and intuitive
4. Play 4 Build the service using agile and iterative practices
5. Play 5 Structure budgets and contracts to support delivery
6. Play 6 Assign one leader and hold that person accountable
7. Play 7 Bring in experienced teams
8. Play 8 Choose a modern technology stack
9. Play 9 Deploy in flexible hosting environment
10. Play 10 Automate testing and deployments
11. Play 11 Manage security and privacy through reusable processes
12. Play 12 Use data to drive decisions
13. Play 13 Default to open