Introducing Agile Product Owners in a FLOSS Project

Abstract

Sponsored Open Source Software projects, driven by various actors, have to balance the needs of volunteer contributors and business objectives. This work presents Catrobat, a FLOSS project established at Graz University of Technology, and how it introduced agile product owners. Product owners communicate the product vision, provide a general direction, decide about features, and prioritize requirements that are implemented by the community, i.e., they are ultimately responsible for the product. This agile approach is intended to ensure a certain outcome, such as business objectives, but also to react to the needs of community members and users on a short-term basis. This paper presents how therefore this role has been defined and the processes have been adapted.