Why is a Product Owner needed
What in the world is wrong with the product owners. Why don’t they leave the Tech Leads alone and let them handle the design. Especially when the customers of the product are other technical teams.
OP - You my friend clearly haven't worked with good product owners. You have no idea how much value they bring to the table assuming they know their shit and clearly and effectively represent business needs
Product managers should understand both the technical and business side of the product.
What and why to build a feature is done by a good product manager. How it is done - engineering team . The border between them are very soft and blurry and there are always some overlaps.
All in praise of PO have clearly worked with a competent PO. in my 10 yoe all PO I have worked with are incompetent/lazy and just rely on tech leads to do their work for them.
This thread seems to confuse Product Owner PO & Product Managers PM. Are companies combining the roles and expecting individuals to do both now?
When the customer is another tech team, the PO should facilitate the meeting between the two teams, document the user stories & prioritize them in the backlog based on competing priorities, funding, tech debt, etc. Just because it's another tech team wanting development time, the PO still has to be part of the conversation.
Because technical leads can’t always make the right trade offs through the journey to build the product - in setting the requirements and during the development phase to meet TTM. If you are a tech lead, who can and does this, then you are effectively the product owner. By product owner, I am assuming you mean product manager.