Stakeholders (Product Owner)

Mission

Own the product: its vision, value, priorities, and the decision on what is good enough to ship. EmeSoft is a delivery-focused team and does not staff an in-house Product Owner - product ownership lives with the client/business stakeholders. This page therefore covers both the classic Stakeholder duties and the Product Owner responsibilities.

Who they are

Executive sponsors, business unit heads, end-customer representatives, and the client’s own product and technical leadership (e.g. a client CTO). They are accountable for why the product exists, what gets built first, and whether the result delivers value.

Responsibilities

As stakeholders

Set and communicate the product vision and target business outcomes.
Secure and protect funding and organizational support.
Provide domain expertise and answer business questions during refinement.
Make timely decisions when the team is blocked on a business call.

As Product Owner

Own and prioritize the product backlog against business value and risk.
Define the Product Goal and the value each sprint should deliver.
Approve acceptance criteria (drafted with the EmeSoft Business Analyst).
Attend Sprint Reviews, give feedback, and accept or reject the increment.

Inputs

Input	From
Market / business need	The business, customers, the market
Refined stories & estimates	Business Analyst, Architect, team
Sprint demo & increment	Delivery team (at Review)
Outcome metrics & status reports	Project Manager / Business Analyst

Outputs

Output	To
Vision, priorities, funding decisions	Business Analyst, Project Manager
Prioritized backlog & Product Goal	Delivery team (via BA)
Business answers & domain clarifications	Business Analyst
Feedback & acceptance decisions	Delivery team

AI tools & how we use them

Stakeholders are light hands-on AI users, but AI raises the quality and speed of what they receive and decide on.

Claude / ChatGPT (backlog & executive synthesis): turn a stakeholder email, call transcript, or strategy note into draft epics and a prioritized backlog with value hypotheses - then refine with the BA. Also used to compress sprint data into a one-page, plain-language outcome summary. Prompt: “From these notes, propose 3–5 epics, each with a goal, value hypothesis, and rough acceptance criteria.”
Productboard / Aha! with AI, or Jira AI: cluster and theme user feedback, detect duplicate requests, and suggest priority from impact/effort signals.
Analytics copilots (Amplitude/Mixpanel AI, Power BI Copilot): ask outcome questions in natural language - “which feature drove the most retention last release?” - to ground prioritization in data.
AI meeting assistants (Otter, Fireflies, Copilot in Teams): capture and summarize stakeholder meetings so decisions and action items are recorded.

Collaboration

flowchart LR
    ST[Stakeholders / Product Owner] -->|vision, priorities, backlog| BA[Business Analyst]
    BA -->|refined stories, options| ST
    TEAM[Delivery team] -->|demo, increment| ST
    ST -->|feedback, accept / reject| TEAM
    PM[Project Manager] <-->|status, risks, coordination| ST

Stakeholders are required at the Sprint Review and are consulted during refinement for domain questions and prioritization. They do not attend the Daily Scrum or Retrospective. Day-to-day, they work through the BA (requirements) and PM (delivery coordination).

Definition of Done for this role

The vision, current priorities, and backlog order are communicated and understood by the BA/PM.
Business questions blocking the team are answered within an agreed SLA.
Acceptance criteria for upcoming work are approved.
The increment has been reviewed and explicitly accepted or rejected.