Can a PO be the customer himself?

Muthuvengatesh,

What does the Scrum Guide say about the requirements for a Product Owner? Do you think a customer or stakeholder can fulfill those requirements?

Also, this specific forum is designed for exam and certification discussions. The other forum is for Scrum inquiries and clarifications.

I dont think customer or stakeholder can fulfill PO responsibilities. So I understand that customer cannot play the role of PO. I am preparing for PSPO, and hence the question.
thanks for clarifying.

I think it is possible, why not ?

Yes, he can!

The core responsibility of PO is maintaining the PBI with maximizing product value, which is easy for him as he knows his business well.

No, (s)he can't be the PO. Just read and try to interpret the Scrum Guide deeply.

@Peter, why (s)he can't be the PO?

Who better than user knows in what way PB should be optimalized?

If (s)he can fulfill rest of requirements where is the blocker? Or which requirement block user as PO?

Hi Pawel,

customer can't be the PO, because s(he) don't belong to the development organization (mostly) and this situation would generate a conflict of interest. It would mean, that (s)he is stakeholder and Scrum Team member in one person, and it's really likely that (s)he would prefer the interests of the client against the interest of the development organization. As you see, it isn't a healthy situation.

Greetings,
Peter

If the PO cannot be the customer, that's a new one on me.

It's possible that in certain situations this *might* not be the best arrangement, but in others it will. After all, the PO is accountable for product value and the return on investment. There's nothing in Scrum which says that this role ought to be decoupled in some way from the customer...and to do so may well increase communication overhead and complexity.

A PO can be a customer. period. A PO can be external or internal to an organization. As long as the customer fulfils the duties and role of a PO, he can fill in those shoes......as mentioned by Ian above, it can create some impediments but is not forbidden.