How can the product owner give accurate times?

From what I understand, the product owner can use a combination of Velocity and Story Points to determine a release date.

The Product Backlog Items will each have an estimate of story points. Over the course of several sprints, the team will complete a certain number of Product Backlog Items, which will have a total number of Story Points for each Sprint. This can be averaged out over the number of Sprints. This is called the Velocity.

Once the Product Owner determines the functionality that they want in the release, they can use the Velocity of the team and the total remaining story points they want in the release to work out a date.

For example, say a team's velocity is 50 points. There are approximately 200 points of PBIs remaining that the Product Owner wants in the release. This will likely take 4 sprints (200/50=4). You then find the date that is 4 sprints in the future and that is your release date.

However because story points are an estimate, the PO may want to provide a range. E.g. instead of 4 sprints they may want to say 4-6 sprints.

The PO does not need any development experience to be able to do this.

Happy to be corrected by those with more experience, but this is my understanding.

I’m wondering: how can the product owner define some dates of the releases science he isn’t a developer or a system analyst?

Shouldn’t a Product Owner understand that there will be an increment of release quality at least once per Sprint, and that he or she is expected to maximize the value obtained?

Ben Brumm thanks for nice example

Ian Mitchell thanks for answer question by question, and by the way, the expert scrum master always lead of help the development team by answering their questions by questions :)