What is the primary role of the Product Owner?

The primary role of the Product Owner is to represent the customer to the Agile team. This involves understanding the customer's needs, gathering requirements, and continuously communicating with stakeholders to ensure the development team is building the right product. The Product Owner articulates the vision of the product and translates customer requirements into user stories, creating a bridge between the stakeholders and the team.

By effectively representing the customer, the Product Owner ensures that the team is aligned with what the customer values most, and this alignment is crucial for delivering a product that meets expectations. This role includes responsibilities like maintaining the product backlog, but it fundamentally centers on advocacy for the customer’s interests, ensuring their needs drive the development process. This focus on customer representation sets the direction for the Agile team, fostering collaboration and feedback that are essential for successful product development.

The other options may represent important activities or areas of focus within the Agile framework, but none encapsulate the primary responsibility of the Product Owner in the same way as customer representation does. Prioritizing, estimating, and ensuring quality are certainly critical tasks, but they stem from the foundational responsibility of understanding and advocating for the customer's needs.