A fairly common situation in organizations is the presence of a PO without authority. It is common for a BA to play this role, and mainly due to the mistaken belief that functional knowledge is the only criteria for a PO. Also the term ScrumMaster suggesting an all important person in a move to Scrum, contributes to this thinking. As in many things the best course of action is to preempt this situation by educating the rest of the organization (before) the start of Sprint about the roles of SM and PO. Once the realization set in, that the SM is not responsible for the delivery on a sprint to sprint basis, and in terms of delivering the product to the customers, people outside will turn to the PO. The PO will then slowly take on a stronger and more meaningful role, suffused with responsibility. In my experience, coaching project teams and organizations, this take some time. The first level of understanding come about in 3 to 4 sprints, but deeper understanding typically takes a release or two (maybe 3 to 6 months). What one can do to make this more visible:
1. Re-iterate that Scrum is a radically different system of running software projects.
2. Encourage interaction between team and PO, as well as PO and external customers/client.
3. Explain to all concerned that while the team is largely responsible for “building the system right” every sprint, the PO is reponsible for making available “The right system”. While the team is collectively responsible every sprint, the release to the customers is the responsibility of the PO.
4. In addition for a release the PO is ultimately responsible for delivery of the “right system right”, in other words the appropriate system which is shippable (i.e of high quality)