It describes who owns what at the product level.

Definitions

Owner

Per Committees there should be a single owner per product scope. This ensures that we can make faster decisions, allow more accountability, and avoid politics.

Maintainers

Per the bus factor argument, all product scope should have a minimum of two maintainers. This is important so that one person suddenly disappearing from a project ("hit by a bus") would not lead to project stalls due to a lack of knowledgeable or competent personnel.

There should not be more than 3 maintainers to ensure enough product involvement in past decisions and to streamline decision-making.

Among the maintainers, you will find the product scope owner and often the parent product scope owner. The third maintainer is often one of the most active contributors in the area.

What’s the difference between an owner, a maintainer, and a contributor?

• An owner is ultimately accountable for the decisions taken.
• A maintainer collaborates with the owner to move important product decisions forward. He/She can take ownership of non-irreversible decisions and non-high-impact decisions. For example by approving a contributor’s PR. That person acts as a counterweight to the owner, and well as helps them delegate and scale themselves.
• A contributor is contributing improvements, e.g. a community member or an MUI employee.

List of owners

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Benchmarks

• https://www.notion.so/blog/notion-product-management-system-align-every-team