The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the product and managing the Product Backlog. A critical part of this responsibility is forecasting what can be delivered and when. To create reliable forecasts and manage stakeholder expectations, the Product Owner must track and understand the team's delivery metrics, such as velocity, cycle time, and lead time. These metrics provide empirical evidence of the team's delivery capability, enabling the Product Owner to make informed decisions about scope, budget, and release planning. While the Scrum Master may facilitate the process of gathering metrics and the Development Team generates the data, the ultimate responsibility for tracking and utilizing these metrics for product-level planning and communication lies with the Product Owner.

A. Developer: Developers are responsible for completing the work and may track their daily progress, but not the overall strategic metrics used for product forecasting.

B. Product manager: In organizations where this role is separate, the Product Manager is typically more focused on market strategy, while the Product Owner handles the tactical tracking of team delivery.

C. Scrum master: The Scrum Master is a facilitator who helps the team use metrics for process improvement, but is not accountable for using them for product-level forecasting or backlog management.

1. IIBA, Agile Extension to the BABOK® Guide, v2, Section 4.1.4.3, "Product Owner." This section details the PO's responsibilities, including "Managing the economics of the product" and "Participating in planning activities," both of which require the tracking and analysis of delivery metrics to make informed trade-offs and forecasts.

2. Schwaber, K., & Sutherland, J. (2020). The Scrum Guide. Scrum.org. The guide states the Product Owner is "accountable for effective Product Backlog management." Effective management includes forecasting progress toward goals, for which tracking delivery metrics is essential. The guide notes that various practices can be used to forecast progress, such as burn-downs, burn-ups, or cumulative flows.

3. Stray, V., & Moe, N. B. (2020). Understanding coordination in global software engineering: A mixed-methods study on the use of meetings and Slack. Journal of Systems and Software, 170, 110717. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2020.110717. This academic paper discusses agile team roles, reinforcing that the Product Owner is responsible for the product vision and backlog, which involves planning and prioritizing based on the team's measured capacity and delivery rate.