From value-centered product ownership to interruption-based product ownership, two contrasting patterns we must be aware of.
The Great Product Owner: Value-centered, and able to communicate that to the Scrum team
A great PO has the mindset that they are there to understand and serve the customer with the help of the team. The great PO knows the environment (both inside the company and the customer’s environment); knows the customer very well, and most importantly understands how to bring that information to the team. Finally, the great PO has conversations centered around the idea of “value” for the customer and the company.
The Bad Product Owner: Interrupting the team and causing them to fail
This particular PO kept bringing new things to the sprint late in the process: “This has to go in as well” was the key phrase. This PO was heavily influenced by influential salespeople in the organization. All of this led the team to never finish the work they started.
In this segment, we refer to the episodes with John Albrecht, who’s been a guest here on the podcast.
Are you having trouble helping the team working well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at: bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.
About Serge Huybrechts
Serge is a Scrum Master, Agile coach, and trainer with a long background in IT Service Management. He considers himself a guide for continuous improvement where Agile, Scrum, and Kanban are the vehicles. Serge loves Agile because of its focus on people and learning resonates with him.
He also calls himself a bulimic reader and very passionate about music.
You can link with Serge Huybrechts on LinkedIn.
