Lack of details can be a motivator for the team to bring their creative thinking. Great Product Owners can take advantage of that. In this episode, we also discuss what happens when the PO doesn’t really know what they own.
The Great Product Owner: Bring a problem, and solve it with the team
Great Product Owners inspire the team to think of solutions the PO could not think of. To do that, they share the context and pain of the customer and leave the details out, so that the team asks questions, and starts imagining what the successful outcome would look like. In this segment, we also discuss how important it is that the PO gives time, and space to the team so they can work on the problem the PO brings to the team.
The Bad Product Owner: The PO who does not know what he owns
Sometimes, the Product Owner isn’t clear on what exactly they own. In those cases, the team can’t be clear either on what they are trying to achieve. This lack of clarity can come from the fact that the PO “hat” is thrown to someone who isn’t right for the job, and may even have a few other “side” jobs they need to attend to. Are these characteristics present in your PO? Listen in, to learn how Dov suggests we tackle these PO anti-patterns.
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 Dov Tsal
Dov Tsal is a versatile agile coach, scrum-master, change-agent, and enabler, helping companies teams, and individuals to make an impact. Dov is also the creator of the #MeetingSpicer, a coaching tool to hack meeting culture. He is also the co-creator of The Agile Tao Podcast about understanding agility through the Taoist prism.
You can link with Dov Tsal on LinkedIn.
