Artur Margonari: How to work with very busy, multiple hat wearing Product Owners

The Great Product Owner: The PO that facilitates conversations and short feedback loops

This PO had a positive attitude, knew the product very well and was able to create communication opportunities between the team and the stakeholders. The PO was able to create, within the team, the idea that the team was working for the stakeholders, not the PO. Finally, this PO was able to create the opportunity for very short feedback loops. 

The Bad Product Owner: The very busy, multi-hat PO problem

When PO’s wear many hats, that creates time and focus conflicts for the PO. It’s hard for such a PO to separate their day-to-day responsibilities from the answers that the team needs and prioritization becomes a problem. Inevitably, the PO with many hats is very busy and ends up pushing the team by telling them exactly “how” they should do their work. It’s up to us, Scrum Masters to help the organization solve this problem, and in some cases, the organization might not even recognize this as a problem! 

Here on the podcast, we’ve created a guide to help Scrum Masters work with very busy Product Owners with our PO Sprint Checklist how-to guide.

 

Are you having trouble helping the teamwork 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 Artur Margonari

Artur is a Brazilian living in Belgium since 2014. When not playing music, practicing martial arts, or traveling, he supports organizations in their agile and continuous improvement journey. He also just adopted a cat and a dog 🙂

You can link with Artur Margonari on LinkedIn and connect with Artur Margonari on Twitter.

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Down-to-earth, hard-earned Scrum Masters lessons and the Tips from the Trenches e-book table of contents, delivered by email
Enter e-mail to download a clickable PO Cheat Sheet
This handy Coach Your PO cheat-sheet includes questions to help you define the problem, and links to handy, easy techniques to help you coach your Product Owner
Enter e-mail to download a clickable PO Cheat Sheet
This handy Coach Your PO cheat-sheet includes questions to help you define the problem, and links to handy, easy techniques to help you coach your Product Owner
Enter e-mail to download a checklist to help your PO manage their time
This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
Enter e-mail to download a checklist to help your PO manage their time
This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
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Checklist
Internal Conference
Checklist
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