Perhaps the most common anti-pattern in the PO role, is the “no real PO” anti-pattern. Either because of their absence, or because the organization downplays that role. In contrast, great PO’s show up everyday, and make sure they help the team, and ask for help from the team.
The Great Product Owner: The PO that helped, and asked for help!
For Mandy, the PO that Ryan introduces, nothing was too much trouble. She was focused on helping the team succeed. When interacting with the team, she made sure the team had everything they needed to succeed. On the other hand, she was also very clear about what she wanted the team to help her achieve, and the problems they needed to help solve. In this episode, we discuss how the PO role is also a servant leader role.
The Bad Product Owner: The “no real PO” anti-pattern
The Product Owner “accountability” is very powerful, but many organizations think they can live without. The PO role is perhaps one of the linchpin roles in Scrum, but yet ignored or downplayed by many. In this episode we discuss why that is, and some of the least productive stances that people take when playing that role.
Are you having trouble helping the team work 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 Ryan Brook
Ryan is a practicing Agile Coach and Scrum Master based in the UK. He is also the co-creator of Scrum Lake, a safe community of practice focused on story telling and deep exploration with Scrum Masters from around the World. He holds both the PSM III and PSPO III and is a candidate Professional Scrum Trainer for scrum.org.
You can link with Ryan Brook on LinkedIn. Or check Ryan’s website at optilearn.co.uk.
