The Great Product Owner: Thinking BIG, but executing the details together with the team
A great Product Owner is able to change their perspective easily, they are able to talk about “the big vision”, as well as discuss some detailed questions that the team needs to answer when implementing the stories selected for a Sprint. This PO kept a “one pager” with a visual representation of the product roadmap, which helped create a language about the product that helped define direction, and collect feedback from the team, as well as stakeholders.
The Bad Product Owner: Lost in the inbox, how PO’s can lose sight of what matters for the product and the Scrum team!
This PO saw themselves as the project manager. He delegated work to specific team me mbers, and saw his relationship with stakeholders as one of reporting only. This PO ended up acting like a (broken) telephone between stakeholders and the team. The PO was not able to focus on outcomes, instead focusing on detailed requests that arrived constantly by email and other means.
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 Caterina Reinker
Caterina is a social anthropologist and passionate Scrum Master. She regards organizations like villages – or cities – with their own language, institutions, and explicit and many implicit rules. Caterina works and lives in Germany and helps groups of people, big and small, in their agile journey.
You can link with Caterina Reinker on LinkedIn.
