In this episode, we refer to a recurring theme in past podcast episodes—the proxy product owner who can’t make decisions because they’re not theirs to make.
The Great Product Owner: Always Available, Always Decisive, Always Has the Context
“There was nothing you tell, any questions you have about a particular feature that this guy doesn’t have an answer to. And that really moved the team so fast.” – Olaitan Fashanu
The best PO Olaitan ever worked with was the mirror opposite of every anti-pattern he’d seen. Deeply involved in refinement. Took backlog management seriously. Always brought the context.
Always available to the team. And—maybe most importantly—always ready to make a decision when devs surfaced trade-offs. The team could ask any question about any feature, and the answer was right there.
Not “let me check,” not “I’ll get back to you,” not “what do you think?”—a decision. That single quality, Olaitan says, was what moved the team faster than anything else. As a Scrum Master, when you see a great PO at work, you also see the amplifying waves of impact: motivation rises, quality rises, ownership grows. Olaitan’s takeaway is sharp: the success of our job depends on how well the product owner does theirs.
Self-reflection Question: When was the last time your PO made a real-time decision that unblocked the team in a single conversation—and what’s preventing that from being the norm?
The Bad Product Owner: Doesn’t Care About Impact, Can’t Make Decisions
“The product owner cares about delivery. We just need to release to the customer. That is something I don’t like.” – Olaitan Fashanu
Olaitan describes two anti-patterns wrapped into one bad-PO type. The first: the PO who doesn’t care about the impact of their work on the team. Tickets dropped without context. No refinement. No problem framing. Just “ship by end of month.” The data shows up in Jira if you’re paying attention—patterns of churn, quality issues, customer complaints, slow market response.
Beyond the numbers, the team loses motivation, frustration creeps in, and eventually you lose the team entirely. The second anti-pattern, layered on top: the PO who can’t make decisions. Developers come back with two options and the trade-offs—and the PO can’t pick one.
Vasco connects it to the proxy PO pattern explored in past episodes—a PO whose decisions aren’t actually theirs to make. The cost is the same either way: the team stalls, ownership erodes, and stakeholder conflict grows.
In this segment, we refer to the proxy PO anti-pattern explored in earlier episodes of the podcast.
Self-reflection Question: Is your PO unable to decide—or unable to be allowed to decide? The difference changes which conversation you need to have, and with whom.
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About Olaitan Fashanu
Olaitan Fashanu is a customer-focused professional with expertise in product management, technology, and coaching. He drives digital and agile transformation, builds collaborative cross-functional teams, and delivers high-quality products across markets. Curious and strategic, he explores AI and data intelligence while balancing technical depth, business goals, culture, structure, and long-term vision.
You can link with Olaitan Fashanu on LinkedIn.
