In this episode, we refer to Product Owner anti-patterns and how Scrum Masters can coach Product Owners without becoming the hidden Product Owner.
The Great Product Owner: Clarity, Courage, and Customer Context
“This product owner gave the team the problem, and not just the solution.” – Joseph Osei-Kusi
Joseph describes a great Product Owner who changed the team’s dynamic by bringing clarity, courage, and context. Instead of feeding tickets to developers, this Product Owner explained the customer problem, the business outcome, and what success would look like. That gave the team room to think. Developers started asking better questions: What should we build? Is there a simpler way to solve this? Can we test this with a smaller release first?
The Product Owner was also clear about what the team was not doing. When urgent stakeholder requests appeared, the question became: Is this more important than the current Sprint Goal? That single question made trade-offs visible. Vasco highlights an important effect: starting with the customer problem creates empathy and brings the Product Owner into the team’s problem-solving space.
Self-reflection Question: Does your Product Owner bring your team customer problems to solve, or mostly solutions to implement?
The Bad Product Owner: The Order-Taker Backlog
“When everything is priority one, nothing is truly priority one.” – Joseph Osei-Kusi
Joseph’s Product Owner anti-pattern is the order-taker PO. This Product Owner cared and worked hard, but had become a pass-through for stakeholder requests. Every request entered the backlog. Everything was urgent. Everything was high priority. The backlog became a storage room for everyone’s wishes, and the impact on the team was predictable: weak Sprint Goals, context switching, and developers building features without understanding the outcome behind them.
Joseph helped by coaching through questions instead of making decisions for the PO. What problem are we solving? What outcome matters now? What happens if we do not do this right now? What are we willing to say no to? Those questions helped the Product Owner move from taking orders to making decisions, while keeping the Scrum Master out of the hidden Product Owner trap.
Self-reflection Question: What decision-making questions could help your Product Owner say “not now” with more confidence?
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About Joseph Osei-Kusi
Joseph is an Agile coach and Scrum Master obsessed with the human side of delivery. He has focused on moving teams beyond just “following the process” to delivering value. He champions radical transparency and psychological safety, and believes that when you get the people part right, everything else falls into place.
You can link with Joseph Osei-Kusi on LinkedIn.
