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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