beginner po Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Shahin Sheidaei: The career oriented Scrum Product Owner, an Agile anti-pattern

The Great Product Owner: The great Facilitator

This Product Owner had come from a Marketing Background, and had no experience with Scrum or as a PO. However, the PO was great at facilitation, and listening to the team and stakeholders. People felt heard, and understood by the PO, who was open minded!

The Bad Product Owner: The career-oriented PO

This Product Owner had come from a business background, and was focused on getting a promotion “out of the PO role”. The PO was using Scrumn as a means to further their own career, and that left the Scrum Master and team bitter about the way in which they were treated!

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 Shahin Sheidaei

Shahin Sheidaei is an Agile, Lean and Success Coach,International Speaker, Transformation Expert, and Entrepreneur.

Shahin is a passionate organizational designer focusing on organizational performance, and is also founder and principal coach at Elevate Change Inc.

You can link with Shahin Sheidaei on LinkedIn and connect with Shahin Sheidaei on Twitter.

Nousheen Manzoor: The many anti-patterns that emerge when the Scrum Product Owner does not understand their role

The Great Product Owner: The balance of skills that enables delivery of customer value!

A great Product Owner finds a balance between helping, and attending to the customer needs, and what the team needs to succeed. Great Product Owners also build relationships with the team and their stakeholders. Even if a great PO might not be technical, they are able to create a common language with the team, so that both can inform each other and come to decisions that help the team succeed in the ultimate goal of delivering customer value!

The Bad Product Owner: The many anti-patterns that emerge when the PO does not understand their role

In this segment, we discuss several Product Owner anti-patterns. We start with the problem that many people in the role don’t have a deep enough understanding of the role, and it’s expectations, even if they are quite clearly defined in the Scrum Guide. From that lack of understanding many patterns can emerge, from not being able to contain/manage the scope to lack of understanding that the PO is there to help the team succeed, and not to be a “demanding tyrant customer” to the team! Listen in to learn about some of the critical anti-patterns that emerge when people don’t understand the PO role sufficiently well.

In this segment, we refer to the Coach Your PO e-course, which outlines some of the aspects to cover with PO’s and how to do it.

About Nousheen Manzoor

Nousheen believes that the future of leadership is kindness and empathy, and the same goes for any role which involves individuals and teams, like the Scrum Master role!

You can link with Nousheen Manzoor on LinkedIn.

Ruta Hardikar: The Product Owner that skipped the Sprint Reviews, and what that caused for the Scrum team

The Great Product Owner: The Customer advocate Product Owner

This Product Owner was very close to the customer, and listened to their needs as well as the struggles they had with the product. Through their work, the PO tried to focus on adding to the backlog stories that would help the customer directly, and would often act as the customer when talking to the team. They were able to focus on prioritization, and prioritized the work for the team. The PO was also able to create clear priorities and have conversations with the team about the 3 V’s: Vision, Value, and Validation.

The Bad Product Owner: The Product Owner that skipped the Sprint Reviews, and what that caused for the Scrum team

The processes we have in place influence the choices, and the focus of the Product Owners. In this segment, we talk about a team and their Product Owner that did not host a Sprint Review. Instead, the PO would focus on reviews with individuals, separate discussion with single stakeholders. However, that meant that other stakeholders would not know what the team had worked on during the Sprint. Furthermore, the team was not involved, and did not have the chance to show, and be proud of what they had accomplished during the Sprint. This was an anti-pattern that Ruta tried to overcome. Listen in to learn how Ruta tackled this anti-pattern.

About Ruta Hardikar

Ruta has over 8 years experience with Agile, and has taken the roles of Agile Coach, Scrum Master, Release Train Engineer (RTE in SAFe), working with GM Financial.

You can link with Ruta Hardikar on LinkedIn.

Robbie Ross: The many demands on the Scrum Product Owner role

The Great Product Owner: Curiosity, dedication and Vision, critical skills for great Scrum PO’s

Great Product Owners play a pivotal role in the success of Scrum teams, they define the Vision, and work to anticipate end user needs. But to achieve that, they – as Robbie puts it – “do all kinds of small things along the way”. In this episode, we discuss how this PO was able to put into practice some specific techniques that helped them define what needed to be done, while keeping a great relationship with the stakeholders, and keeping the trust by the team.

The Bad Product Owner: The many demands on the Scrum Product Owner role

The Product Owner is a very demanding role, Robbie describes how this aspect is often misunderstood by people in the role. The demands of the PO role go far beyond the context of the product itself, and include many demands on the human relations and collaboration skills for the Product Owner.

About Robbie Ross

Robbie is an Agile Practice Manager at Jumar Technology with a passion for working with and empowering teams to foster an Agile environment at scale. He’s also a Certified Scrum Master, Kanban practitioner and Agile community member helping teams release their genuine potential to deliver value. Quite a career shift since completing a Sports Science degree at University.

You can link with Robbie Ross on LinkedIn and connect with Robbie Ross on Twitter.

Ricardo Ribeiro: Setting Scrum teams free! A Product Owner superpower

The Great Product Owner: Setting Scrum teams free! A Product Owner superpower

Great Product Owners are able to focus the team on concrete goals that the team feels committed to achieve. They are available to the team when necessary, and through the use of clear goals gives the team the decision power on how to achieve the goals!

The Bad Product Owner: Helping PO’s stop dictating the “how” to their Scrum teams

When Product Owners want to dictate how developers work, it can lead to conflict, and lack of motivation from the part of the team! But how to detect the more subtle ways in which PO’s try to dictate to developers the “how”? In this episode, we talk about several different aspects of this PO anti-pattern, and then discuss how Scrum Masters can evaluate how they can help the Product Owners.

About Ricardo Ribeiro

Ricardo is a Scrum Master (PSM) and certified Professional Scrum Product Owner™ (PSPO) with over 10 years of experience leading high-performing teams and delivering complex Transformational Programmes within the Banking, IT, Computer Hardware and Oil & Gas companies.

You can link with Ricardo Ribeiro on LinkedIn.