Andrew Mitchell: Communication, and Empowering Engineers, Two Product Owner Superpowers

The Great Product Owner: Marty Cagan’s Influence, Inspiring Excellence in Product Ownership

In this segment, Andrew emphasizes the importance of moving POs out of engineering and into the business to better understand business needs. Inspired by Marty Cagan’s book “Inspired”, this great PO excelled in writing effective stories and facilitated closer collaboration between developers and customers. They viewed the engineers’ involvement with customers as a helpful aid rather than a threat. This shift toward self-management empowered the team and enabled faster delivery of products. A great PO plays a crucial role in fostering collaboration, understanding business requirements, and driving successful outcomes.

The Bad Product Owner: The PO that could not communicate requirements effectively, and what to do about it

In this segment, Andrew discusses the challenges that arise from having a bad Product Owner (PO). These POs excel in discovery but struggle to communicate effectively with the team, leading to frustration and a lack of trust. Andrew suggests coaching the POs in writing clear stories and focusing on value and prioritization. Interrupting the team’s work is another issue to avoid. He emphasizes the importance of well-defined acceptance criteria in stories. Andrew also notes that problems with bad POs often stem from organizational issues rather than individual skills. Bringing the team closer to the discovery work can help address these challenges effectively.

The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Product Owners as a Scrum Master

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 Andrew Mitchell

Andrew prioritizes people when building products, aiming for happy and engaged employees who create great products and serve customers well. He emphasizes trust, psychological safety, servant leadership, and believes Scrum is the best framework to achieve these goals.

He was also a host of the Product Owner Summit 2023, where we collaborated.

You can link with Andrew Mitchell on LinkedIn.

Bojan Smudja: Genchi Genbutsu, how to help Scrum Product Owners go beyond the backlog to understand the real product

The Great Product Owner: Coaching the Product Owner, A Crucial Role for Scrum Masters

Bojan highlights the importance of coaching the Product Owner (PO) as a Scrum Master. He emphasizes that scrum masters should be prepared to provide coaching to the PO, focusing on their development rather than becoming product coaches themselves. Bojan notes that great POs possess the ability to multitask and actively participate in meetings. They act as focused salespeople, selling product ideas and visions to stakeholders and the team. Simply mastering tools like JIRA and stakeholder communication is not enough; the PO must also sell their ideas to the team and scrum master. By coaching the PO and helping them refine their skills, Scrum Masters contribute to the overall success of the product development process.

If you want to know more about what topics, and how you can coach your Product Owner, check out our e-course on How to Coach Your PO.

The Bad Product Owner: Genchi Genbutsu, how to help PO’s go beyond the backlog to understand the real product

In this segment, Bojan discusses a team composed of newcomers, including a newbie Product Owner (PO), working on an existing product. Bojan noticed that here was a disconnection between the work on the team’s Scrum board and the actual product. The PO struggled to bridge the gap between the technical tasks and the features used by customers. Consequently, the team lost sight of the purpose behind their work and the reasons for building the product. One prominent anti-pattern was the lack of a customer feedback loop, resulting in a missed opportunity to gather valuable insights. Bojan advises the implementation of appropriate feedback loops tailored to the specific product being developed. Additionally, he references the concept of “Genchi Genbutsu,” which encourages going and seeing the product in action with customers to gain a deeper understanding.

The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Product Owners as a Scrum Master

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 Bojan Smudja

Bojan is an Agile coach dedicated to assisting individuals, teams, and organizations in reaching their objectives. With his expertise and guidance, he empowers others to embrace Agile methodologies and maximize their potential for success.

You can link with Bojan Smudja on LinkedIn.

Kaisa Martiskainen: The danger of thinking you know the solution before involving customers, a case study for Agile teams

In this episode, Kaisa talks about a temporary team that was formed to solve a problem in their organization. The team was using monitoring tools that sent a lot of alerts, making it difficult for customer support to determine which alerts required action. Kaisa and her colleague wanted to try out Agile practices to address this issue.

However, one individual on the team almost destroyed it with their behavior. One person, who was an expert on the monitoring tool, sent a PowerPoint presentation with all the solutions without consulting with others. This person also declined meeting invitations and eventually left the company after becoming angry.

Kaisa highlights two anti-patterns: thinking we know the solution without involving the customer and pushing one’s own solutions without consulting with others. She also emphasizes the importance of changing the culture of action and including customer feedback. Ultimately, the team reached its goal after the problematic person left, and Kaisa learned the importance of involving everyone in the problem-solving process.

Featured Book of the Week: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Lencioni

Kaisa recommends the book “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Lencioni as a helpful resource for understanding common issues that can arise in a team environment.

She also discusses the concept of System’s intelligence, introduced by Esa Saarinen (PDF Download), which emphasizes the importance of connecting engineering thinking with human sensitivity.

Kaisa also recommends “The Coaching Habit” by Michael Bungay as a book that has helped her avoid an anti-pattern where her knee-jerk reaction is to immediately help someone without allowing the person to help themselves. The book provides seven questions that every coach should ask, which help to increase precision and effectiveness and allow others to take more responsibility. By asking these questions, sometimes people realize they do not need Kaisa’s help. This allows her to avoid being overly involved and helps people become more self-sufficient.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches – Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!

About Kaisa Martiskainen

Kaisa is an Agile coach working for a large multinational software company. Originally from Finland, her thirst for learning new things and passion for languages led her to live in Sweden, and Scotland before settling in Montreal, Canada. She is an avid Redditor who spends her free time reading, knitting, investing and playing with her two daughters.

You can link with Kaisa Martiskainen 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.

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 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.

Get The Booklet!
How to deliver on time and eliminate scope creep By scoping projects around outcomes and impacts, not requirements!
Get the Product Owner Booklet!
Avoid scope creep! And learn to scope projects around impacts and outcomes, not requirements!
Get These Valuable Lessons Today!
Down-to-earth, hard-earned Scrum Masters lessons and the Tips from the Trenches e-book table of contents, delivered by email
Enter e-mail to download a clickable PO Cheat Sheet
This handy Coach Your PO cheat-sheet includes questions to help you define the problem, and links to handy, easy techniques to help you coach your Product Owner
Enter e-mail to download a clickable PO Cheat Sheet
This handy Coach Your PO cheat-sheet includes questions to help you define the problem, and links to handy, easy techniques to help you coach your Product Owner
Enter e-mail to download a checklist to help your PO manage their time
This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
Enter e-mail to download a checklist to help your PO manage their time
This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
Internal Conference
Checklist
Internal Conference
Checklist
Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Motivate your team with the right metrics, and the right way to visualize and track them. Marcus presents a detailed How-To document based on his experience at The Bungsu Hospital
Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works
A moving story of how work at the Bungsu Hospital was transformed by a simple tool that you can use to help your team.
Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works