The Great Product Owner: The Impact of an Absent Product Owner on Agile Teams
In this episode, Frederik introduces a product owner who is absent and unresponsive, leading to challenges for the team. The lack of interaction and participation in Scrum events becomes demotivating, and the team starts seeking excessive upfront details, leading to slow and cumbersome planning. This absence may be due to the PO’s busyness or other roles they hold. The episode provided tips such as talking to the PO to understand the situation and sharing the vision for the PO role. It emphasized the importance of explaining to the PO why their presence is critical for successful collaboration and achieving shared goals.
The Bad Product Owner: The Power of Purpose, Unveiling the Qualities of a Great Product Owner
In this segment, John – the PO – is portrayed as an exceptional product owner who prioritizes purpose and outcomes. He possesses a clear vision of the product’s purpose and utilizes it to guide decision-making for the backlog. John effectively aligns stakeholders and the development team by communicating the product goal and emphasizing the “why” behind their work. He excels in identifying the target customer and ensuring the product meets market needs. John collaborates with the team, facilitates stakeholder involvement, and holds them accountable for decisions. The episode highlights the use of impact mapping as a valuable tool for goal-oriented decision-making. John embodies the qualities of a great product owner, driving the success of the product through purpose-driven leadership.
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 Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse
Frederik is a Certified Team and Enterprise Coach at the Scrum Alliance. He works and lives in Belgium. He is part of the company iLean. Frederik has worked as Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Agile Coach. He works with teams and leadership to improve collaboration, flow, and learning. Frederik co-organizes the XP Days Benelux conference – this year, in 2023, the conference has existed for 20 years. He is also a regular speaker at local and international conferences.
You can link with Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse on LinkedIn.

Retrospectives, planning sessions, vision workshops, we are continuously helping teams learn about how to collaborate in practice! In this Actionable Agile Tools book, Jeff Campbell shares some of the tools he’s learned over a decade of coaching Agile Teams. The pragmatic coaching book you need, right now! Buy
As Scrum Master we work with change continuously! Do you have your own change framework that provides the guidance, and queues you need when working with change?
Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today!
Recovering from failure, or difficult moments is a critical skill for Scrum Masters. Not only because of us, but also because the teams, and stakeholders we work with will also face these moments! We need inspiring stories to help them, and ourselves! The Bungsu Story, is an inspiring story by Marcus Hammarberg which shows how a Coach can help organizations recover even from the most disastrous situations! Learn how Marcus helped The Bungsu, a hospital in Indonesia, recover from near-bankruptcy, twice! Using Lean and Agile methods to rebuild an organization and a team! An inspiring story you need to know about! 