micro-management Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Tom Molenaar: When Product Owners “Eat the Grass” for Their Teams

The Great Product Owner: The Vision Catalyst

“This PO had the ability to communicate the vision and enthusiasm about the product, even I felt inspired.”

Tom describes an exceptional Product Owner who could communicate vision and enthusiasm so effectively that even he, as the Scrum Master, felt inspired about the product. This PO excelled at engaging teams in product discovery techniques, helping them move from merely delivering features to taking outcome responsibility. The PO introduced validation techniques, brought customers directly to the office for interviews, and consistently showed the team the impact of their work, creating a strong connection between engineers and end users.

The Bad Product Owner: The Micromanager

“This PO was basically managing the team with micro-managing approach, this blocked the team from self-organizing.”

Tom encountered a Product Owner who was too controlling, essentially micromanaging the team instead of empowering them. This PO hosted daily stand-ups, assigned individual tasks, and didn’t give the team space for self-organization. When Tom investigated the underlying motivation, he discovered the PO believed that without tight control, the team would underperform. Tom helped the PO understand the benefits of trusting the team and worked with both sides to clarify roles and responsibilities, moving from micromanagement to empowerment.

In this segment, we refer to the book “Empowered” by Marty Cagan.

Self-reflection Question: How do you help Product Owners find the balance between providing clear direction and allowing team autonomy?

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About Tom Molenaar
Tom is a team coach with a background in social psychology and behavioral influence. He is passionate about fostering collaboration, and helping teams flourish and achieve their potential. His approach blends insight, empathy, and strategy to cultivate lasting team success.

You can link with Tom Molenaar on LinkedIn.

Somya Mehra: When Technical Expertise Becomes Product Owner Micro-Management

The Great Product Owner: The Clear Communicator and Dependency Master

Somya worked with an exceptional Product Owner on a project with multiple team dependencies. This PO excelled at clear, direct communication with both stakeholders and the team. They were proactive in stakeholder communication and maintained strong focus on what was needed and why. Their backlog management was exemplary, creating proper epics with comprehensive information including dependencies, enabling the team to easily know who to contact. This approach led to a much more motivated team.

The Bad Product Owner: The Technical Micro-Manager

Somya encountered a technically strong Product Owner whose knowledge became a liability. While technical strength can be beneficial, this PO used their expertise to control the team, telling developers exactly what solutions to implement. Initially, developers accepted this direction, but it escalated to every feature and task. The developers became uncomfortable voicing their perspectives, creating an unhealthy dynamic where the PO’s technical knowledge stifled team autonomy and creativity.

Self-reflection Question: How do you help Product Owners leverage their technical knowledge without falling into micro-management patterns?

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 Somya Mehra

Somya is a Scrum Master at u-blox with nearly 7 years of IT experience across India and Finland. With experience in Waterfall and Agile models, she leads with empathy and a people-first approach. Somya is deeply interested in human behavior and understanding the motivations behind people’s actions.

You can link with Somya Mehra on LinkedIn.

Thorben Pantring: The Micro-Manager PO, And The Impact It Has On Agile Teams

The Great Product Owner: Empowering Teams, The Art of Servant Leadership in Product Ownership

A greatProduct Owner, as described by Thorben, is an outward-facing individual who actively engages with customers, bringing their challenges to the team for collaborative problem-solving. This PO allows the team autonomy, offering ideas without being directive, fostering a collaborative atmosphere in refinement sessions. Engaged in large-scale adoption, this PO excelled as a master collaborator and embraced the servant leadership role. Thorben emphasizes the development team’s centrality in software, debunking the notion of working for the team. This Product Owner embodied customer focus, collaboration, and servant leadership.

The Bad Product Owner: The Micro-Manager PO, And The Impact It Has On Agile Teams

In this segment, Thorben discusses Product Owner (PO) anti-patterns, highlighting issues like focusing on overly detailed feature specs leading to micro-management. This approach stifles openness to feedback and fosters a “just do what I tell you” mentality, making developers passive and hindering communication. This mode of collaboration leads to having pre-defined, upfront designed features with minimal room for adjustments even when problems are found! This pattern ultimately results in deadline-driven development and disengaged developers.

The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Product Owners as a Scrum Master

About Thorben Pantring

Thorben is an experienced Scrum Master & Team Lead in the eCommerce space, showcasing expertise in leadership, LeSS, Scrum, team management, and engineering. With an insatiable desire for learning and a relentless pursuit of progress, Thorben embodies a fervent passion for leadership, agility, and technology.

You can link with Thorben Pantring on LinkedIn.

Harri Tunturivuori: When Suggestions Sound Like Orders, The Cost of Micro-Management in Agile Teams

In this episode, Harri recounts a challenging experience he had while working with a team that had a new manager. The manager was promoted from within the team and was a high-performing team member, but lacked good leadership skills. He couldn’t let go of the technical skills and ended up micro-managing the team.

The manager would step in and give suggestions to the team members, but it came out as an order. He even wrote the solution in the user stories, which resulted in the team disengaging because the manager was bossing them.

Some team members quit their jobs, and others became demotivated. Harri felt helpless in the situation and eventually came up with tips to deal with it, including having a conversation with the manager, preparing for the conversation, and being understanding. The team’s feedback was collected, and facts were presented to the manager on how this behavior was affecting the team.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone dealing with anti-patterns in their team dynamics.

Featured Book of the Week: Scrum Mastery by Geoff Watts

Harri’s most influential book is Scrum Mastery by Geoff Watts, who has been a past guest on the podcast. The book offers many practical tips and advice for Scrum Masters, emphasizing the importance of being a servant leader. Harri found the book funny, which made it a pleasant read. He appreciated the tips provided in the book, which can help Scrum Masters go from being good to great. Geoff Watts is a well-known author in the field of Scrum and agile software development, and his book has been highly recommended by professionals in the industry. If you are a Scrum Master looking for practical advice to improve your leadership skills, Scrum Mastery is definitely worth checking out.

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

About Harri Tunturivuori

Harri is an experienced leader, Scrum Master, and Agile Coach who was introduced to the world of agile software development in 2010. Since then, Harri has had the pleasure of leading great agile teams in various forms.

Harri enjoys working in a fun environment where there is room for innovation, and Harri is driven by the challenge of growing a group of good people into a great team.

You can link with Harri Tunturivuori on LinkedIn.

Ziryan Salayi: Detecting and eliminating micro-management patterns in Scrum teams

This team did not feel that they could make their own decisions. When observing the team, Ziryan noticed that management was heavily involved with the team, and the team did not feel comfortable making decisions without management involvement. As he started working with the team members 1-on-1, Ziryan started to notice the patterns that had trapped this team. Listen in to learn about those anti-patterns, as well as what Ziryan did to help the team get out of that self-defeating pattern.

Featured Book of the Week: Yes-but what if it all works out? By Berthold Gunster

In Yes-but what if it all works out? By Berthold Gunster, Ziryan found an inspiring story of how to handle change with a “yes, and” rather than a “yes, but” attitude. The book helped Ziryan prepare for responding to, and harnessing change resistance. In this segment, we also talk about Scrum – A Pocket Guide by Gunther Verheyen, and the episode with Yves Hanoulle and Woody Zuill, where we discuss the heuristic: “Turn up the good”.

How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she’s supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Ziryan Salayi: Detecting and eliminating micro-management patterns in Scrum teams Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta!

Abou Ziryan Salayi

Ziryan is a Scrum Master, Professional Scrum Trainer, and organization coach with a passion for getting the most out of people and teams. His aim is to enable employees to be fully empowered and support self-organization in all areas within agile organizations

You can link with Ziryan Salayi on LinkedIn and connect with Ziryan Salayi on Twitter.