part-time PO Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Mike Bowler: The Pitfalls of Combining PO With Other Roles

The Great Product Owner: Building Trust Through With Agile Teams Through Active Involvement

Mike highlights that great Product Owners are actively engaged with their teams and balance presence with external responsibilities. These POs ensure frequent collaboration, participate in ensemble programming, and create opportunities for the team to ask questions and receive feedback. The key is mindful engagement that avoids unnecessary barriers and promotes trust.

Self-reflection Question for the Great PO Section: How can you foster an environment where your Product Owner remains engaged yet empowers the team to make independent decisions?

The Bad Product Owner: Pitfalls of Combining Roles and Controlling Behavior

Mike discusses the anti-pattern of a Product Owner who doubled as a manager. This dual role often led to micromanagement, stifled team autonomy, and the exclusion of the Scrum Master from decision-making. In such cases, teams becomes dependent on the PO’s direction, eroding self-organization. Mike’s solution involves encouraging leaders to choose between being a PO or a manager to avoid power imbalances.

Self-reflection Question: How can you encourage balanced PO involvement without stifling team autonomy?

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Shift: From Product to People Cover

Angela thought she was just there to coach a team. But now, she’s caught in the middle of a corporate espionage drama that could make or break the future of digital banking. Can she help the team regain their mojo and outwit their rivals, or will the competition crush their ambitions? As alliances shift and the pressure builds, one thing becomes clear: this isn’t just about the product—it’s about the people.

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About Mike Bowler

Mike is a seasoned Agile coach and trainer with over 25 years of experience. He focuses on technical practices, workflow optimization, leadership coaching, and human behavior, including neuroscience and psychology. His expertise extends from technical implementation to fostering psychological safety.

You can link with Mike Bowler on LinkedIn.

Publish on: 15th November, 2024, 10:05 CET

Toby Rao: The Part-Time Product Owner Anti-Pattern, And Its Consequences

The Great Product Owner: The Part-Time PO Anti-Pattern

In this segment, Toby discusses common anti-patterns associated with Product Owners (POs), particularly the issue of them treating their role as a part-time role. Many organizations assign PO responsibilities as a secondary task, causing problems like absenteeism during critical team interactions. This particular PO, who had a full-time job outside of their role, lacked both Agile and software development experience, along with emotional intelligence. The key takeaway was the importance of PO presence and engagement with the team, with a suggestion to have them spend a full day working alongside the team to improve collaboration.

The Bad Product Owner: User-Centric Leadership, a Critical Skill For POs

In this segment, Toby discusses the qualities of a great Product Owner (PO). The exceptional PO he describes, was known for their easy collaboration with the team and their constant availability. The PO emphasized understanding before imposing their views and consistently approached discussions from the perspective of the key Personas for the product. The PO also encouraged the team to consider the system from the customer/user standpoint, this PO deeply comprehended the team’s workflow, which made collaboration easy. Additionally, they recognized the efficiency of pre-refinement in the team’s processes, and made the necessary adaptation to their own workflow.

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 Toby Rao

Toby is an ICF-credentialed Coach and accredited IC Agile trainer, and practices as a certified Executive coach. With a dynamic Agile journey beginning in 2007, he’s an active contributor to the global Agile community. He is based in Washington DC Metro, and speaks at Agile events worldwide and co-founded the A20 Agile conference. Toby also co-founded two thriving Agile meetups in the Washington DC area, with a combined 1300 members.

You can link with Toby Rao on LinkedIn and connect with Toby Rao on Twitter.

Fred Deichler: From shared Product Owner responsibilities to a focused PO that could actually help the Scrum team!

The Great Product Owner: Growth Mindset in the PO role

Great PO’s have what Fred calls a “Growth Mindset”. Fred also highlights some of the key techniques Scrum Masters can use to help Product Owners in their work, such as regular 1-on-1’s, and working with the PO in defining what they want from their career. Through this work, Fred was able to help the PO work with the team in organizing a “hackathon”, which generated great ideas for the product. In Great PO fashion the PO was also able to tell the team which of those ideas would make sense “now” vs. “not yet”.

The Bad Product Owner: The 3-headed PO hydra!

In this team, the PO had left, and the company tried to fill in the PO role quickly by bringing 3 different people together to take on that role. However, that did not go so well, as Fred explains. We explore why having multiple people in the PO role can be a great “bandaid”, but it will backfire sooner or later. We also discuss how Fred was able to bring those 3 part-time PO’s together and work to define a better way to work together for those 3 people, so that the team could have the necessary support from the PO role.

About Fred Deichler

Always leaning on the Scrum values and Agile principles (even before he knew about them), Fred has guided numerous teams through their Agile Journeys over his 20-year career in Technology leadership. Driven by a passion for continual improvement and finding a balance between people, process, and tools. And Fred knows his own journey is just as important.

You can link with Fred Deichler on LinkedIn.