product owner Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Kaisa Martiskainen: Coaching your Product Owner transitioning from a project manager role

The Great Product Owner: How a PO Can Be a Great Coach for Your Scrum Team

In this episode, Kaisa shares their experience with a PO who was an expert in lean product development. Kaisa explains that the PO was very generous with their time and knowledge, and ended up being a coach for Kaisa and the team. The PO was able to explain critical lean product development aspects, and showed the team how they worked. Kaisa notes that a great PO can be a mentor and a teacher, and this experience helped them grow and learn more about lean.

The Bad Product Owner: Coaching your Product Owner transitioning from a project manager role

In this episode, Kaisa shares her experience of working with a new Product Owner (PO) who had previously worked as a waterfall project manager. The PO was only focused on planning, executing, and delivering, which went against the principles of agile methodology. The PO struggled with defining the vision and direction of the product, and had to go back to the manager for decisions. To help the PO transition and learn the role, Kaisa recommended having a conversation with the PO and their manager, having a mentor for the PO, and having the Scrum Master support and coach the PO. Kaisa emphasizes the importance of coaching the PO to become an effective member of the agile team.

In this episode, we refer to the Coach Your PO e-course, which tackles 18 key aspects when coaching your PO.

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 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.

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

You can link with Kaisa Martiskainen on LinkedIn.

Kaisa Martiskainen: Product Owner collaboration, and the importance of building relationships in Scrum

In this episode of the podcast, Kaisa shares her experience as a rotating scrum master at the start of her journey. She was eager to be a good scrum master and saw every problem as an impediment she had to remove, which led her to act as a messenger between the Product Owner and the team. Also because the team was not comfortable with the Product Owner’s communication style. Kaisa provides some tips for handling such situations, such as pausing and asking questions instead of immediately rescuing the team, and asking who is in the best position to solve the issue when the team asks for help. She emphasizes that in many cases, the scrum master is not the best person to solve the issues the team is facing.

Kaisa also suggests building a relationship between the team and the Product Owner, such as by organizing a happy hour. She highlights the anti-pattern of communicating only asynchronously and recommends the use of synchronous communication methods to build better relationships within the team.

The inspiring story of how a failing hospital turned things around with Agile and Lean

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! Buy the book on Amazon: The Bungsu Story – How Lean and Kanban Saved a Small Hospital in Indonesia. Twice. and Can Help You Reshape Work in Your Company.

About Kaisa Martiskainen

You can link with Kaisa Martiskainen on LinkedIn.

Rayyan Karim: Key concepts to train Product Owners on, lessons for Scrum Masters

The Great Product Owner: Key concepts to train Product Owners on, lessons for Scrum Masters

In this segment, Rayyan talks about how Product Owners (POs) need to learn how to form Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and how he trained other POs in his team to create as-is and to-be customer journeys. By using product goals, empathy maps, and customer journeys, they were able to identify dysfunctions in their teams. Rayyan also mentions the Double Diamond method and how it helped them succeed. He also references the Team of Teams McChrystal as a resource for further learning.

The Bad Product Owner: The Challenges of Being a PO Without Proper Training and Support

In this segment, Rayyan talks about a common problem where a business analyst is suddenly made a Product Owner (PO) without any training or change in position. This leads to a lack of understanding of the backlog, customers, and detailed work required. Rayyan suggests that the system is responsible for such problems and offers tips to tackle them. He advises to drop everything and work with the new PO only, and suggests avoiding anti-patterns such as vague backlog items, bullet points, and lack of measurement of item value. He also recommends being ready for such situations and providing support at the right time. In this segment we refer to the Coach Your PO e-Course module that covers how to onboard a new PO.

The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Product Owners as a Scrum Master

About Rayyan Karim

Rayyan is and Agile Coach & Trainer and the founder of Design Your Future with presence in the UK and the UAE. Rayyan is known for supporting leading executives of FTSE100 and NASDAQ corporations to create transformational results quickly.

You can link with Rayyan Karim on LinkedIn and connect with Rayyan Karim on Twitter.

Manuele Piastra: Customer-Centric Product Ownership, and how it grows the product IQ of the Scrum team

The Great Product Owner: Coaching the Uncoachable, Dealing with Difficult Product Owners

In this segment, Manuele talks about the anti-pattern of a Product Owner (PO) with a product manager background. PO’s with this background tend to focus on managing the work and the team, assigning tasks themselves, and writing solution-centric stories. They provide little focus on the “why” and the vision, which deviates from the idea of working as a team and breaks team dynamics. Manuele suggests nurturing the relationship if the PO is open to learning and working with you, but redefining the coaching contract with the sponsors if the PO is a senior person who is used to telling others what to do. If you can’t coach the PO, Manuele advises considering getting out of there.

For ideas, tips, and models to use when coaching your Product Owner, check out our Coach Your PO e-course, now on its second version.

The Bad Product Owner: Customer-Centric Product Ownership, and how it grows the product IQ of the team

In this episode, Manuele talks about the impact a great Product Owner (PO) can have on a Scrum team. He explains that great POs start from the “why” and develop a compelling vision for the product. They find out who the customers and personas are and help team members get in touch directly with customers and stakeholders. This helps raise the product IQ of the team, making them more product savvy. Great POs allow team members to talk to customers and stakeholders to understand their needs better. Manuele suggests that POs should frame the problems clearly and not worry about how the team divides the work. When working with a great PO, it feels easy.

The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Product Owners as a Scrum Master

About Manuele Piastra

Manuele Piastra moved to London in 2014, which was a life-changing experience for him. He gained access to more sources of learning, worked in fast-paced companies with complex technology stacks and ambitious goals, and developed open-mindedness, patience, and autonomy.

You can link with Manuele Piastra on LinkedIn and connect with Manuele Piastra on Twitter.