Balancing Product Ownership Between Vision and User Reality | Richard

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile Storytelling from the Trenches
Episode: Balancing Product Ownership Between Vision and User Reality
Host: Vasco Duarte, Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Product Owner
Guest: Richard Brenner
Release Date: April 18, 2025

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1. Introduction

In this episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte welcomes Richard Brenner to discuss the delicate balance a Product Owner (PO) must maintain between visionary ideas and the practical realities of user needs. The conversation delves into identifying common pitfalls in product ownership and highlights the traits that make a PO effective in steering Agile teams toward success.

2. Identifying Product Owner Anti-Patterns

Richard Brenner shares his experiences with ineffective product ownership, describing a scenario that serves as a cautionary tale for Agile teams.

• The Sponsor Turned PO:
  Richard recounts working with a high-ranking sponsor who also assumed the role of the Product Owner. This individual had strong technical ideas and a clear vision but lacked a deep understanding of the end-users' needs.

  "We found out they cannot use that software, they cannot work with that." — Richard Brenner [05:15]

• Impact of Misaligned Focus:
  The project initially thrived on technical innovation but faltered upon delivery when actual users struggled with usability. This misalignment underscored the importance of involving end-users early and maintaining a clear separation between sponsorship and product ownership responsibilities.

  "This was a huge learning in terms of involving your end customers early in the process." — Richard Brenner [05:15]

3. Characteristics of an Effective Product Owner

Transitioning from anti-patterns, Richard discusses the attributes that define an outstanding Product Owner.

• Hypothesis-Driven Approach:
  A great PO views every decision as a hypothesis that needs validation through market testing and user feedback.

  "Everything they do is a hypothesis and they need to test it on the market." — Richard Brenner [06:59]

• Active Stakeholder Engagement:
  Effective POs maintain continuous communication with stakeholders and end-users, ensuring that the product evolves based on real needs and feedback.

  "Actively talking to the end users from that perspective." — Richard Brenner [06:59]

• Dual Role Dynamics:
  Richard notes that often, the PO role is divided between strategic oversight and operational tasks, emphasizing the need for a balanced approach.

  "Usually I had it somehow twofold... one more the active, operative part of the role." — Richard Brenner [06:59]

• Inspirational Leadership:
  Exemplary POs inspire their teams, challenge them to excel, and foster a collaborative environment that drives joint success.

  "He... tried to challenge the team in terms of what he's trying to achieve and had really good conversations." — Richard Brenner [08:00]

4. The Coaching Stance in Product Ownership

Vasco and Richard explore the concept of the Product Owner adopting a coaching mindset, traditionally associated with Agile Coaches or Scrum Masters.

• Facilitating Team Autonomy:
  A PO with a coaching stance empowers the team to make decisions about how to implement solutions, fostering ownership and creativity within the development process.

  "The team needs to decide on how are we building the solution." — Richard Brenner [10:54]

• Positive Challenge and Partnership:
  By challenging the team constructively, the PO encourages members to explore and implement the best solutions, leading to shared success and a stronger team dynamic.

  "It's a partnership, and if the partnership is good and you have success, then you see, okay, this is working." — Richard Brenner [11:43]

5. Establishing Role Expectations and Contracting

The discussion shifts to the importance of clear role definitions and contracting to ensure smooth collaboration between POs and their teams.

• Role Expectation Matrix:
  Richard introduces the use of a role expectation matrix, where each team member outlines their contributions and expectations from others. This tool facilitates transparent communication and alignment of responsibilities.

  "I have a PO here, a Scrum master here, and the developers... what am I bringing to the team?" — Richard Brenner [12:29]

• Joint Conversations for Clarity:
  Engaging in joint discussions about roles and expectations helps prevent misunderstandings and ensures that everyone is aware of what they can and cannot expect from each other.

  "It's a joint conversation and it gives you more clarity in the setup." — Richard Brenner [12:29]

6. Tools and Resources Mentioned

• Role Expectation Matrix:
  A framework for defining and communicating the roles and expectations within a team. Richard plans to provide this resource in the show notes for listeners to utilize.

• Product Owner Sprint Checklist:
  A tool developed by the podcast team to help Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches engage in effective conversations with POs about their responsibilities and ideal practices. This checklist encourages collaborative path-setting toward ideal product ownership.

7. Conclusion

Vasco concludes the episode by thanking Richard for his valuable insights and directing listeners to connect with him via LinkedIn for further discussions and resources. The episode underscores the critical balance a Product Owner must maintain between visionary leadership and practical user-focused development, offering actionable strategies for Agile teams to enhance their collaboration and product success.

Notable Quotes:

• "Everything they do is a hypothesis and they need to test it on the market." — Richard Brenner [06:59]

• "It's a partnership, and if the partnership is good and you have success, then you see, okay, this is working." — Richard Brenner [11:43]

• "It's a joint conversation and it gives you more clarity in the setup." — Richard Brenner [12:29]

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Additional Resources:

• Role Expectation Matrix: Available in the show's notes.
• Product Owner Sprint Checklist: Developed by the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast team for facilitating effective PO-team conversations.

Feel free to connect with Richard Brenner on LinkedIn for more insights and resources related to Agile product ownership.

Transcript

[Vasco]

Have you ever wondered what it really.

[Unknown Host]

Takes to make Agile work well? At the Global Agile Summit, we're bringing you real life first person stories of Agile succeeding out there in the real world that will inspire you to take action. Whether you're a leader, a product innovator, a developer, you'll hear practical insights from those who've done it. They'll be telling their own stories from the stage. I'll tell you more about this at the end of this episode. So stay back and listen to the full detailed description of what we have in store for you at the Global Agile Summit. But if you can't wait, you can go right now to globalagilesummit.com and check out our full schedule for now onto the episode. But I'll see you at the end of this episode with more details on the Global Agile Summit. Talk to you soon. Hello everybody.

[Vasco]

Welcome to our TGIF Friday and Product Donor episode this week with Richard Brenner. Hey Richard, welcome back.

[Richard Brenner]

Hi Vasco. Thank you.

[Vasco]

So Richard, Friday is of course the product owner episode and we will talk about what great product owners do. I'm interested in that also because you've been a product owner so you have first person experience and opinions about that. But first let's dive into the opposite, the product owner anti pattern. So share with us Richard, what might.

[Unknown Host]

Have been potentially the worst product owner.

[Vasco]

Anti pattern you've witnessed in your career?

[Richard Brenner]

That was a fun question to think about. And, and I have one person really in, in my head and I would call it the sponsor and also technology interested medical doctor. So this was a very high management position. He also like hired the company where I was part back then as a developer and he was taking from a client perspective also the role of a product owner for that project. Started with one team, then later I think up to four Scrum teams working across Europe on that product. And first of all this, this product owner was having very concrete ideas about the technology and how we should build the solution because he knew his clients and we came up with it very, let's say back then I was also part of the development team and we had a very quick cool solution in terms of technology like a domain specific language. I'm not going into more details here but really cool thing. And we also discussed a lot about semantics of that language. Where do we put this and this and how can we make sure everything. So it was really cool for me that was a project in the first place where I thought yeah, we are a cool Agile team. We have a top Project manager on our side, we have a good and empowered product owner who can decide. I thought it was a good thing up until the point where we first delivered the project to actual clients of that particular company, where we found out they cannot use that software, they cannot work with that. And then I realized we also became a user experience guy into the project later and we realized we need to rethink the whole concept, the whole user experience concept, the whole way, how people interact with the software. And for me, that had huge learnings in terms of involving your end customers early in the process, showing some MVPs early on, testing with real users. Also this clear separation, who is the sponsor and who is actually using the software. And also making me fan of the whole user experience topics because ultimately we were lucky and we stayed in the project and we could fix it. But this was a huge learning in terms of a product owner and what the impact is if you just follow that without any sparring on certain decisions.

[Vasco]

So what I hear here is that if there wasn't anything wrong necessarily, but the problem was that the person whom you thought was the product owner was actually the technical visionary, but wasn't really able to embody and understand the actual end user of the product. Right?

[Richard Brenner]

Yes. And also a very like, inspiring, strong person paying for the project. So it was also someone you needed to listen to as a, like a supplier, because we were part of, and I was part of the supplier team. So this was an important person for us. And if he said something, we followed often, of course we had conversations, but not on that deep strategical decision detail that the whole user experience concept might not work out for the end users.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Vasco]

And this highlights the importance of having these two completely different roles. Right. Like one is the technology visionary, somebody who owns the idea of what the product should do, and the other is the product owner, which is the person who understands how that idea can be translated into a usable and significantly productive or valuable product.

[Richard Brenner]

Right, exactly, exactly.

[Vasco]

A great story indeed.

[Unknown Host]

Okay.

[Vasco]

But of course there aren't only bad product owners, right? Like, some are amazing at what they do. So share with us, Richard, the best product owner you've ever worked with, how did they work?

[Richard Brenner]

I think, before I come to my concrete example, I think one pattern is that they understand that everything they do is a hypothesis and they need to test it on the market. So usually a good product owner knows that he doesn't know anything, or everything that we try to do is a hypothesis we need to test and also tries to really make sure that we have that feedback loop set up with end users and that we are able to test early on. And that also really uses the time to talk to stakeholders, clients, and is really actively talking to the end users from that perspective. And for me, it was a bit hard actually to think about the perfect po, because usually I didn't find this one PO as described in the Scrum guide, because usually I had it somehow twofold. You have one person who has the money and is probably the sponsor of the whole thing, and one more the strategic part of the role, and one is the more active, operative part of the role who is also creating the stories, really working with the team and so on. But I think one product owner I worked with was also part of a client where I was part of the supplier team. And this product owner, I would call him the coaching product owner, was really also, in a way of communicating very good, so that he tried to challenge the team in terms of what he's trying to achieve and had really good conversations, challenging the team to give their best and also doing on the customer side, all the conversations and making sure that we focus on the right things to build, but also is very active part of the development team and somehow be inspiring and making them try to do their best job. So very good leader also.

[Vasco]

Yeah. And that leadership aspect is actually very important because if we go back to the example we talked about at the top of the show, when you describe the technology visionary, that part of the job is important. Right? Like that part of the job isn't wrong. What is wrong is not connecting that with other aspects like understanding how the users will actually use the product.

[Richard Brenner]

Exactly, exactly. And it's not hard. It's really hard to see this when you're part of the whole process. It's not so obvious what is missing.

[Vasco]

And this coaching stance, though, I want to explore that a little bit more because obviously, usually we think of coaching as being the agile coach or the Scrum master's responsibility, not the product owner's responsibility. But one of the things that you shared actually got me thinking that the role that the product owner brings to the team needs to have some coaching aspects, because the proctor will not be able to answer all of the questions. Right. Like people that are more technical can answer technical questions, but perhaps not so much visionary questions. And then visionary people can answer perhaps visionary questions, but not so much technical questions.

[Unknown Host]

And they need to be able to.

[Vasco]

Allow the team to participate in that discovery of knowledge and decision making. And that is the coaching stance.

[Richard Brenner]

Yeah, exactly. Because you want Actually, the team needs to decide on how are we building the solution. So if you have a product owner who has this coaching stance, he can somehow also positively challenge the team on finding a good solution for the thing that the product owner tries to achieve for his users. So it's a partnership, and if the partnership is good and you have success, then you see, okay, this is working. And the product owner also makes sure that you get the success or the part of the success, because the end users have now a cool thing. Then you have a joint success and this brings you all together with the product owner.

[Vasco]

Joint success. That's a great point. One last thought I would like to have your. Or rather one last question I would like to have your thoughts on is earlier in the week you talked about the importance of contracting, right? And now we're talking about PO as a coach. So PO as helping the team to go beyond the coding and testing and perhaps designing work that they need to do. I think that here we also need to talk a little bit about contracting because some teams might not want to be there. Right? So what I'm thinking is how would you introduce the concept and the ideas of contracting to a PO that wants to take that stance, the coaching stance?

[Richard Brenner]

Let me think of something I did already. It's not just targeting the po, but the whole team. Also within our teams here at TechTalk we have product owners and teams and who is expecting what from whom. And what I like to do is this role expectation matrix where we say, look, I have a PO here, a Scrum master here, and the developers and everyone can write down what am I bringing in as a product owner, what am I bringing to the team? And the others can write to the other roles, what am I expecting from that role? And then you have a first conversation going on. And of course, when I talk one on one with the product owner, I also try to reflect on things that I've seen, like, is the product on the very top down or is he saying that? Then I would reflect with the product owner personally about this coaching stance. But in addition, you can also do this as a joint effort with, with this role expectation matrix to make sure that everyone knows what you can and what you can't expect from the po. And also the PO knows what can I take from that, things that the people want from me and what can't I do. And then it's a joint conversation and it gives you more clarity in the, in the setup.

[Vasco]

I'll put the link to the role expectation matrix in the show. Notes so that people can go and check it out. And also to a tool we've developed here on the podcast called the Product Owner Sprint Checklist, where Scrum masters and agile coaches can have an effective and practical conversation with the product owner about what are the responsibilities they are willing and ready to take and what the ideal scenario looks like so that we can kind of set a path to go closer to the ideal scenario. And some of those responsibilities can be taken by the team as well. But then the team needs to be part of that conversation, right? They can't just be assigned those responsibilities because they are product owner accountabilities.

[Richard Brenner]

Exactly.

[Vasco]

Richard, it's been a pleasure. Great week, filled with insights.

[Unknown Host]

But before we go, Richard, where can.

[Vasco]

We find out more about you and the work that you're doing?

[Richard Brenner]

I think my most active profile would be on LinkedIn, so just.

[Unknown Host]

Absolutely. So everybody check it out.

[Vasco]

The LinkedIn profile. Richard's LinkedIn profile is in the show Notes and go and ask him a few follow up questions. Why not? Maybe he has some templates to share with you. And we're always learning as a community. Thank you very much, Richard. It's been a pleasure to have you here. Thank you for your generosity with your time and your knowledge.

[Richard Brenner]

Thanks for having me. Vasco.

[Unknown Host]

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