Millions of Users, Multiple Stakeholders—The Art of Product Owner Navigation | Bernard Agrest

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile Storytelling from the Trenches

Episode: Millions of Users, Multiple Stakeholders—The Art of Product Owner Navigation | Bernard Agrest

Release Date: July 4, 2025
Host: Vasco Duarte, Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Product Owner
Guest: Bernard Agrest, Agile Practitioner

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte welcomes Bernard Agrest to discuss the intricacies of effective Product Ownership in agile environments. The conversation delves deep into common pitfalls, exemplary practices, and strategies for navigating complex stakeholder landscapes.

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Identifying the Worst Product Owner Anti-Patterns

Bernard Agrest opens the discussion by highlighting detrimental behaviors often observed in Product Owners (POs).

Overloading the Backlog
Bernard emphasizes that one of the most significant anti-patterns is "adding everything to the backlog because of either emotional appeal or hierarchy" (01:41). This practice undermines value-based prioritization, leading to a bloated backlog that dilutes focus and hampers product value.

Lack of Value-Based Prioritization
When POs respond to every request without assessing the value, "if you're listening to everyone, you don't think you're listening to anyone" (01:41). This scattergun approach prevents the PO from owning outcomes and taking accountability for the product's strategic direction.

Challenges in Coaching Ineffective POs
Bernard describes working with POs who lack real authority, leading to what he terms "runaround coaching" (02:30). In such scenarios, traditional coaching methods fall short, necessitating innovative approaches to instill decision-making authority and accountability.

Strategic Techniques to Counter Anti-Patterns
To address these issues, Bernard recommends the Cost of Delay technique. By quantifying the impact of delaying a feature, POs can make informed decisions about prioritization without getting bogged down in hierarchical pressures. He notes, "if you can do the cost of delay, you can put a real number and push back in a professional way" (03:10).

Additionally, Bernard underscores the importance of publicly supporting POs and reinforcing role clarity among stakeholders. This involves facilitating team-level agreements that delineate responsibilities, thereby enhancing productivity and reducing unnecessary pressures on the PO (04:50).

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Exemplary Practices of Effective Product Owners

Shifting focus from pitfalls to best practices, Bernard shares his experiences with top-tier POs who excel in their roles.

Balancing Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
Bernard recounts working with a PO at Strategic for America who managed a product impacting millions. This PO adeptly balanced immediate backlog decisions with long-term strategic goals, all while handling evolving internal policies and external regulations (05:39).

Expertise and Organizational Insight
What set this PO apart was his deep understanding of both the product and the organizational dynamics. Bernard observes, "he was not only an expert in the product but really an expert in understanding how the different organizational functions worked" (07:26). This holistic knowledge enabled him to integrate seamlessly across departments, breaking down silos and fostering collaboration.

Proactive Idea Generation and Business Case Development
Rather than passively waiting for team proposals, this exemplary PO "came to the team with an idea, already mapped out with a business case" (07:26). This proactive approach not only provided clarity but also empowered teams to make informed decisions, enhancing the overall product development process.

Facilitating Team Autonomy
By clearly outlining the "need" and "expected outcomes," the PO allowed development teams to take ownership of technical decisions. Bernard remarks, "if you share clearly what the need is, you help the team make decisions on a daily basis" (08:06), highlighting the importance of autonomy in agile teams.

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Building a Community of Best Practices

The conversation transitions to the significance of sharing success stories within the agile community.

Collecting and Sharing Success Stories
Bernard and Vasco advocate for the "collecting of these stories" to inspire and educate fellow practitioners. Bernard expresses enthusiasm for listeners to "clip this and share it with those who need inspiration" (09:16), reinforcing the value of communal knowledge sharing.

Encouraging Community Engagement
Vasco emphasizes that sharing real-world examples helps POs and Scrum Masters align better with stakeholder and team needs, ultimately fostering more effective and resilient agile practices.

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Connecting with Bernard

As the episode concludes, Bernard invites listeners to connect with him on LinkedIn for further discussions on project management, change management, and emerging topics like AI within the PM context (09:33).

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Key Takeaways

• Avoid Backlog Overload: Focus on value-based prioritization to maintain a manageable and effective backlog.
• Empower Product Owners: Equip POs with the authority and tools they need to make strategic decisions.
• Proactive Management: Exemplary POs actively contribute ideas and provide clear business cases to guide their teams.
• Foster Collaboration: Break down organizational silos to enhance communication and product value.
• Community Sharing: Regularly share and learn from success stories to continuously improve agile practices.

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Notable Quotes

• Bernard Agreste (01:41): "If you're listening to everyone, you're not listening to anyone."
• Bernard Agreste (02:30): "Runaround coaching is when a PO has no authority and everything’s about influence."
• Bernard Agreste (03:10): "If you can do the cost of delay, you can put a real number and push back in a professional way."
• Bernard Agreste (07:26): "He was not only an expert in the product but really an expert in understanding how the different organizational functions worked."

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Conclusion

This episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast offers valuable insights into the art of effective Product Ownership. Bernard Agrest's experiences and strategies provide actionable advice for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches aiming to enhance their teams' performance and navigate complex stakeholder environments successfully.

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For more episodes and resources, visit scrummastertoolbox.org.

Transcript

[Vasco]

Hey there, agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if, for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame war free and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's this Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership. That's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast. Hello everybody. Welcome to our Friday TGIF and product owner episode this week with Bernard Agreste. Hey Bernard, welcome back.

[Bernard Agreste]

Thanks Vasco. Excited for the weekend?

[Vasco]

Absolutely. It is Friday tgif, so TGIF is also the product owner episode. And we'll talk about what great product owners look and sound like in a minute. But first share with us potentially the worst product owner anti pattern you've witnessed in your career. Yeah.

[Bernard Agreste]

Not going to call anyone out, but I think the worst anti pattern product owner thing that I've seen has been adding everything to the backlog because of either emotional appeal or hierarchy. Right. So you're not adding based on value and. Right. I think it's an anti pattern because it seems like the POs being collaborative. Right. They're like, they're talking to people, they're collaborative, they're responsive. Oh yeah, that's great. But if you're listening to everyone, I don't think you're listening to anyone. And you're certainly not listening to what the value of the product is supposed to be. You're not owning outcomes. You have no real accountability. And I've worked with someone like that. And so in that role it's really difficult to coach. Right. Because you know you have no authority. Right. Everything's about influence. And this is a PO who is responding almost exclusively to authority. And so I call it runaround coaching. Right. I'm not coaching them on how do you say no? Instead I start helping them with defining the business case for why they need to say yes or no to something, especially during a sprint. Right. Because if you're adding something during a sprint, which I've seen happen many times. I mean that's just going to mess things up too. A great technique that I've used is cost of delay. Because if you can do the cost of delay, you can put a real number and doesn't have to be like we go down the details, get an exact metric, but just a general sense of hey, if we take this, the cost of delay is X. And I think it's a very professional way of pushing back on a request that messes up a sprint. And then the other thing that I'll do. Right. Again, all of this has to be kind of like I call it run around coaching is try to publicly support them and reminding people, stakeholders, themselves, staff members, like, hey, like what is the role of a po? And if we need to do we. Like, I'm happy to facilitate a team level working agreement that reinforces roles so people can actually get back to being productive. Yeah.

[Vasco]

And the peer role is so critical that sometimes just talking about it is necessary because not everybody understands the PO at the same level. When in this case you just give an example that is very specific, the PO that can't say no. Sometimes this PO is maybe too focused on the hierarchical approval. Right. Like getting the people with power happy and they don't realize necessarily the consequences of saying yes to everything. And because they are saying yes to everything, then there's also the pressure to deliver and this PO is likely going to put pressure on the team to do more, to deliver more and that creates all kinds of other anti patterns. So sometimes we do need to step back and consider what do we need to talk to the POs and the stakeholders about the PO role. Right. And I wrote and produced a few years ago the coach your po. E course the link is in the show notes for people to go and check, check it out. And there we cover not only the, let's call it, the critical skills that every PO should have, but also like these techniques, these approaches to bring the right topics with the pos. For example, one is saying no to backlogs. Another one, which is a very common anti pattern, is to help product owners create the space and time to be present with the team. And as scrum masters, we need to be able to help the POs create that space because otherwise the team does not succeed. Right?

[Bernard Agreste]

Yeah, no, absolutely.

[Vasco]

But it's not only about bad anti patterns. Sometimes we do work with amazing product owners, so it's good to focus on that and share one of those stories. So Bernard, when you think about the best product owner you've ever worked with, how did they work?

[Bernard Agreste]

Yeah, I thought a lot about this question and I've never worked with this person directly. He was a PO when I was at. Strategic for America is a little bit decentralized in that there are regions so like the Oklahoma region, in the Bay Area region that I worked for and then there's like the overarching national team. And so he was the PO for a very critical product on the national team that every region interfaced with. And I worked really closely with him at times, just never, you know, he was never like on my team. And so what consistently impressed me about him was he managed a product that, you know, literally impacted millions of people. And he needed to manage a product that had to consistently evolve due to changing internal policies, but then also changing external regulations. And so he had this remarkable, remarkable ability to balance short term backlog decisions and long term strategic engagement while keeping, you know, easily hundreds of stakeholders engaged and informed. And I think what made him so good as his job was that he was not only an expert in the product, but really an expert in understanding how the different organizational like functions worked out there. And really like insert like the opposite of silo. Right. He was almost like the spoken the wheel of like, how can I slot in to make this team's life easier? So he really, really understood that. And so he wasn't coming with, you know, he, the way it worked for him was it wasn't that a team would come to him with an idea and he would do it. He would come to the it to the team with an idea, with like already a mapped out business case for why it should get done and how it would help them. And then they'd be like, oh yeah, this is great. And then he'd work with them and he would add in features.

[Vasco]

Yeah. And that is so important, the understanding of why this is important, how it affects others. Also, because product owners delegate many detailed decisions to the development team because it's impossible to know everything in advance. And when creating the, if you create the business case, if you share clearly what the need is, if you even paint a few stories of success that might happen after the product or the feature is available, then you're really helping the team to be much more clear about how they build the product and to help them make those decisions on a daily basis.

[Bernard Agreste]

Yeah, and I keep thinking of it like, how is it that I can make the tech work for you? I think sometimes we think of tech as just something that enables our work, but it really does improve our work. And I think he saw that so clearly. And because he was so well versed in the organization as a whole, he was also quite senior at the organizational level, because he was both senior and proximate and very well understood. I think that, like, the value that he added was immense.

[Vasco]

Yeah, absolutely. And when you think about these kind of stories, these kinds of product owners, I think one thing we should do as a community is to collect these stories. And that's of course, what we're trying to do here on the podcast. Because this story is something you can just clip on YouTube. For example, if you're listening on YouTube, you can clip this on YouTube and you can send it to a PO that needs help or to a scrum master that needs inspiration and get that message out there and really inspire product owners to be more what their stakeholders need, to be more what their teams need, and ultimately to be more of what the business and the product needs.

[Bernard Agreste]

Yeah, I really do love that. Hopefully people, clip this.

[Vasco]

There you go. Clip this, everybody. Bernard, it's been a pleasure. We're getting close to the end, but before we go, where should people go if they want to know more about you and the work that you're doing?

[Bernard Agreste]

Yeah, thanks so much, Vasco. It's been a pleasure as well. I'm always happy to chat with people and meet new connections. They can find me on LinkedIn.com bernardagrest I post about project management and change management and also a little bit of AI stuff as well. In the context of PMing two to three times a week.

[Vasco]

Absolutely. And I'll put the link in the show notes to make sure that you all can easily connect with Bernard and maybe ask a few follow up questions. Share your own story. Trading war stories is a great way to learn, right? You heard some from Bernard this week. Why not share some with them as well? Bernard, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for your generosity with your time and your knowledge.

[Bernard Agreste]

Thank you, Vasco. Thank you for inviting me as well.

[Vasco]

All right, I hope you liked this episode, but before you hit next episode, here's the deal. This podcast is powered by people like you, the members who wanted more than just inspiration. They wanted real tools and real connection to people who are practicing agile. Every day we're talking access to over 700 hours of agile gold, CTO level strategy talks, summit keynotes, live workshops, E courses, deep dive interviews, books, and if you're into no estimates, we got the pioneers of no estimates in those deep dive interviews as well. Agile Business Intelligence, creating product visions, coaching your product owner courses, you name it. You'll get invites to monthly live Q&As with agile pioneers and practitioners, plus a private Slack community which is free of all of that AI Slack slop you see everywhere. And of course, without the flame wars, it's a community of practitioners that want to learn and thrive together. It's the best place to connect with community and learn together. So if this podcast has helped you before, imagine what you will get from this podcast membership. So head on over to scrummastertoolbox.org and join the community that's shaping the future of Agile. We have so much for you, so check out all the [e-mail] membership because listening is great. It's important. But doing it together, that's next level. I'll see you in the community Slack we really hope you liked our show. And if you did, why not rate this podcast on Stitcher or itunes. Share this podcast and let other Scrum masters know about this valuable resource for their work. Remember that sharing is caring.