Overcoming the Part-Time Product Owner Trap | Ville Reijonen

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile Storytelling from the Trenches

Episode Summary: Overcoming the Part-Time Product Owner Trap | Ville Reijonen

In the January 24, 2025 episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte engages in a deep and insightful conversation with Ville Reijonen, an experienced Agile Coach, about the prevalent issue of part-time Product Owners (POs) and strategies to mitigate its challenges. This episode delves into the anti-patterns associated with part-time POs, the significant impact on project outcomes, and actionable solutions to ensure effective product ownership even when full-time commitment isn't feasible.

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1. Introduction to the Episode

The episode opens with Vasco Duarte briefly mentioning the upcoming Global Agile Summit, setting the stage for the main discussion. However, the core of the episode focuses on addressing the "Part-Time Product Owner Trap," a common hurdle many Agile teams face.

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2. Identifying the Part-Time Product Owner Anti-Pattern

Ville Reijonen begins by describing the absent Product Owner anti-pattern:

"[03:09] Ville Reijonen: This is the kind of repeating pattern anti-pattern which usually I will say subset of this one is the absent product owner..."

Ville explains that companies often invest in projects without dedicating a full-time PO, leading to individuals juggling their regular duties alongside PO responsibilities. This dual role frequently results in the PO being absent or disengaged from the Scrum process.

Vasco Duarte echoes this sentiment, highlighting the lack of understanding and commitment among part-time POs:

"[04:15] Vasco Duarte: So it's kind of the part time product owner. Is that how you would describe that."

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3. The Cost of an Absent Product Owner

Ville provides a compelling example to illustrate the financial implications of an absent PO:

"[05:28] Ville Reijonen: So my go to kind of explanation often this the product owner and their managers is this kind of that there's six people on the team and they implement a system six hours and two hours they can do something else but they do six people and six hours per day. So that's 36 hours in a day totally doing something..."

He emphasizes that inadequate PO engagement can lead to misaligned implementations, requiring additional time and resources to rectify mistakes. Ville quantifies the cost by demonstrating how a minor lapse in PO involvement can escalate project expenses significantly.

Vasco concurs, pointing out that the absence doesn't stem from malintent but rather from a lack of clarity regarding the PO's role:

"[06:47] Vasco Duarte: Yeah, I hear you and I totally agree. The lack of guidance and lack of availability leads to the teams developing things that end up not being necessary or being wrongly implemented and we need to fix it. That's very expensive."

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4. Strategies for Managing Part-Time Product Owners

Acknowledging scenarios where the PO's full-time availability isn't feasible, Ville proposes effective strategies:

"[07:28] Ville Reijonen: So most often is the issue that they don't have hours, but they might have 15 minutes and you pre schedule these slots well beforehand..."

Key strategies discussed include:

• Scheduled Short Meetings: Allocating regular, brief meetings (e.g., 15 minutes daily) ensures consistent PO engagement without demanding extensive time commitments.

• Delegation and Proxies: Empowering other team members to act as proxies can maintain momentum when the primary PO is unavailable.

• Incremental Availability: Gradually increasing the PO's involvement over time helps bridge the gap between part-time and full-time commitment.

Vasco adds practical advice on leveraging tools and checklists to facilitate this transition:

"[08:30] Vasco Duarte: We have here on the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast and I'll put the link on the show notes. We have a checklist..."

This checklist includes questions to assess the current state of PO involvement and set targeted improvements, allowing teams to methodically enhance the PO's effectiveness.

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5. Enhancing Communication with the Product Owner

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the importance of communication in overcoming the challenges posed by part-time POs. Ville underscores the value of creating a common understanding through consistent interaction:

"[10:02] Ville Reijonen: And I would say breaking mockups is really beneficial anyways. It doesn't need to be Even peo who is busy if you create understanding, again common understanding, what we are doing together..."

Furthermore, both Ville and Vasco highlight the benefits of a regular cadence of meetings to foster open communication and allow for unexpected insights:

"[12:00] Ville Reijonen: So this was a regular thing. He had a lot of one to one meetings with where, like every two weeks, every month with people..."

"[13:42] Ville Reijonen: Well said. I will find that one so vile."

Vasco elaborates on how regular, informal conversations can lead to serendipitous discoveries, enhancing the PO's ability to respond to unforeseen challenges:

"[13:47] Vasco Duarte: ...this regular cadence is very important because of course it becomes a habit... allows for serendipitous discovery. Right. Like things that you weren't expecting to discover, but they come up."

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6. Exemplary Product Owners: Learning from the Best

Shifting the focus to positive examples, Ville recounts his experience with an exceptional PO who excelled in communication and proactive engagement:

"[10:36] Ville Rayonen: It's a personal skill in this case that this person was talking with everybody and sharing information. Small nuggets of gold to every direction..."

This PO's approach involved:

• Proactive Communication: Regular one-on-one meetings to share insights and gather feedback.

• Transparency: Facilitating a shared understanding of the system being developed.

• Adaptive Meetings: Adjusting the length and frequency of meetings based on current needs and discussions.

Vasco builds on this by emphasizing the importance of such practices in fostering an environment where the team can thrive despite the PO's limited availability:

"[12:43] Vasco Duarte: Yeah. And this regular cadence is very important because of course it becomes a habit..."

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7. Resources and Further Engagement

In the latter part of the episode, Vasco directs listeners to additional resources, including a checklist designed to optimize PO involvement. He also encourages connecting with Ville Reijonen on LinkedIn for those interested in deeper discussions about Scrum patterns and Agile methodologies.

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8. Conclusion

The episode wraps up with Vasco thanking Ville for his valuable insights and encouraging listeners to rate, share, and engage with the podcast to support the community of Scrum Masters and Agile practitioners.

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Key Takeaways

• Avoiding Anti-Patterns: Recognize and address the pitfalls of absent or part-time Product Owners to prevent costly project setbacks.

• Strategic Scheduling: Implement regular, brief meetings to maintain consistent PO engagement without overburdening their schedule.

• Empowered Delegation: Utilize proxy POs and delegate responsibilities to sustain project momentum in the PO's absence.

• Enhanced Communication: Foster a culture of open and proactive communication to facilitate better team understanding and adaptability.

• Learning from Exemplars: Emulate the practices of highly effective Product Owners to elevate team performance and project success.

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Notable Quotes:

• "[05:28] Ville Reijonen: ...how expensive is that one? If the one hour of product owner, two or five hours of product owner time would have saved, let's say 100 hours of calling what is the beneficial ratio here?"

• "[12:00] Ville Reijonen: ...He had a lot of one to one meetings with where, like every two weeks, every month with people."

• "[13:42] Ville Reijonen: Well said. I will find that one so vile."

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For more insights and resources, visit the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast and connect with Ville Reijonen on LinkedIn.

Transcript

[Vasco Duarte]

Hey, how are you doing? I'm Vasco Duarte, your host on the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. And I've got some exciting news. So right now, as I record this, I'm holding in my hand the signed contract for our very first Global Agile Summit. We're all in and I couldn't wait to share this news with you. So mark your calendars. May 18th, 20th of 2025 in Tallinn, Estonia. We're gonna have a transformative experience. We're putting together an event that is all about real life agile. It's not theory or buzzwords. It's practitioners sharing what's working, what's making an impact, and how they've overcome challenges that you too will have to face, or maybe even facing. Right now we're bringing together the best stories in Agile. From product leaders to engineering wizards to business visionaries, these will be stories that will inspire you to action. This isn't just another conference. It's a chance to connect with the people that are shaping the future of Agile. And here's the best part. Right now we're in our super early bird phase. And that means you can grab tickets at just 25% of the final price. Look, that's not just half off, it's half off of the half off. It's an incredible deal for our dedicated community members, just like you listening to this right now. So at the summit, day one will be all about hands on workshops. And days two and three, we'll dive into leadership, product strategy, coding, testing, and everything that makes Agile thrive in organizations. Right now remember, these are all first person, real life stories. Now whether you're a leader, a developer, or part of a consulting company, this event is built to take your Agile game to the next level. So don't wait. Go to globalagilesummit.com and grab your ticket. Today, let's all make 2025 the year agile truly transforms your teams, your business and our industry. I'll see you all in Tallinn. And Remember, go to globalagilesummit.com and get your super early bird ticket right now. It only be available until the agenda is announced, so don't wait. Grab it right now. Right now that that's out of the way, onto the episode. Hello everybody. Welcome to our Friday TGIF and product owner episode this week with Ville Rayonen. Hey Ville. Welcome back.

[Ville Rayonen]

Thank you, Osko.

[Vasco Duarte]

So Friday is of course product owner and we know that there are some awesome, amazing product owners, but there are also some difficult ones and we'll start with that. So wille Share with us what might have been potentially the worst product owner anti pattern you've witnessed in your career.

[Ville Rayonen]

This is the kind of repeating pattern anti pattern which usually I will say subset of this one is the absent product owner. But what I've seen is it further is this case that you have some company and they want to they often there's a project and then they hire some software company to do the project for them and they find the money and they do the investment. But often they don't have the person really to be the product owner and they just assign this task or somebody else. They don't really add more capacity, they don't free up capacity to do it, somebody else's job to do it. And often this person might not be so familiar with scrum or being product owner and they have their own day to day work on top of this project leading or product ownership they are doing and what ends up doing happening is that they are absent.

[Vasco Duarte]

So it's kind of the part time product owner. Is that how you would describe that.

[Ville Rayonen]

Part time product owner which creates the absent product owner effect?

[Vasco Duarte]

One of the things that I like so first I totally see this and this is actually very common especially in companies that for example hire a subcontractor to develop the actual software. And one of the things that I have seen is that the it's not that these product owners want to do a bad job, right? It's that they don't even understand what's required from a product owner and they kind of just take it as a side job and say yeah, yeah, I'll write the requirements or whatever and then maybe even the contractor brings in what they would call a business analyst or a requirements engineer, whatever that might be that ends up becoming the proxy PO sometimes. So when you're working with these part time pos like how do you help them to understand their role in a way that doesn't necessarily force them to be a full time po? Because it might not be possible at all, but that helps them to bring the essence of the product owner role to the team when they do interact with the team.

[Ville Rayonen]

So my go to kind of explanation often this the product owner and their managers is this kind of that let's say that there's six people on the team and they implement a system six hours and two hours they can do something else but they do six people and six hours per day. So that's 36 hours in a day totally doing something. And let's say that they are some feature, they are Implementing and in batch setup it takes two weeks to make, so it's 10 days. So 360 hours of billable work time. And let's say that the product owner is absent and they do something which is not something they want. So it has to be fixed and takes one week to fix it. So now they have spent three weeks of implementing this one, which they might have done in two or maybe in one week. So how expensive is that one? If the one hour of product owner, two or five hours of product owner time would have saved, let's say 100 hours of calling what is the beneficial ratio here? So it goes directly to the money. It's expensive not to spend the time.

[Vasco Duarte]

Yeah, so I hear you and I totally agree. The lack of guidance and lack of availability leads to the teams developing things that end up not being necessary or being wrongly implemented and we need to fix it. That's very expensive. But there are also cases when these POs really aren't available. Let's say that the PO is the CEO and that has happened in many companies, smaller ones obviously, but that has happened. And they really don't have time. Right. So how do we help them? Like how do we bring their scarce time to be a productive contribution to the team? Like what have you learned about that?

[Ville Rayonen]

So most often is the issue that they don't have hours, but they might have 15 minutes and you pre schedule these slots well beforehand enough of them often enough, so they might have 15 minutes every day. So you have rather than have a lot of time every two weeks, have little bit of time every day. So you get the feedback loop in there and have them, maybe they, if they are too busy, maybe there's somebody else or few other people who can be there for them when they cannot be. So kind of delegate the trust in that sense. So let somebody else do the product ownership work. So of course it's more messy setup when there's the CEO who is the real product owner. Then there's other proxies for that one. But it's probably more the end result will be better than having somebody who's not there at all.

[Vasco Duarte]

Yeah, we have here on the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast and I'll put the link on the show notes. We have a checklist. So this is basically a set of questions you go through with the PO where you agree where we are today. Right. Like for example, I only have 15 minutes every Tuesday. Right. And then you try to set a target situation and there's a set of questions that you go through and an example of how Scrum would handle that so that you start moving towards that. Because for example, the PO might have time for a kickoff meeting, say half a day with the team. And very often what would happen is that the kickoff meeting would be around business case and like some background information. But it would be much more effective if that's all we have for a month. It would be much more effective to actually start from a use case and then do a hackathon style quick prototyping session with the po because that gives a lot more knowledge to the team. Right. So we really need to know where we are, what's the availability, where we want to go and then together with that part time PO really slowly move things towards that. Because maybe this month they only have time for the kickoff, but maybe starting next month they could meet for half an hour every Monday and maybe the month after that maybe they could be available on Mondays and Wednesdays. Right. So if we schedule that, as you said, right. Like if we really look into it and prepare for it, we can actually help these part time pos be really productive and also help the team effectively.

[Ville Rayonen]

And I would say breaking mockups is really beneficial anyways. It doesn't need to be Even peo who is busy if you create understanding, again common understanding, what we are doing together, it's always good idea. So mockups are great for that one as long you don't go too far with them. So you think it's a full system, it's now mock up, we are done.

[Vasco Duarte]

All right. But that's a, you know, an anti pattern. But there are some amazing POs out there as well. Ville. So share one of those with us. The best product owner you've ever worked with. How did they work?

[Ville Rayonen]

It's a personal skill in this case that this person was talking with everybody and sharing information. Small nuggets of gold to every direction. So you could say plant seeds, you never know which is going to grow and which one is not. But this person was heavily communicating everywhere and that created a lot of understanding of the system we were creating and understanding where we are and what are the problems. I have been working media companies and many other places and I have never seen a company where they would say that we communicate too much. So this.

[Vasco Duarte]

Well, they might say we have too many meetings, that's for sure.

[Ville Rayonen]

Yeah, it's not about the meetings, about the communication, the quality of the communication.

[Vasco Duarte]

So one of the things, one of the characteristics you shared was that this PO was sharing nuggets of Information in different directions, I imagine also collecting feedback from different directions. What other patterns did this PO use to really, how do you say, boost to really amplify that communication impact.

[Ville Rayonen]

So this was a regular thing. He had a lot of one to one meetings with where, like every two weeks, every month with people. So he didn't arrange meetings when necessary. He had always meetings to see if there's something necessary.

[Vasco Duarte]

So he was proactive.

[Ville Rayonen]

Definitely proactive. And the point of these meetings, if you have nothing to say, nothing to discuss, you can make the meeting shorter. But if you don't have a meeting, you don't meet the people. So. So I have kind of regular cadence of meeting people and sharing these nuggets of gold and getting the feedback and getting the system running.

[Vasco Duarte]

Yeah. And this regular cadence is very important because of course it becomes a habit. That's what cadence means. But also because it opens you up for surprises that don't need to be scheduled. If there's a meeting that is scheduled, it probably has an agenda, it has a goal. And, and those meetings are necessary. I'm not arguing against those meetings, but I'm saying that they don't allow for serendipitous discovery. Right. Like things that you weren't expecting to discover, but they come up. But when you have regular conversations, we call it the water cooler effect, you will be surprised. And those surprises are in fact the level of surprise is the amount of information you got. Right. The more surprised, the more information you got. And when there's no surprise, there's no information. Right. So that's. I think one of the key values of this approach is that it allows the product owner to be open to these surprises and therefore allow them to react, to be ready to react to those surprises.

[Ville Rayonen]

Well said. I will find that one so vile.

[Vasco Duarte]

Thank you very much for being with us this week. We're getting close to the end, but if people want to know more about you and the work that you're doing, where should they go?

[Ville Rayonen]

I'm not so much on social media, but you can check me out always on LinkedIn. And if you want to talk about patterns or scrum patterns or agile in general, I'm always willing and maybe see you in some coaching camp somewhere in the world.

[Vasco Duarte]

Absolutely. So I'll put the link to Ville's LinkedIn page in the show notes. Make sure you check it out. And why not send him a connection request with a note and a question related to this week of episodes. Go ahead and get connected. Ville, thank you very much for your generosity with your time and your knowledge.

[Ville Rayonen]

Thank you, Vaska. It was pleasure.

[Vasco Duarte]

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.