The Mobile Product Owner—Why Great POs Have Legs and Use Them | Pascal Papathemelis

Summary

Episode Summary: "The Mobile Product Owner—Why Great POs Have Legs and Use Them" featuring Pascal Papathemelis

Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Host: Vasco Duarte, Certified Scrum Master and Agile Coach
Guest: Pascal Papathemelis
Release Date: July 11, 2025

In this insightful episode, host Vasco Duarte engages in a deep conversation with Agile expert Pascal Papathemelis, focusing on the critical role of Product Owners (POs) within Agile teams. They explore both the detrimental anti-patterns that can undermine a team's effectiveness and the exemplary behaviors that define great Product Owners. Below is a comprehensive summary of their discussion.

1. Identifying Anti-Patterns in Product Ownership

Pascal begins by sharing a concerning anti-pattern observed in some Product Owners: dominating meetings. He recounts his experience with a PO who monopolized discussions during Sprint Planning, leaving the team passive and stifling open communication.

Pascal [01:44]: "The product owner dominates everything and tells quite a lot to the team what the team has to do and needs to do."

This domineering behavior often stems from the PO's dual role as both a leader and a manager, which can create an imbalance of power within the team. Pascal emphasizes the importance of psychological safety, noting that such dynamics discourage team members from providing honest feedback or voicing concerns.

2. The Impact of Stress on Product Owners

Vasco and Pascal delve into how stress and responsibility can influence a Product Owner's behavior. High stress levels may lead POs to micromanage, believing that they are the linchpin of the team's success.

Pascal [05:41]: "If the product owner would be able to listen, then it would be fine because then you could, like, create a channel of communication with the product owner and analyze and help the product owner reflect on the situation."

When POs feel overwhelmed, they might shut down essential Agile practices like retrospectives, viewing them as unnecessary or time-wasting, which further isolates the team and hampers continuous improvement.

3. Challenges in Coaching Non-Receptive Product Owners

Pascal discusses the difficulties in coaching Product Owners who are resistant to feedback or change. Without an open channel of communication, Agile coaches and Scrum Masters find it challenging to guide POs toward more effective practices.

Pascal [06:16]: "You can't help a person that does not want to be helped."

This highlights the necessity for POs to be willing to engage and collaborate for the team's success, underlining the collaborative spirit that Agile methodologies promote.

4. Characteristics of Exceptional Product Owners

Shifting focus to positive attributes, Pascal outlines the qualities that make a Product Owner truly effective:

• Open Communication and Active Listening: Great POs are approachable and listen to their teams, fostering an environment where ideas and feedback are freely exchanged.

• Strong Networking Skills: They maintain robust relationships with stakeholders, ensuring clear and persuasive communication that aligns stakeholder expectations with the team's capabilities.

• Clear Vision and Backlog Management: Exceptional POs have a well-defined vision for the product and manage the backlog meticulously, ensuring that it is coherent and prioritized to maximize value.

Pascal [08:36]: "They have a good vision, like they understand what is the goal... the product owner should maximize the value the team creates."

• Incremental Thinking and MVP Mindset: Effective POs embrace the concept of building Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), allowing for iterative development and early feedback, which is crucial for agile adaptability.

Pascal [11:38]: "If you as a product owner want to have upfront the perfect solution, then it will not be an MVP and it will not be an iterative process."

5. Facilitating Success Through Organizational Support

Pascal shares an example of successfully aligning a leadership team with the Agile framework by clearly defining the Product Owner's role, ensuring that the PO has the authority and support needed to make decisive actions.

Pascal [09:16]: "When it was clear with the leadership team that that's the way we would work, then things went very fine afterwards."

He underscores the importance of organizational backing to empower Product Owners, enabling them to lead effectively without undue pressure or conflicting directives.

6. Practical Recommendations for Product Owners and Teams

• Encourage POs to Engage with Stakeholders: POs should proactively interact with stakeholders to gather comprehensive requirements and maintain alignment with business goals.

• Promote Psychological Safety: Teams should feel safe to express ideas and concerns without fear of dominance or retribution from leadership.

• Embrace Agile Practices: Regular retrospectives, sprint reviews, and backlog refinements are vital for continuous improvement and should be upheld as essential practices rather than optional tasks.

• Foster Incremental Development: Adopting an MVP approach facilitates early feedback and allows teams to adjust quickly, ensuring that the product evolves in line with user needs and market dynamics.

7. Conclusion

The episode concludes with Pascal emphasizing the multifaceted role of Product Owners and the necessity for them to possess both leadership and collaborative skills. By fostering open communication, maintaining a clear vision, and embracing Agile principles, POs can significantly enhance their team's performance and the product's success.

Pascal [12:24]: "The ability to think incrementally, which, of course the product owner is the critical role for that also."

About Pascal Papathemelis

Pascal is a seasoned Agile Coach with extensive experience in guiding teams and organizations towards effective Agile practices. He advocates for empowering Product Owners and fostering environments where teams can thrive through collaboration and continuous improvement. Pascal is active on LinkedIn and participates in Agile communities, sharing his insights and supporting fellow practitioners in their Agile journeys.

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This episode offers valuable lessons for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Product Owners aiming to refine their roles and enhance team dynamics. By highlighting both common pitfalls and exemplary practices, Vasco and Pascal provide actionable insights to foster successful Agile teams.

Transcript

[Vasko]

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[Pascal Papatemelis]

Hello everybody. Welcome to our tgif the product owner episode this week with Pascal Papatemelis. Hey Pascal, welcome back.

[Pascal]

Hello.

[Pascal Papatemelis]

So product owner it is, it is Friday after all, so we want to dive into what great product owners look like. But before that, do share with us the potentially worst anti pattern in the product owner role that you witnessed in your career.

[Pascal]

I have an example of a product owner that I've been having challenges recently made me one of the last teams I worked with not too much long time ago and, and that is a product owner that takes all the space in the meetings. So if we have Sprint planning, the product owner talks most of the time and the team is really like mouth shut and the, the product owner dominates everything and tells quite a lot to the team what the team has to do and needs to do and then the team accepts that. And one of the things that it is the personality of the product owner that takes all the space and things but it's also the fact that the product owner is the superior of the team. So I've seen even in the past and I've mentioned always when I had opportunity to say that the product owner should not be the line manager of the people in the team, but they should be equal because otherwise he has a stronger force and people might not be afraid, might not be having the courage to talk against the product owner if he is on something right or not be able to give him feedback. Yeah. So in that last product owner we ended up, now that the team is not speaking up, there is no psychological safety. We ended up on not having retrospectives because the product owner says that this is, yeah, lost time. It's not valuable time. Whereas I tried to explain to the product owner, but that it's not this the case. Who has worked with several hundred teams over the past 20 years. Yeah, but the product owner is not listening. So you need to pick up your fights. And then I make a word to my sponsors and to the other people that at that time that, you know, with this team, we have a bit of a struggle and we need to see how we move ahead. And it's not in my call. I cannot decide on the team composition that was given by the organization. But then I try to make. First, I try to show the mirror to the product owner. If he listens and if he wants to improve, fine. Secondly, then I make things visible to the organization.

[Pascal Papatemelis]

One of the things that I hear from this story is this perhaps stress level also impacting how the product owner reacts. Because of course, they take so much responsibility and they want others to perform to the level of success that they expect of themselves. Right. And then they try to manage all of that. And that, of course, brings more questions. The team steps back, makes less decisions themselves. That brings more work onto the po. The PO gets even more overwhelmed, is more tempted to micromanage and direct and. And you end up with a product owner perhaps even believing that they are the only ones that can save the team and that without them, the team would not do anything. Therefore even being more tempted to end all of the meetings that have nothing to do with them directly. Right. Like the retrospective. I don't need any retros because I can tell the team exactly what they have wrong and what they need to fix.

[Pascal]

There is nothing wrong because the team just needs to follow what I want to do in that case. Yeah. And yeah, if there is, it would be only the stress level. And if the product owner would be able to listen, then it would be fine because then you could, like, create a channel of communication with the product owner and analyze and help the product owner reflect on the situation. But if the product owner is not listening and you cannot have a channel, then you cannot coach the product owner and you cannot coach a person who does not want to be coached.

[Pascal Papatemelis]

Yeah. And that's an important insight. You can't help a person that does not want to be helped. Yeah. And of course, we may start from that perspective. Okay, let's find something else that they may want help with. But if they ultimately prove that they don't really want help from. For anything, and there's very little we can Do.

[Pascal]

Yep. And actually this, this product owner was driving things that we don't need to have. You know, Sprint retrospective, Sprint reviews, all those. We were spending a three hour session for having like a review and a retrospective. He clearly stated that all those things are waste of time. We just should tell to the people what they need to be doing. So micromanagement and. Yeah, and we should not play with post its. I got the accusation. I'm a post it fetishist. We try to do those meetings. Very good.

[Pascal Papatemelis]

Then of course this is a very important realization. Right. Because that kind of comment clearly says that the product owner perhaps even feels threatened in their authority and because they think perhaps that they are the only ones who can tell the team what to do and when to do it and how to do it, then any interference will be seen as a threat as well.

[Pascal]

Could be, I don't know. I've done my own hypothesis, but it's very hard. If I don't have a good channel with the product owner, then when I work with him to verify or falsify the hypothesis. So there might be many reasons why the product owner behaves that way.

[Pascal Papatemelis]

And sometimes it's just good to step back and let the product owner create their own either success or failure, whatever they are able to do. Although in software very rarely can one person succeed on behalf of the team, usually the team needs to step up for success to become a reality. And of course not all product owners are like this. Some are amazing as people and as professionals. So let's focus on one of those. Pascal, share with us the story of potentially the best product owner you've ever worked with.

[Pascal]

Oh, I've never thought about who would be the best because I think many have been really good. And the common attitudes they have shown was that they were open for communication, active listening, good networkers, so that they know who are the stakeholders. They can have the disposal discussions that have the courage to say and confront the stakeholders. Yes, you need to persuade me and I make the decision. And me as a coach or scrum master, I've been supporting that. Like once there was a leadership team and we were working on a new critical product in one organization and then I made clear to the team like one person will decide about the product and that is the product owner. And if you want, and then when it was clear with the leadership team that that's the way we would work, then things went very fine afterwards. So we need to also help the product owners and create the space for them to thrive. And that was an Action of that I mentioned of the other product owner where I said that we're all in the same building and I said that the product owner needs to have legs and walk around to meet his stakeholders. Another good thing for product owners, that they have a good vision, like they understand what is the goal, that they should be suitable, challenging for the organization for the level of maturity the organization is, and they should be able to break down the product in good granularity so that the team can pull from the backlog. I mean, the product owner should maximize the value the team creates. And by having a good backlog management and involving the team well enough in the refinement, that helps in the team in understanding the product and working on the right things.

[Pascal Papatemelis]

Yeah, that ability to communicate is really critical. And when we think about the backlog, for example, which is a critical tool for product owners, it's far too often that we see backlogs that have fuzzy items, perhaps a collection of items that come from multiple stakeholders, but have nothing to do with each other. So there's lack of coherence, lack of direction, and. And that point that you made about great partners having a clear vision and being able to communicate it is really important because we're going to discover so many ideas as we work with the product that if we don't have the ability to cohere, to bring those ideas together, it's going to create a very confusing and not perhaps the best possible product.

[Pascal]

Yeah. And perhaps also, you know, aim to the right level of MVP is something very critical to get started and learn and get feedback fast. If you as a product owner want to have upfront the perfect solution, then it will not be an MVP and it will not be an iterative process. And then you will get the feedback and the learning on the product quite late because you will spend lots of time on doing something that might be perhaps totally wrong. So having this, this understanding and mindset that we start small and then we evolve and. Yeah, yeah.

[Pascal Papatemelis]

The ability to think incrementally, which, of course the product owner is the critical role for that also.

[Pascal]

Yes.

[Pascal Papatemelis]

Awesome. Pascal, it's been such a pleasure to have you in the show this week. Before we go though, we. Where can people find out more about you and the work that you're doing?

[Pascal]

Yeah, probably everybody can find me on LinkedIn. I've not been very active on LinkedIn recently as I've been trying to spend more time on other things like learning myself and educating and then also on family. And I've had quite intense work situation. Over the last year. But yeah, if you get want to get in touch you will be able to find me on LinkedIn and then send me a message and occasionally every now and then I will look there and perhaps I. Yeah, or join an.

[Pascal Papatemelis]

Agile coach camp in Finland. Right. I'm sure Pascal will be there.

[Pascal]

I decided actually this they're planning now a coach camp on in August, end of August but there have been due to the economic situation, not enough participants and anyway this year I decided myself to have a break. So yeah, I'm eager to 2026. So probably if we are lucky enough to have sponsors and people to support that then I will be there in 2026.

[Pascal Papatemelis]

Absolutely. Pascal, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for your generosity with your time and your knowledge.

[Pascal]

Yeah, thank you. And I wish all the audience, I don't know if that's published before the summer, a good summer. And yeah, all the best to everybody.

[Vasko]

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[Pascal Papatemelis]

Slack. We really hope you liked our show. And if you did, why not rate.

[Vasko]

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[Pascal Papatemelis]

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