The Product Owner Who Made Retros Unsafe (And How We Fixed It) | Terry Haayema

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Product Owner Who Made Retros Unsafe (And How We Fixed It)

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast | Host: Vasco Duarte | Guest: Terry Haayema
Release Date: September 26, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Vasco Duarte and Agile Coach Terry Haayema explore the complex dynamic between Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and teams—especially focusing on how Product Owner behaviors can both harm and enhance team safety and productivity. Terry candidly shares a story about one of the worst Product Owner anti-patterns he’s witnessed: a Product Owner who made retrospectives unsafe. He contrasts this with a highlight of the best Product Owner he’s worked with, whose approach fostered genuine connection and customer empathy within the team. The episode is rich in actionable insights for Scrum Masters and Agile practitioners striving to create safer, high-performing teams.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Defining the Product Owner Role (01:25–01:48)

• Context Setting:
  The episode opens with Vasco emphasizing the critical nature of the Product Owner role within Scrum, asking Terry for both worst and best examples from his experience.
• Key Theme:
  How Product Owners’ approaches fundamentally shape team dynamics and outcomes.

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2. The Product Owner Anti-Pattern: Making Retros Unsafe (01:48–06:58)

• Background:
  Terry recounts an experience with a Product Owner who had been thrust into the role from a traditional management background, unprepared for Agile’s collaborative culture.

• Problematic Behaviors:

  • Managerial Mindset: Product Owner approached the team expecting them to deliver on process-based KPIs, focusing on “number of widgets delivered,” which clashed with Agile values.
  • Undermining Psychological Safety in Retrospectives:
    • “He would come to the retro and call people out for things that had not been done or had not been done to his level of satisfaction. And you can imagine that the team retreated.” – Terry (02:19)
  • Impact on Team:
    • “No people like being spoken to like that. But even the people who hadn't been called out retreated.” – Terry (02:38)

• Coaching Attempts and Interventions:

  • Terry tried to introduce the retrospective prime directive, clarify the importance of team reflections, and use “gentle coaching” and interrupts to protect individuals, but nothing worked due to the Product Owner's lack of self-awareness.
  • SBI Feedback Model: Focused on describing the Situation, Behavior, and Impact when providing feedback.

• Turning Point:

  • Terry chose to move the retrospective to a new time and location and did not invite the Product Owner, hoping the exclusion would prompt reflection and change.
    • Memorable moment:
      “So I booked the retro for a different room at a different time and didn't invite him.” – Terry (04:27)
  • When the Product Owner asked why he was excluded, Terry used the SBI model to explain the impact of his behavior—this was the catalyst for a breakthrough.
    • “It was actually being excluded from the invitation that in this case helped him to see his behavior differently.” – Terry (05:27)

• Lesson Learned:

  • Conventional coaching, even when persistent, sometimes fails to shift awareness; a “shock moment,” like exclusion, can be necessary to prompt reflection.
    • “Sometimes people are at the level of self-awareness that talking about creating awareness is not going to create awareness. You have to create kind of a shock moment, right?” – Vasco (07:10)

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3. The Role of “Shock Moments” in Coaching (06:58–08:32)

• Vasco’s Reflection:
  Vasco points out he would hesitate to recommend such an extreme intervention but acknowledges its power in rare cases.
  • “It's still a shock moment when you finally realize that, hey, they're not even inviting me anymore. That gets us as people. It gets us back to that moment in school where we were not invited to play a special game…” – Vasco (07:27)
  • Emphasizes the emotional impact and the necessity of sometimes going beyond rational discussion.

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4. The Best Product Owner: From Voice to Connector (08:32–12:29)

• Introduction to the “Great” Product Owner:
  Terry shifts to celebrate a Product Owner who demonstrated exceptional leadership by being more than just the “voice” of the customer.

• Key Characteristics & Practices:

  • Role as a Connector:
    • “The product owner I'm going to talk to you about as being the great PO saw it much more as being the connector between the team and the customer.” – Terry (09:03)
  • Customer Connection Events:
    • Organized informal gatherings (“pizza and beer” sessions) where team members, business stakeholders, and customers mingled and shared real experiences.
    • These laid-back social events created empathy and a direct understanding of customer needs, rather than relying solely on documentation or process.
  • Outcome:
    • The most successful feature the team ever built—reordering from the last six customer orders—came directly from a conversation at one of these events.
      • “We literally came up with a feature that saved customers a whole lot of time by just presenting them all their last six orders… We would never have thought to do that, but it was just through conversations.” – Terry (10:36)

• Team Impact:

  • Team engagement and motivation soared; the direct connection nurtured empathy and ownership.

• Key Takeaway:

  • The best Product Owners do more than shepherd a backlog—they actively cultivate relationship-building and invite customers into the product development journey.

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5. Resources & Ways to Connect (12:29–14:07)

• Terry shares his willingness to connect via LinkedIn and discusses his contribution to the community through organizing Agile Tour Sydney and offering free online resources.
• Highlights his book, which focuses on individual agility rather than just team or organizational agility.

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Notable Quotes

• On unsafe retrospectives:
  “He would come to the retro and call people out for things that had not been done or had not been done to his level of satisfaction.” – Terry (02:19)
• On team reaction:
  “But even the people who hadn't been called out retreated.” – Terry (02:38)
• On the value of unexpected interventions:
  “It was actually being excluded from the invitation that in this case helped him to see his behavior differently.” – Terry (05:27)
• On product owner as connector:
  “…the great PO saw it much more as being the connector between the team and the customer…help the team to get inside the head of the customer and understand the customer by interacting with real people…” – Terry (09:10)
• On team-driven innovation:
  “The single best feature we ever built came from one of those conversations.” – Terry (10:25)
• On coaching through exclusion:
  “Sometimes people are at the level of self-awareness that talking about creating awareness is not going to create awareness. You have to create kind of a shock moment, right?” – Vasco (07:10)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:11 – Episode intro; product owner roles introduced
• 01:48 – Worst PO anti-pattern described
• 02:19 – Unsafe retrospectives and team retreat
• 04:27 – Excluding PO from retro as intervention
• 05:27 – PO’s moment of realization
• 06:58 – The role of “shock moments” in awareness
• 08:32 – Transition to best PO example
• 09:03 – Reframing PO as customer connector
• 10:25 – Real-world customer connection leading to innovation
• 12:29 – Resources, events, and contact info

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Conclusion

This episode paints a vivid picture of how Product Owner behavior can make or break psychological safety and team efficacy. Through story and reflection, Terry and Vasco offer listeners both cautionary tales and inspiring examples, arming Scrum Masters with practical insights for fostering healthier, more creatively responsive Agile teams.

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Transcript

[A]

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.

[B]

Hello everybody. Welcome to our TGIF Friday and Product Owner episode this week with Terry Hyema. Hey Terry, welcome back.

[C]

Hey Vasco, thank you again for having me. Happy Friday everyone.

[B]

Indeed. Happy Friday everyone. It's already Friday and we're going to have a nice and relaxing conversation about what is potentially one of the most critical roles in the whole Scrum Frame framework. The product owner role. We'll talk about great and successful product owners in a minute. But first Terry, share with us potentially the worst product owner anti pattern you've witnessed in your career.

[C]

So I've witnessed many. I've been doing this for a while. It's not my first rodeo, but the worst. I think I do need to preface this with the person involved was doing the best they could with what they had. They had never really been brought into the role effectively and they were a mid level leader in a business area who suddenly found that they were the product owner and really wasn't equipped. So again, we always want to assume that the person's doing the best they can with what they have. But having been like a manager, focused on processes and KPIs and working in an area of the business where people had to do a certain number of widgety things every hour, that was kind of his approach to management and that doesn't quite work from a product owner point of view. The biggest anti pattern or the most negative behavior that came out of that, beyond dictating to the team what they should do beyond expecting them to deliver a certain number of widgets, it was that he actually made the retro unsafe. He would come to the retro and call people out for things that had not been done or had not been done to his level of satisfaction. And you can imagine that the team retreated. They're technical people, they don't like being spoken to like that, or no people like being spoken to like that. But even the people who hadn't been called out retreated. And I tried a few kind of gentle coaching kind of interventions. You know, I'd start the retro by bringing up the retrospective prime directive. And we all assume, you know, all of that, but it didn't really get through because he wasn't very self aware, hadn't really been a leader, more a manager. And there'd be points where I'd sort of button and interrupt and say, look, we really don't want to call out individuals and you know, this is about the performance as a team and what are we going to do differently as a team. But none of that worked. So I booked the retro for a different room at a different time and didn't invite him. So we actually had to move to a retrospective without this product owner having tried many times to coach. But there wasn't that coaching invitation and there wasn't that self awareness that there was a need for coaching. And I don't recommend necessarily doing that every time, but in this instance it actually worked because the product owner came to me and said, what happened to the retro? And I said I had to move it because it was unsafe and I had to use the like the SBI feedback approach. So stick to the situation and the behavior. Don't sort of get, you know, personal. And then once you've described the situation and the behavior, then talk about the impact of the behavior. And then there was like, you could see there was a moment for him where he had that realization. That didn't happen because of seeing the prime directive. It didn't happen because of numerous, you know, gentle prods or even, even asking sort of some powerful questions. None of that had sort of got through. It was actually being excluded from the invitation that in this case helped him to see his behavior differently. And then we actually brought him back in and it was, it was better.

[B]

That story has a great ending.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

But as I was expecting that that person would get so mad that eventually you would have had to leave. Because that has happened in some of our stories here on the podcast that people say, hey, at some point I just had to leave. There was no way around it. But that actually has a great ending.

[C]

It did. And the thing was, it was the trigger that I needed to help him to see the situation differently. So being in the retro and saying, hang on, hang on, we can't call people out hadn't helped him to see it differently. That was just me being the interfering scrum master. But actually uninviting him was, was a different moment.

[B]

And thanks, not worth show me.

[C]

Don't tell me that was the thing that let him know, oh, actually, you know, that this is impactful.

[B]

I would never advise that. But it's beautiful. It's beautiful to hear how it can work, right? Like, like, because I, you know, I would have had one on ones. I would have, you know, kind of tried to convey, here's what happened, here's what I observed, here's what happened on the other side. Have you noticed how people react when you say things like that? So I would try to create awareness, but you made a great point, which is sometimes people are at the level of self awareness that talking about creating awareness is not going to create awareness. You have to create kind of a shock moment, right? Like still safe. It's not threatening or whatever, but it's still a shock moment when you finally realize that, hey, they're not even inviting me anymore. That gets us as people. It gets us back to that moment in school where we were not invited to play a special game we all wanted to play, right? And that, and that brings back the awareness that, wait a minute, this is serious, right? Like now I feel this is serious. I'm not trying to rationalize why this is serious. I feel it's serious, right? So yeah, it can work. That's a beautiful story, Terry, but there.

[C]

Was no invitation and no coaching invitation, so I would try to have one on ones. It's like not going to happen. I would try to have those coaching moments. Did you observe how the team responded when you called that person and out? No invitation at all.

[B]

But we know there are some great product owners out there, so we want to focus on one of those right now. So, Terry, share with us the best product owner you've ever worked with. How did they work?

[C]

So completely different story, different product owner as well. So I often describe the product owner as the voice of the team for the customer and the voice of the customer for the team. So the team don't need to scrabble around to talk to 50 people to know something. They just talk to the product owner. And the people who receive what the team does don't need to distract the team to know, when will my thing be done. They can just talk to the product Owner. So that's all good, that's all well and wonderful, but the product owner I'm going to talk to you about as being the great PO saw it much more as being the connector between the team and the customer. So not just the voice of the customer, but the connector. And they put together a bunch of initiatives that actually help the team to get inside the head of the customer and understand the customer by interacting with real people, not just having a really great user story format. So you'll know the whole idea as I want, so that it's to help us empathize with the customer. And we have these Personas and stuff like that. But what this product owner did was they would hold these events and they'd actually invite a whole bunch of customers along and the team and some of the business people who supported the team and supported the customer and they would fund like pizza and beer and it wasn't a huge cost, but then get people talking to each other and socializing and the connections that were made and the understanding of what actually is going on for the customer. The single best feature we ever built came from one of those conversations. It wasn't the product owner having the really the best product vision ever. It wasn't, you know, design thinking. I mean, you could call it a design thinking type of activity, but it wasn't one of those kind of things. It wasn't a formal design thinking thinking activity. It was literally let's get together and share some pizza and beer with our customers and talk to them. And when you're talking to them, it's like, how you going? What do you do? I do this, I'm on this team. What do you do? I'm a customer, I use the system this way. And we literally came up with a feature that saved customers a whole lot of time by just presenting them all their last six orders. And I can just click things because it was a business to business type system. So I can just click things from past orders. Now we would never have thought to do that, but it was just through conversations and then getting a bit creative with customers. And when we did a small proof of concept, people loved it. Orders went up. But not only did orders go up, the size of orders went up as well. And the team's engagement with the customer, their ability to empathize with the customer. Well, we actually just met those people a couple of weeks ago and we shared pizza and beer with them. So my great product owner example was one who saw themselves not just as the voice of the customer, but as the connector to the customer, the one who brings the customer into the team and helps us to build some social bonding, get an understanding of who these people really are and help the customer understand who we are as well. And the conversations that emerged were incredibly valuable. I haven't seen better examples than that from product.

[B]

What a great story to finish our week off. Terry, that was beautiful. Inspiring. Terry, we're getting close to the end. If people want to connect with you, understand you better. Maybe have pizza and beer just in case you're in Sydney, Australia. Otherwise you can always do it remotely, of course. Where could they go?

[C]

Always happy to connect on LinkedIn and always happy to. I mean, it doesn't have to be pizza, but always happy to, you know, share a coffee or pizza and beer or something. I do help to organize Agile Tour which happens every November. So I'd encourage Sydney Agile Tour Sydney. Yes, Sorry.

[B]

Because there's Agile tours all over the place. Global.

[C]

Yeah, that's right. And I mean I would invite you to read my book as well. So my book is quite different. It's about individual agility, not about teams or organizations. There's enough books that do that and yeah, let's connect on LinkedIn. I don't use Twitter very much, but if you look me up online, I've got a website there. I've got a whole lot of templates you can have for free. I've got a whole lot of playbook books you can have for free. That's just my part of giving something back to this community that's helped me to build a career. Absolutely.

[B]

We'll put the link to all of those in the show notes for now. Terry, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for your generosity with your time and your knowledge.

[C]

Thank you so much, Vasco. And thank you to all the Scrum masters out there. You do such an incredibly important thing. Don't underestimate yourself.

[A]

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[B]

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