Why the Best Product Owners Let Go of What They're Best At | Carmela Then

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast
Episode Title: Why the Best Product Owners Let Go of What They're Best At | Carmela Then
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Carmela Then
Air Date: January 9, 2026

This episode delves into the nuanced qualities of effective Product Owners in Agile teams. Carmela Then, a seasoned Agile practitioner, shares her candid experiences—contrasting the pitfalls of Product Owners who micromanage versus the transformative impact of those who practice servant leadership. Listeners gain practical insights into how Agile teams thrive when Product Owners empower rather than control, leading to better collaboration, morale, and outcomes.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Anti-Pattern: Product Owner as a Bottleneck

[01:46 – 07:41]

• Carmela recounts a story about a Product Owner who was extremely knowledgeable about both business and technical aspects, but this expertise became a double-edged sword.
• The Product Owner became the sole repository of crucial knowledge, leading to frustration and miscommunication within the team.
• He would often bypass collaboration, going as far as writing code himself and handing it to developers with rigid instructions.

Quote:

“Everything is in his head so nobody else knows what he has in his head. So he become like very frustrated in terms of trying to articulate what he's wanting to achieve with the developers. … So he ended up writing the coding and just hand it over to the developer.”
— Carmela Then [03:30]

Impact on the Team

• Developers felt disengaged and disconnected from the “big picture.”
• Lack of proper documentation and team input led to performance issues and maintainability problems.
• The environment stifled initiative and fostered blame rather than collaboration.

Vasco adds:

“Of course the developers get disengaged. … They’re not encouraged to understand the big picture either.”
— Vasco Duarte [04:22]

2. Breaking the Pattern: Carmela’s Approach

[04:53 – 07:41]

• Carmela describes adopting a humble, learner's stance: “I started to ask a lot of dumb kind of question, quote, quote and say I don't understand what you're saying. Can you just draw it on the paper for me?” [05:03]
• She leveraged “bad memory” as an excuse to insist on documentation, which gradually helped externalize the PO’s knowledge.
• By sharing this information with the whole team, she catalyzed understanding and inclusion, eventually convincing the PO to let go of coding tasks and focus on vision and priorities.

Quote:

“Please let the team help you so that you could actually do what we need you to do. What you actually best at, which is share with us your business end to end knowledge.”
— Carmela Then [06:34]

• The transition was gradual, played out over several quarters but paid dividends in team capability, code quality, and morale.

Host Reflection:

“That shows that we do need to be patient. Patience is a great skill to have in this kind of situation.”
— Vasco Duarte [07:41]

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3. The Positive Example: Servant Leadership in Product Ownership

[08:06 – 12:09]

• Carmela recounts her experience with “the best product owner” she’s worked with, Jenny, in a bank’s scrum team.
• Jenny’s approach was people-centric: bringing cookies, cracking jokes, building relationships, and maintaining a humble presence.
• Practiced servant leadership by breaking down hierarchies—everyone was encouraged to speak up regardless of their role.

Quote:

“He didn’t have that kind of ego saying like, you know, look at me, I’m from the business, I’m great and you are tech … He absolutely practiced the servant leadership.”
— Carmela Then [08:34]

• Jenny ensured visibility and context for every user story.
• He took ownership of facilitating communication between stakeholders and the team, always open to feedback.
• The team shifted from hierarchical silos (“testing team shouldn’t be questioning product owner”) to a collaborative, flat structure.

Notable Result:

• Testers felt empowered to challenge requirements:

“Eventually I even had the QA person... say, ‘I think product owner, you miss this scenario, you miss this use case.’” [11:17]

• The team operated with autonomy, transparency, and joint responsibility for product quality.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamps | Speaker | Quote or Event | |--------------|---------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | [03:30] | Carmela Then | “Everything is in his head so nobody else knows… So he ended up writing the coding and just hand it over…” | | [06:34] | Carmela Then | “Please let the team help you so that you could actually do what we need you to do. … Share your business…” | | [07:41] | Vasco Duarte | “That shows that we do need to be patient. Patience is a great skill to have in this kind of situation.” | | [08:34] | Carmela Then | “He absolutely practiced the servant leadership… bringing cookies, cracking jokes, getting people to talk.” | | [11:17] | Carmela Then | "Eventually I even had the QA person... say, 'I think product owner, you miss this use case.'" | | [11:44] | Vasco Duarte | “What testers are really good at, right, like finding what’s missing.” |

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Key Lessons and Takeaways

• Product Owners should empower, not control.
  Letting go of tasks outside their key focus (like coding or micromanaging) enables the team and lifts overall product quality.

• Transparency and documentation are critical
  Core knowledge should be accessible, not trapped in one person’s head.

• Servant leadership breaks down hierarchies
  The best Product Owners lead by example—encouraging contribution, dissolving silos, and uplifting team spirit.

• Patience and humility matter.
  Change is gradual, especially for deeply ingrained anti-patterns. Humility—on both the Scrum Master’s and Product Owner’s part—is essential.

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Connect with Carmela Then

• LinkedIn: Carmela welcomes direct connection and questions via LinkedIn. She prefers one-on-one chats over public posts.
  [12:29 – 13:02]

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Summary Table of Key Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------|--------------| | PO anti-pattern story | 01:46 – 07:41| | Carmela’s intervention/solutions | 04:53 – 07:41| | “Best Product Owner” story | 08:06 – 12:09| | Collaboration and flat structure | 09:50 – 11:44| | Advice and Carmela’s contact info | 12:09 – 13:02|

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This episode is an honest look at the difference a Product Owner can make—either by becoming a bottleneck or by inspiring real teamwork through humility and servant leadership. Both cautionary and motivational, Carmela’s stories are rich with practical tips for Agile practitioners at every level.

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. Hello everybody. Welcome to our product owner TGIF episode this week with Carmela then. Hey Carmela, welcome back.

[B]

Hello Vesco. Thank God it's Friday, huh?

[A]

Yes, dgif as they say. Happy Friday everybody. So Happy Fridays. Here are also product owner Fridays and that's what we'll investigate next. We'll talk about great product owner owners in a minute but before we go there, share with us Carmela, potentially the worst product owner anti pattern you've witnessed in your career.

[B]

Oh, I don't even know where to start. So the, well the worst product, I won't call him the worst product owner and he's actually a nice guy and the thing is he didn't have experience in good air jobs or how a good product owner should look like. That's how I think. And so because he was just so capable, he knows the entire business from back to front, front to back. And he even knew the system himself because he did quite a number of analysts time and supporting the system and he could write some pseudo codes even and he did a lot of like programming of some of the business system as well. So he just knows everything himself. And they also brought him into the team as a product owner because he knows, he knew just knows so much about the business. So as you could imagine someone like that, he's just you so used to do it all from but and at the same time because he knows everything, everything is in his head so nobody else knows what he has in his head. So he become like very frustrated in terms of trying to articulate what he's wanting to achieve with the developers and without proper documentation as well, putting like his thought from in his head onto paper for other people to understand it, he become like really frustrated. And because just because people didn't deliver what he wanted to deliver. So he ended up writing the coding and just hand it over to the developer and say I want this feature written. Yes. Can you just put this code into your tool and do whatever you need to do with it so that we can get the end product out the other way?

[A]

In the end, I think this kind of leads to a number of anti patterns. Of course the developers get disengaged. They don't really know what they're doing because they're just doing whatever they're told and they don't understand the big picture. They're not encouraged to understand the big picture either. I can imagine that the frustration with this person only grew and grew and grew every time bigger and heavier. Frustration. Were you able to help this person? What did you try?

[B]

Yeah, so, because I didn't know a lot about the area and I've learned to become very thick skinned and even though people tell me that you're not good, you suck kind of thing and I'm okay with it. So I started to ask a lot of dumb kind of question, quote, quote and say I don't understand what you're saying. Can you just draw it on the paper for me? That's how I understand it. So he started to put things down onto paper for me and as he's talking I started to write things down. So my excuse is I have a really bad memory. I will not remember what you say five minutes ago. I better start documenting it. Can you slow it down for me so I can document everything that you say? So I started to do that and I started to share with the developers and the testers so that they can also understand what's going on in his head as well. And eventually I just had to tell this product owner, I was like what you're doing is great. But then at the same time you are one person, you have the whole team here. Please let the team help you so that you could actually do what we need you to do. What you actually best at, which is share with us your business end to end knowledge. Because we need that to make sure that we build a robust product. Yeah. And the developers are great at what they are doing, like the coding. So if you can share with them what you are trying to achieve, what's your expectation? They could write the code in a more efficient way so that it has doesn't have. It has less performance issue and when we need to next time, when we need to change it, it's. It's easier. It doesn't look like a lot of bandits that get stuck together. And so it was over a number of. A number of quarters actually. They were running PI planning so. So there was a number of PIs before we get to the point that he was so happy that he was happy to let go of writing the court part to the people who are actually more skillful in the area.

[A]

And that shows that we do need to be patient. Patience is a. Is a great skill to have in this kind of situation.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. And not without the ego as well. So at that time I didn't have to prove that success and I know it all. Actually happy to show that, you know, I'm not good being humble and. Yeah.

[A]

So not all product owners are bad though. Carmela. Some are really great. So share with us the story of who was potentially the best product owner you've ever worked with.

[B]

It is a product. It was a product owner that I worked with in the, in the bank. He, Jenny, absolutely love people. He was the leader in the scrum team. The way I say leader is he, he get people together, he. He brings cookies, he crack jokes and he gets people to talk in the scrum. And he didn't have that kind of ego saying like, you know, look at me, I'm from the business, I'm great and you are tech. You are, you know, just a few levels below me. He didn't have that kind of attitude. Some, some product owner that I came across when I was new to agile. They had that kind of attitude, but he didn't have that. He has the business knowledge and he, he was actually a very humble leader. He's like, he absolutely practiced the servant leadership. So when he asked, when the team goes to him, he's very approachable. When a team went to him and say this is what we need and these stakeholders, he came to us and we don't really understand what he. That what the stakeholder is looking for. Like can you, can you be the mediator and help us? And he was willing to take it on and he owned the product landscape. He knows that every single story that we deliver, he participate in all of the refinement, help us prioritize. And he was that like he was present. He was present. He was serving the team and very coachable as well. So I wasn't the coach or scrum master at that time, so I could see that he was constantly with the Agile coaches. When they've given him feedback, he was very happy to take it on. And he's all about how do we deliver this product better, how do we uplift the team spirit and how do we break down the barriers between people? And so as a result of. Because the team was very new to Agile and in the beginning of team joining Agile, everybody has this kind of hierarchical kind of mindset, as in the testing team. They are testing team, they shouldn't be questioning the business analyst but they shouldn't be questioning the product owner. They have that kind of mindset. But towards the end that team, because of him, the barrier has broken down and that mindset, the kind of hierarchical mindset has broken down as well. It is like it is operating, operating. The scrum was operating the way scrum should be operating, which is, you know, a flat structure where everybody could talk to each, everybody. And eventually I even had the QA person who's doing, a person who's doing a QA role to say, I think product owner, you miss this scenario, you miss this use case.

[A]

What testers are really good at, Right, like finding what's missing.

[B]

Yes. They're not only testing what they were told to test, they could look at the landscape and go, I think you missed this. And then we, oh yes, we missed it. So yeah, let's prioritize that story and in the, in the next sprint. And yeah, he was amazing to work with.

[A]

It does sound like an amazing product owner and it's great that you were able to share that story, to inspire others hopefully to be that kind of product owner. Carmela, we're getting close to the end though. Before we go though, do share with us, where can people find out more about you and the work that you're doing?

[B]

Oh, great question. And I'm on LinkedIn, of course, and you can always reach out to me there. Not very active on LinkedIn, but do check my messages. I'm always happy to have one on one chat. That's probably my style of communication. Less of, you know, a post type of bridal. And if you have anything that you like to ask me, reach out to me on LinkedIn. Happy to connect.

[A]

Absolutely. We'll put the link in the show notes so that you all can connect with Carmela and why not ask a few follow up questions from the stories that she shared with us this week. Carmel, it's been a pleasure, thank you very much for your generosity with your time and your knowledge.

[B]

No problem at all. I actually appreciate your time as well. Vasco, in putting together setting aside time to do this just because you have the heart of funding to help the Agile community to give everybody a little bit of a tool in their toolbox to help navigate the day to day challenges. So actually I'm very appreciative of you of what you're doing for the community.

[A]

Thank you Carmela. All right, I hope you like this episode, but before you hit next episode, here's the deal. This podcast is pretty 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 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 membership 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.