How to help a “hands-off” PO to engage more with the Scrum team | Usman Kotwal

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

The Great Product Owner: The empowering Product Owner

This PO was in her first job as a Product Owner. Still, she had a natural sense for how to work with the team. Using both of her technical and business experience, she brought a mix of skills and a curious mentality that sparked great collaboration with the team. 

Another great sign, was when she asked Usman to be the Scrum Master for that team (which was missing one), and worked with him to help the team. To start with, she recognized her presence was important, and when she realized she had too much on her plate, she actively started sharing work with Usman, the Scrum Master.

Through her work and attitude, she was able to make the team feel both responsible and empowered!

The Bad Product Owner: How to help a “hands-off” PO to engage more with the Scrum team

This Product Owner was very hands-off. The PO was working with a team from a consultancy, which had their own “shadow PO”. This only made the situation worse, as the Product Owner did not feel responsible for the success of the team (as the team was “external”), and wanted the “shadow PO” to solve all the problems, with very little information or interaction. 

In this segment, we also discuss what Scrum Masters can do to help “hands-off” PO’s to feel more responsible and engage more with the teams.

Are you having trouble helping the team work well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.

About Usman Kotwal

Usman is a Scrum Master and Agile Coach in the field of data analytics in life sciences. He considers his learning journey to continue forever when it comes to bringing forward change in the ways we work collaboratively. His mission is to help guide the way to empowered product teams.

You can link with Usman Kotwal on LinkedIn.