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Scrum Failures: Reason #1 - The Bad Product Owner

jpeckham

2/18/2009 12:19:38 AM

You might have a bad product owner and fail at scrum if your product owner:

  1. interrupts sprints with side projects.
  2. diminishes the impediments you bring up and/or claims they're just 'the way things are'
  3. watches and allows team members to be abusive to eachother or not adhere to scrum values.
  4. hides the true velocity from the executive sponsor
  5. doesn't bring stakeholders to the table for planning and/or keeps them at arms length from the developers
  6. decides things for the team on specific implementation/doesn't empower the team to make decisions
  7. leads by politics instead of business value
  8. is passive aggressive
  9. doesn't take responsibility for the results of a sprint
  10. doesn't participate in sprint planning
  11. doesn't prioritize effectively/constantly
  12. doesn't keep the backlog estimated by soliciting estimates from team

Remember, product owners are people too... sometimes they just don't understand agile/lean practices and are simply too use to traditional methods.

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Comments  2

  • Bobby 9/21/2011 12:00:00 AM

    This is so true. I have had one of these for the past year, ticks all but nums 3, 4. Also our Product Owner has managed to push us into a fixed cost with date deadlines for functionality, effectively waterfall...

  • James Peckham 9/23/2011 12:00:00 AM

    Not much you can do in this situation... might have to vote with your feet. I've also been fairly successful at sometimes digging into the reasons they do bad things and trying to come up with 'safe' ways to handle their fear. Most 'bad' behaviors happen due to fear. Find out the fear then try to find a collaborative way to come up with a solution.

    I wish you the best!
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