10 Things the Product Owner Can Do To Drive the Team Crazy
10 Things the Product Owner Can Do To Drive the Team Crazy
By Marc Löffler
It’s about time to give the Product Owner a chance to fight back. With the help of Heiko Weltin I created a list as a base for the revenge. I hope you’ll like it:
- Create your product backlog without any prioritization. In the end you need all of the features before you can bring the product to the market.
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Only create the headline of your user stories and don’t add any additional content, even if the team asks. You can’t prepare everything for the team.
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Only use two types of priorities: “Urgent” and “Can be done later”. Anything else would be a waste of time.
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Always promise release dates and scope to your customer without talking to your development team upfront. You are a skilled estimator.
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Always add one task to a user story that keeps the team from finishing it. The Definition Of Ready (DOR) is for wimps.
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Insist in long running sprints of at least four weeks. If the team has more time, more features can be done.
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Only prepare as many stories as needed to finalize half of the sprint. The rest of the time it is the task of the developers alone to clarify the rest of the stories.
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Only meet once a week with the team and keep this meeting as short as possible. You don’t want to hang out with those sissies.
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Always answer your phone during any team meeting. Don’t leave the room as the team shouldn’t be able to continue the discussion without you.
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Never attend the daily scrum. Instead, talk to single developers afterwards. This makes it easier to build pressure on them.
What do you think? Do you have some additions to this list? Feel free to add them in the comments.
Marc Löffler works as Functional Manager at Storz Endoskop Produktions GmbH in Switzerland. His passion is to help teams implementing agile frameworks like Scrum and XP and to transform our world of work. You can read more from Marc on his blog.
