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"The biggest anti-pattern was that he made the retro unsafe... he would come to the retro and called people out for things that had not been done."
Terry describes a product owner who came from a management background focused on widgets and KPIs, completely unprepared for the collaborative nature of the product owner role. This person's biggest anti-pattern was making retrospectives unsafe by calling out individual team members for things not completed or not done to his satisfaction. When gentle coaching interventions failed, Terry took the dramatic step of excluding the PO from retrospectives entirely. Surprisingly, this shock treatment worked - when the PO asked why he wasn't invited, Terry used SBI feedback (Situation, Behavior, Impact) to help him understand how his actions were destroying team dynamics. The story has a positive ending, with the PO eventually understanding and changing his approach.
In this segment, we refer to the Retrospective Prime Directive, and the SBI feedback framework.
Terry's best product owner example saw their role not just as the voice of the customer, but as the connector between team and customers. Instead of relying solely on user stories and personas, this PO organized regular informal events where real customers and team members could meet, share pizza and beer, and have genuine conversations. These social connections led to deep customer understanding and resulted in their best feature ever - a simple addition that showed customers their last six orders for easy reordering. This feature increased both order frequency and size while dramatically improving the team's ability to empathize with their users.
Self-reflection Question: How might you help your product owner move from being the voice of the customer to being the bridge that connects your team directly with real users?
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About Terry Haayema
Terry is an international Author, Speaker, Conference Host, Trainer, Facilitator, Mentor and Transformative Coach whose personal purpose is to help people see differently, so they find joy.
You can link with Terry Haayema on LinkedIn, or visit his website to learn more about his book.