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PO does not collaborate with the development team

Last post 03:37 pm December 2, 2014 by tim muttitt
2 replies
Anonymous
10:02 am November 27, 2014

If the PO is not available to collaborate with development team, what are the options available for SM ?


09:12 am December 2, 2014

Hi Rajesh,

it might be helpful if you gave some more context.

In general, an unavailable Product Owner is an impediment to the Scrum Team, so the Scrum Master should try to remove it (= try to make the Product Owner available). This could be done in various ways:
- finding some communication method that enables the PO to be available without further changes
- removing an impeding management precept
- fostering a more cooperative atmosphere
- facilitating understanding of the Scrum process
- ...
All depends on the root cause of the unavailability.


03:37 pm December 2, 2014

The other option is to share what impact the PO not being available is having on the team and its productivity.
Such things can be - time spent waiting for a decision, time spent going back and changing something as an assumption was made and then 3 days later the PO was available and made a decision in a different direction.

One way to highlight this to management, or whoever is responsible is to play a game with them. You can do a variant of this - http://tastycupcakes.org/2014/05/the-product-owner-role/
where you ask them to build a paper airplane and give them no other instructions. You come back after 5 minutes and tell them it wasn't what you were expecting and to go back and 'make it better'. You then repeat that and you will see their frustration. Then you can give a little more detail about the shape of the wings and how far it must fly (acceptance criteria) and then you can disappear. Maybe you show up 30 minutes later and accept the paper airplane - which shows work was just sitting on the shelf for 30 minutes and the guy building the plane had no idea if it was what was expected or not.


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