Sofia Katsaouni: The Pitfalls of Multiple Product Owners For One Team, And A Solution That Worked

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: Collaboration, Guidance And Trust, What Great PO’s work to achieve

In this episode, Sofia explores the qualities of a great Product Owner (POs), highlighting their guidance, collaborative problem-solving with the team, and how they shielded the team from interference. Trust-building is a key aspect, achieved by not imposing solutions and avoiding unilateral communication of deadlines. Sofia offers a tip on helping POs communicate "no" kindly to stakeholders. Additionally, she discusses the effective involvement of stakeholders, emphasizing onboarding and expectation-setting before demos.  

The Bad Product Owner: The Pitfalls of Multiple PO’s For One Team, And A Solution That Worked

In this episode, Sofia shares an early-career experience with dual Product Owners (POs) who were also team managers, causing chaos and confusion. She identifies the anti-pattern of having two POs without alignment, leading to an environment where the team felt constrained. Sofia provides tips on resolving this issue, advocating for a single PO, clarifying role responsibilities, and utilizing the PO proxy pattern to help coordinate and align stakeholder participation.

 

[IMAGE HERE] 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 Sofia Katsaouni

Sofia is a dedicated Agile and Organizational Coach who places people and their needs at the forefront. Transitioning from electrical engineering, she applies analytical skills to empower high-performing teams. With an emphasis on trust and psychological safety, Sofia enables startups and scale-ups to foster human-centric, performance-driven cultures.

You can link with Sofia Katsaouni on LinkedIn.