The Too-Technical PO and the One Who Was Willing to Experiment | Alf Dobbert-Baums

Alf Dobbert-Baums: The Too-Technical PO and the One Who Was Willing to Experiment

In this episode, we refer to Shift: From Product to People and the value of keeping the PO–developer conversation at the goal level.

The Great Product Owner: The PO Who Was Willing to Drop the Spec and Trust the Developers

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

"Let's ditch the technical part, and let's see what happens." - Alf Dobbert-Baums

The Great PO, in Alf's experience, is willing to experiment with letting go. She stopped writing detailed technical specifications and started writing plain user stories. Then — and this is the harder move — she stopped throwing them over the fence and walked into the developers' space to have the conversation. Alf had coached her toward it, and he watched the trust compound. Because she trusted the developers on the how, she had less work to do (the developers were closer to the system anyway) and the developers had room to make real decisions. The conversation stayed where it belonged: on the goal. Alf names the pattern this great PO embodied — open to experiments, willing to say "let's see what happens," and quietly resisting the seductive pull of getting technical because it feels safer. The Scrum Master's job is partly to make that letting-go feel safe enough to try.

Self-reflection Question: Where is your PO still writing the "how" — and what would it take for them to trust the developers enough to write only the "why" and the "what"?

The Bad Product Owner: The PO Who Thinks They Know More Than the Developers

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

"He said: 'developers can retrieve the information from the archive database.' The developer said: 'the information is not in the archive database.'" - Alf Dobbert-Baums

The anti-pattern is the PO who is too technical — the one who writes specs full of implementation detail and treats the developers as executors. Alf calls him John. John wrote a user story that told the developers exactly where to fetch the data from: the archive database. Then he tried to hand the story to Alf to present, the way a memo gets handed across a desk. Alf refused. He insisted John present it to the developers himself. John did. The first developer to speak said the information wasn't in the archive database. Alf hopes that moment humbled John a little. The point isn't whether John was right about the database — the point is the dynamic. When the PO writes the technical answer into the story, the developers stop being collaborators and become receivers. The translation work that creates real value — between user goal and technical option — never happens. The PO ends up with more work, less ownership from the team, and worse outcomes.

In this segment, we refer to Shift: From Product to People and the idea that great POs facilitate the conversation between user goal and team, rather than dictating it.

Self-reflection Question: When was the last time your PO wrote a technical detail into a story and the developers had to walk it back — and what would change if the PO trusted them to design the "how"?

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About Alf Dobbert-Baums

Alf lives in Berlin. He studied Theater/Religion at the Freie University Berlin. He is a Systemic Organizational Consultant, a Scrum Master and Agile Coach. He has also been a freelancer for Usability and Requirements Engineering for car manufacturers. At "Verti" he led the agile transformation.

You can link with Alf Dobbert-Baums on LinkedIn.