Product Owner's involvement with the dev team

When a PO is not completely involved with the dev team and overall in scrum events, what's the ideal action for a Scrum Master?

Would you expect a Product Owner to be “completely involved” with the Development Team? He or she must also work with stakeholders. As for Scrum events, the Daily Scrum happens more often than any other, and the PO is not expected to attend at all.

Perhaps the “ideal action” would be to discuss with the PO how he or she actually intends to fulfill their role, and take it from there.

In addition to Ian Mitchell's suggestion of having a discussion with the Product Owner about fulfilling the requirements of the role, I would also consider having a discussion with the Development Team, perhaps first. The Product Owner is accountable for a number of things that have a direct impact on the Development Team's ability to carry out their work - expressing Product Backlog items clearly, ordering the Product Backlog (which drives Product Backlog Refinement and Sprint Planning), and ensuing that the Development Team understands the items that are expressed in the Product Backlog (which goes back to the first point of clearly expressing the Product Backlog Items). The Product Owner may delegate some or all of these things to the Development Team, but is always accountable for them.

I'd ask the Development Team about how they feel the Product Owner is doing with respect to ensuring that the Development Team is able to effectively carry out their work. This could mean doing the work that the Product Owner is accountable for or ensuring that the Development Team always has sufficient abilities, knowledge, and time to do it. This can be useful for working with the Product Owner to remove these impediments from the Development Team's success, if there are any.

I observed that with the best performing scrum teams, Scrum Product Owner is always very close to the team

Thanks for the answer Ian.

My apologies for not framing my first sentence properly. I meant a scenario where the PO is not collaborating with the Dev team to a level where there are gaps in communication between them (PO is possibly busy with other work).

Yes, discussing with the PO is a definite course of action. But does 'coaching' the PO about Scrum implementation or responsibilities also a course of action that a Scrum Master should take?

Thomas

Duly noted. Yes, how the development team feels about the involvement and work is very important too. So, thanks for the depth in that direction.