Temporary fixes are supposed to be temporary. That's why Technical Debt should be on the Product Owner's radar.

In my practice, I get the chance to talk to a lot of different individuals from many organizations. Here are some of the things that really stood out to me about 2025.

AI is closing the Product Owner data gap by accident. Revenue accountability finally meets real-time access - but decision rights, funding, and governance still lag. Dashboards don't equal authority.

In vielen Unternehmen hängen die Werte und Prinzipien des Agilen Manifests (wenn überhaupt) irgendwo an der Wand – zwischen Vision-Statement und Kaffeeküche. Gelebt werden sie selten. Stattdessen wird Scrum eingeführt wie ein neues Prozesshandbuch: Meetings ersetzen Denken, Jira ersetzt Verantwortun...

Scrum talks about *adaptation*—but not the kind driven by opinions, pressure, or discomfort. True adaptation only happens after transparency and inspection. Without learning first, teams don’t adapt—they drift. This post challenges how Scrum Teams really use adaptation.

The Scrum Guide is short—but every word is packed with intent. In this series, we explore its language one post at a time, connecting each phrase to real-world professional Scrum practice. You’ll never look at “collective intelligence” or “relationships and interactions” the same way again.

All the first steps you need to know to start your AI journey in product management.

Product leaders own revenue, but many companies still run feature factories—leaving Product Owners accountable without the authority, data, or stable teams to deliver. Fixing it requires outcome-based governance and Evidence-Based Management measurement.

There’s an old expression, don’t gild the lily. It means to try not to over decorate something that’s already beautiful on its own. Sometimes I want to tell a Product Owner that I am working with not to gild the lily by overloading their requirements with solutions.

In diesem Artikel erklärt PST Simon Flossmann die am häufigsten übersehene Aufgabe eines Product-Owners

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, host Dave West sits down with authors Sander Dur and Ryan Brook to explore their new book, The Anatomy of a Product—a practical field guide that uses the human body as a metaphor to demystify modern product management. (30:22 Minutes)

This blog post addresses the confusion around the Product Owner accountability in Scrum. It clarifies that a Product Owner is a set of accountabilities, not just a job title, and that their core purpose is to maximize the value of the product delivered by the Scrum Team. Ultimately, Product Ownershi...

What makes self-managing teams effective? And how are they also cost-effective? In this live Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer session, Professional Scrum Trainers Robb Pieper and Jason Malmstadt will leverage their experiences to tackle your toughest questions about the business impact of self-manag...

The Anatomy of a Product explores products as living systems, revealing how to diagnose and improve every part, from vision to delivery. Using metaphors, practical tools, and real-world stories, it helps product teams think clearly, collaborate better, and build healthier, more purposeful products.

In diesem Artikel erklärt PST Simon Flossmann, wie Scrum Master ihre Product Owner bei der Maximierung des Wertes unterstützen können.

One of the core aspects of Product Ownership is to create alignment across everyone who is involved with the product in some way. A great way to do this is to establish a compelling Product Vision, a strategic objective that helps everyone to envision the future of the product.  The problem usually...

I am often asked, how many teams can a Scrum Master support? Like so many things in Scrum, the answer is that it depends. The maturity of the teams, the organizational structure, the priority of the work and even the seniority of the Scrum Master are all factors to consider. There is no single, "...

Scrum Teams don’t just need skills—they need expertise: deep understanding built through experience and curiosity. Expertise isn’t about knowing everything; it’s about learning fast, connecting dots, and turning insight into smarter action. Because in complex work, speed of learning beats depth of k...

If your Sprint Review is starting to feel a little pointless, ask yourself: Do we have a clear direction? And are we collaborating together to adjust course and find the best path to get there?

Dieser Artikel identifiziert die Erfolgsfaktoren für Agilität, die in Ihrem Unternehmen fehlen. Er bietet Ihnen konkrete Maßnahmen, die Sie am Montagmorgen umsetzen können, um zu prüfen, was Sie in Ihrem Einflussbereich an Veränderungen vorantreiben können.

Scrum balances three forces—strategy, tactics, and risk—through the Vision, Product Goal, and Sprint Goal. The Product Goal bridges the gap between long-term vision and short-term execution, ensuring focus, alignment, and manageable risk in complex environments.

What manufacturing taught us about knowledge work — and why Ackoff knew we were asking the wrong questions

Experienced Scrum practitioners often reach a plateau where the mechanics are mastered, but the outcomes still feel constrained and inefficient. If you are comfortable with Scrum and ready to evolve your practice, consider an approach that reframes the Product Backlog and Sprint Planning around valu...

This article identifies the success factors for agility that are absent in your organization. It gives you concrete Monday-morning actions to test what’s actually possible within your sphere of influence to drive change, because agility matters.

In Scrum, *collectively* doesn’t mean everyone must master every skill. It means the team as a whole has the skills to deliver value. Discover why this matters, how to avoid the “Lego block” myth, and how to grow resilience by sharing and acquiring skills.

Scrum isn’t powered by lone heroes—it thrives when groups of people engage together. From teams to stakeholders to leaders, Scrum creates the structure for collaboration, transparency, and shared purpose. Which groups are you engaging—or leaving behind?

In diesem Artikel stellt PST Simon Flossmann 3 Fragen vor, die sich Product Owner viel zu selten stellen.

Scrum Teams don’t exist in a vacuum. The Scrum team's success—or failure—is heavily influenced by the broader organization around them.

Scrum helps teams solve complex problems, but even skilled practitioners can fall into common pitfalls that hold them back. PST Robb Pieper shares how to spot these mistakes and fix them to restore collaboration and deliver real value.

Scrum isn’t about compliance—it’s about engagement. By giving teams purpose, mastery, and autonomy, Scrum taps into intrinsic motivation. When people are engaged, they care, contribute, and grow. Are your teams engaged—or just going through the motions?

What is one thing that is always true for a Product Owner? Yes, you guessed it right. Product Owner is an accountability within the Scrum Framework.

In this special episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Dave West sits down with Ken Schwaber, co-creator of Scrum, to celebrate 30 years since the initial introduction of Scrum at OOPSLA 1995, based on the paper, The Scrum Development Process.(29:59 Minutes)

From wasted features to late launches, risk is everywhere. Scrum doesn’t hide it—it makes it visible and helps teams reduce it, Sprint by Sprint. Is your team truly controlling risk—or just hoping for the best?

Managing multiple products can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. In this post, PST Jason Malmstadt gives you tips on defining your products clearly, finding focus, and navigating complexity through better product management.

Scrum isn’t about busywork—it’s about making outcomes more predictable. But many teams confuse predictability with fake certainty. In this post, we explore how Scrum really optimizes predictability, where teams go wrong, and what you can inspect today.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, host Dave West is joined by Dr. Alan Brown—professor, executive advisor, and expert in AI and digital technologies—to explore how Agile teams can adapt and thrive in a rapidly evolving AI landscape. (44:58 minutes)

Die agile Welt spaltet sich in zwei Lager: Diejenigen, die davon überzeugt sind, dass KI die Praktiker aus der Welt schaffen wird, und diejenigen, die KI als eine weitere Modeerscheinung abtun. Beide liegen falsch.

In diesem Webcast zeigen dir die PSTs Peter Götz und Simon Flossmann, wie du als Product Owner Schritt für Schritt von einer inspirierenden Produktvision zu einem priorisierten Product Backlog gelangst, ohne das Vertrauen der Stakeholder zu verspielen.

Agile is often reduced to buzzwords about mindsets or methodologies, but its real value runs deeper. In this post, PST Robert Pieper explains how Agile as a strategy helps teams adapt, learn, and deliver meaningful results in a constantly changing world.

Taking a leaf out of fellow PST Sander Dur’s recent post, I would like to explore if Product Ownership and Product Management are mutually exclusive or inclusive. I personally like his analogy that the Product Owner and the Product Manager are just two different t-shirts. Now, different people have ...

When your backlog isn’t prioritized, even great teams can lose focus. In this blog, PST Jason Malmstadt explains how effective prioritization helps teams deliver faster, stay aligned, and build trust with stakeholders.

When you’re kayaking in fast whitewater, the boat tends to go wherever you look. That's because when you look at something, your whole body tends to lean that way without you even realizing it.

The Agile world is splitting into two camps: Those convinced AI will automate practitioners out of existence, and those dismissing it as another crypto-level fad. Both are wrong.

Many companies water down the Scrum Master by splitting the accountability across teams, making it a side hustle, or rotating it each Sprint. It feels efficient but strips away the very impact that makes Scrum work. The Scrum Master isn’t about booking meetings, being a Jira jockey, or tracking velo...

This article introduces four perspectives for structuring product groups and teams: frequency, criticality/uncertainty, operational dependencies, and cost of delay. Together, they help define the right scope of product groups and balance autonomy with efficiency.

Warum Produktspezialisten in die strategische Irrelevanz schlafwandeln, wenn grundlegende KI-Risiken ignoriert werden.

Redeveloping a software system that manages vast sets of data to provide the advantages of cloud-based automation is a big challenge, especially when the customers include some of the world’s largest energy companies. To efficiently manage this process, the System Development team at rhi relied on a...

AI is tremendously helpful in the hands of a skilled operator. It can accelerate research, generate insights, and support better decision-making. But here’s what the AI evangelists won’t tell you: it can be equally damaging when fundamental AI risks are ignored.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Patricia Kong hosts a discussion with Elaine Lin Hering, author of  USA Today Best Selling Book "Unlearning Silence," and Ravi Verma, a Professional Scrum Trainer. They examine how workplace culture and cultural norms influence who speaks up and wh...

Sometimes Scrum gets a bad rap. When I ask why an organization struggled with Scrum, I almost always hear something like “there was too much overhead.” But when I dig deeper, I usually find that the organization had imposed extra rules—rules that have nothing to do with Scrum. In other words, when S...