Episode
The PO Who Doesn't Care vs the PO Who Always Has the Answer | Olaitan Fashanu
- Published
- Jun 26, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 879
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- https://scrummastertoolbox.libsyn.com/the-po-who-doesnt-care-vs-the-po-who-always-has-the-answer-olaitan-fashanu
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Summary
Olaitan Fashanu: The PO Who Doesn't Care vs the PO Who Always Has the Answer 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 . In this episode, we refer to a recurring theme in past podcast episodes—the proxy product owner who can't make decisions because they're not theirs to make. The Great Product Owner: Always Available, Always Decisive, Always Has the Context 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 . "There was nothing you tell, any questions you have about a particular feature that this guy doesn't have an answer to. And that really moved the team so fast." - Olaitan Fashanu The best PO Olaitan ever worked with was the mirror opposite of every anti-pattern he'd seen. Deeply involved in refinement. Took backlog management seriously. Always brought the context. Always available to the team. And—maybe most importantly—always ready to make a decision when devs surfaced trade-offs. The team could ask any question about any feature, and the answer was right there. Not "let me check," not "I'll get back to you," not "what do you think?"—a decision. That single quality, Olaitan says, was what moved the team faster than anything else. As a Scrum Master, when you see a great PO at work, you also see the amplifying waves of impact: motivation rises, quality rises, ownership grows. Olaitan's takeaway is sharp: the success of our job depends on how well the product owner does theirs. Self-reflection Question: When was the last time your PO made a real-time decision that unblocked the team in a single conversa…