The Product Owner Lesson From Agile Teams That Forget the User | Marcin Klimaszewski

Marcin Klimaszewski: The Product Owner Lesson From Agile Teams That Forget the User 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.

"The user never wants to log in. That is never the goal of the user." - Marcin Klimaszewski

Marcin describes a pattern he has seen too often: teams speak about users as if the team already knows what users need. In one EdTech example, the obvious solution looked simple from the development side: students should log in. But in a classroom with twenty or thirty students and only forty-five minutes, login was not a neutral feature. A few forgotten passwords, a few typos, and the teacher suddenly became an administrator instead of a teacher. The Product Owner needed the team to see the real problem, not just the technically familiar solution. The eventual answer was simpler for the users: the teacher logged in and shared a code with the students. That gave the product enough identification without stealing classroom time. Marcin connects this to the Sam Walton reminder that the customer is the real boss. For Product Owners and Scrum Masters, the work is not to defend our preferred solution. The work is to keep asking what problem the user is trying to solve.

In this segment, we talk about EdTech and the Sam Walton idea that the customer can fire everyone by spending money somewhere else.

Self-reflection Question: Where is your team solving an internal business problem and calling it a user need?

Featured Book of the Week: The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick Marcin recommends The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick because it helps product people and Scrum Masters ask better questions. The trap is familiar: we explain our idea, ask whether people like it, and receive polite opinions instead of useful evidence. Marcin points out that better discovery starts with people's real experiences, problems, and past behavior. He also recommends Sprint by Jake Knapp, a practical guide to design sprints and structured product discovery. Sprint helped him see workshops as sequenced decisions toward a larger goal, not ceremonies to follow blindly. The method is useful only when it helps the team learn, align, prototype, test, and decide.

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