The Biggest Reason Product Owners Fail

If we are using Scrum as the foundation for our agile process, then we have a Product Owner who is out there discovering
and prioritizing the things that continually deliver increasing value to the business and it's customers.

So, why do they fail to deliver value to their business and customers? I'll give a super simple answer. They don't
know the customer.

I have been working on teams and for start ups for years, and there has never been a Product Owner who spoke with their
customers. They spend time googling and researching their competition for feature sets, doing triage on customer support
requests, and if they are very ambitious, have someone from sales or marketing organize a survey. Its fascinating to me
that in agile we believe in "People and interactions over tools and processes," but can't extend that courtesy to the
very people whose problem we are trying to solve.

So here's a way to fix it. I'll go very heavy handed on this one. Require that a customer be present as a stakeholder
during review and planning. Let the whole team see and react to the customer as they see what was delivered. Let the Product
Owner make the final call as to what is important after hearing what everyone says. Let the arguments happen. They are
all arguments for the right reason.

I have worked with Product Owners who have insisted that there aren't normal customers for the business. If this happens
, just ask, "Who pays for our product?" If they still insist that there isn't one then find a customer's contact info for
the Product Owner. I'm sure its in a database or Salesforce. If they still insist that there isn't a customer, then fire them.

If a Product Owner doesn't truly know their customers then they cannot truly deliver value to them.