I am the scrum master, proxy product owner here - what is the best way to deal with an impatient stakeholder? At first I was able to tolerate it, but it is becoming stressful.
To give a few examples:
The team have committed to delivering work based on a product roadmap that the Product Owner and I have agreed on.
I have then planned the resources to deliver work based on that roadmap by organising my upcoming sprints accordingly.
We've used a Gaant chart in this case, just to visualise upcoming sprints - although this is not set in stone and the PO is aware.
- The team have delivered everything requested often ahead of schedule.
As sprints are undertaken, and work has been delivered based on what has been agreed, I have then been faced the following issues:
- It is difficult to please him with the quantity of work delivered on a weekly bases.
This is irrespective on the amount of work that has been delivered, he keeps wanting more and more to the point that I keep having slightly heated conversations with him, telling him that without the team working unpaid overtime (which they have told me that they do not want to do), it is not possible to deliver 60 hours work in a 40 hour week.
The stress of him having a go at me is starting to affect me, since I often find it hard to relax at work, not knowing if what we have done on a weekly bases is good enough.
I have members of staff in the scrum team working their butts off, to the point one developer right now is coming into work sick, so that he can help the rest of the scrum team meet their sprints.
Product owner seems to take no interest in learning low level of agile. I often break high level functionality into very small pieces i.e. user stories so that it is manageable for the team. This has created some tension with the PO, since he thinks stories should not be broken into slices but be one story that contains sub features.
So to give one example, the team were asked to implement a report. The report has a search feature, a table which contains data and a filter to view report by date range.
I would break that one feature down into 3:
Story 1: Table
Story 2: Search Story 3: filterSince they are all features in themselves.
I have told him that it is important that features are properly broken down otherwise I can't make forecasts on when they will be delivered and at what quality.
- PO tells me in private that I am doing a good job despite his bitching.
Finally, after introducing my project management approach, the product is much better than what he had before since my team rewrote the old product from it being badly written - previously he was managing that. He knows this and has acknowledged this, but the stress and constant bitching is getting to me. How do you guys handle this?
Thanks