The Hydra Product Owner and the PO Who Made Trust Possible | Mirco Gerling

Mirco Gerling: The Hydra Product Owner and the PO Who Made Trust Possible

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 Great Product Owner: Precision That Builds Team Trust

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 .

 

"He always had an answer, or if he didn't have the answer, he tried to ask the clients, the users, the stakeholders." - Mirco Gerling

 

In pharmaceutical software, the wrong dose can kill someone. So when Mirco worked with a PO in that domain, precision wasn't a virtue — it was a survival requirement. The PO wrote meticulous user stories in classic "As a user, I want… so that…" format with very good acceptance criteria. The developers always knew what done meant. And when, mid-sprint, the team spotted a gap — "Is 80% tolerance of 100% or 80% of all?" — the PO was there, asking the right people, refining or splitting the story, never letting ambiguity ship. Even when half the team was out sick in winter, the remaining developers could deliver because the user stories were clear enough to stand on their own. Stories linked to automated tests. Each acceptance criterion traceable to the test that proved it. The result: a team that trusted their PO. As Mirco puts it, that trust came from one thing — the PO had already done the work needed to help the team understand what to do and how they'd know it was done.

 

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