The One Introducing The Poh-Poh

Introducing the Poh-Poh

The team gathers for sprint planning. Laptops open, JIRA loaded, caffeine levels high. As usual, the board is a mix of half-refined stories, carryovers, and question marks.

Someone asks the most question of questions in Agile:
“What’s the goal for this sprint?”

Poh-Poh leans in like a philosopher to say.

“We’re building toward a customer-first, frictionless ecosystem—think TikTok meets TurboTax for B2B.”

Silence.

Someone types “frictionless ecosystem” into the story description while trying not to cry.

The team nods, unsure whether they’re building a financial dashboard or prototyping a social network for accountants. Either way, the sprint has technically started—and no one knows what they’re sprinting toward.

The Disengaged Visionary

Poh-Poh is not an absentee Product Owner. This isn’t a case of someone vanishing between sprint reviews. Poh-Poh is everywhere—at every ceremony, in every Slack thread, chiming in during every roadmap discussion. Visibility isn’t the problem. The problem is clarity.

Poh-Poh is disengaged from focus, not from activity. The involvement is constant, but the guidance is chaotic. There’s no shortage of ideas, opinions, or energy—only a shortage of synthesis. Direction never quite materializes. Priorities never quite stick.

A Running List of Classic Poh-Pohisms

Optimistic Vagueness

Rather than face tough questions, Poh-Poh cloaks ambiguity in positivity “We’ll get there”, “I trust the team”, “Agile is about learning as we go” These phrases deflect responsibility without providing direction.

Hallucinated Strategy

The product direction shifts based on passing thoughts, Slack messages, podcast inspiration, or executive whim. Poh-Poh speaks in metaphors, market jargon, and vague aspirations—but rarely in actionable outcomes.

Vision, in Poh-Poh’s world, is a rolling brainstorm—ambitious but unfiltered. The backlog becomes a graveyard of half-shaped initiatives and abandoned excitement. Features are requested enthusiastically, then quietly forgotten. The product strategy shifts monthly, driven by gut instinct, competitor noise, or passing executive comments.

Poh-Poh doesn’t obstruct delivery by vanishing; delivery slows because direction is erratic. Every conversation opens the door to a new idea, a new opportunity, or a newly redefined definition of “done.”

Prioritization Paralysis

In Poh-Poh’s world, there’s no trade-off, only add-ons. Poh-Poh avoids saying "no" to stakeholders, ideas, or features. A backlog that’s bloated, inconsistent, and indecisive ultimately results in a Platypus project. 

This is not an issue of engagement—it’s a problem of orientation. Poh-Poh is fully present but facing every direction at once.

And without someone anchoring product decisions in a consistent “why,” the team is left guessing what matters—and when it might change again.

The Team Impact

Under Poh-Poh’s leadership, the product vision isn’t a strategy—it’s a vibe.

Each sprint begins not with alignment, but with abstraction. Teams gather around their sprint boards, hoping for clarity and receiving, instead, metaphors. “We’re building a frictionless ecosystem,” says Poh-Poh. “Think TikTok meets TurboTax for B2B.” It sounds visionary. It also sounds completely unusable.

What follows isn’t delivery—it’s translation. The team spends more time interpreting goals than achieving them. And slowly, the impact compounds.

Confidence Starts to Crack

Unclear direction breeds uncertainty. Developers begin second-guessing priorities. Designers are left trying to reverse-engineer “vision” from Jira tickets. Instead of asking what delivers value, the team ends up asking, “What does Poh-Poh really want?” Delivery becomes guesswork.

Planning Turns to Theater

Sprint planning morphs into ceremony. Stories are pointed. Goals are declared. But no one believes they’ll stick. With priorities shifting mid-sprint as the norm, teams stop planning for outcomes—they start planning for disruption.

The Team Pivots Without Purpose

Every new Slack thread or executive whisper causes the roadmap to lurch. Features once labeled critical quietly disappear. New initiatives rise with no warning. What was important Monday becomes irrelevant by next Thursday. The team adapts, but each pivot erodes trust, momentum, and morale.

Platypus Products Are Born

Without clear, consistent guidance, the team doesn’t build a product—they assemble a platypus. It sort of works. It technically ships. But it lacks cohesion, purpose, and real user value. Demo day is met with polite nods and private confusion: “Who is this for?”

Cynicism Creeps In

Poh-Poh’s energetic optimism starts to ring hollow. “We’ll get there” becomes code for “I don’t know.” “I trust the team” sounds like deflection. Retrospectives repeat the same themes. Nothing changes. The team stops raising concerns—not because things are better, but because they’ve stopped expecting improvement.

Autonomy Without Alignment

With no clear decisions from Poh-Poh, the burden of product ownership shifts to the team. Developers make roadmap calls. Designers guess at user needs. What looks like empowerment is really abandonment. The team is autonomous—but aimless.

Agile doesn’t fear change. It fears chaos. Poh-Poh’s vision-by-mood-board creates exactly that. Without a stable “why,” even the best teams are left chasing ambiguity across sprint after sprint.

Why Poh-Poh Isn’t the Enemy

It’s easy to point fingers. When priorities shift weekly, features stall mid-sprint, and the team’s roadmap starts to look like a conspiracy wall, it’s tempting to treat Poh-Poh as the root cause.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most Poh-Pohs didn’t choose to operate this way.
They weren’t handed a clean vision or enough decision autonomy—they were handed a moving target and told to “own it.”

The real story behind a Poh-Poh is often one of pressure, ambiguity, and expectation mismanagement. Let’s pull back the curtain.

The Chaos Came First

Poh-Poh is often dropped into a fast-moving organization with multiple stakeholders, conflicting priorities, and a product that already has baggage. There are quarterly targets, a wish list from sales, two execs who both “own the roadmap,” and zero actual user access.

They’re trying to herd cats—and also be the cat.

The Vision Vacuum

No one trains most Product Owners on how to build and maintain real product vision. They’re expected to be translators, therapists, facilitators, and visionaries. All at once. With no time for strategy, and even less support.

So what does a well-intentioned PO do when they don’t have the time or tools to think long-term? They shift into reactive mode. They repeat what they hear. They brainstorm out loud. They say “yes” to everything, hoping something sticks.

That’s not sabotage. That’s survival.

Optimism as Armor

Many Poh-Pohs are actually trying to shield the team—from executive chaos, from constant shifting demands, from uncomfortable truths. They use positivity like armor:
“We’ll get there.”
“I trust the team.”
“It’s Agile—we’re learning.”

They’re not dodging accountability. They’re holding back a wave of complexity and hoping the team doesn’t see them sweat.

Poh-Pohs Don’t Want to Be This Way

Most Poh-Pohs feel the disconnect. They know the backlog is bloated. They know priorities are fuzzy. They know the team is confused. But without the tools, support, or space to reset, they just keep running.

What looks like chaos from the outside might actually be someone doing their best to lead in a structure that never let them lead well.

Poh-Poh isn’t the villain.
Poh-Poh is often the first person who needs help.

Help a Poh-Poh today. 

Coaching Poh-Poh Back to Product Clarity

Behind the vague metaphors and ever-shifting priorities is someone trying to do too much with too little. Coaching a Poh-Poh back to clarity isn’t about confrontation—it’s about collaboration. The team doesn’t have to suffer through sprint after sprint of “frictionless ecosystem” metaphors. They can help bring focus, direction, and confidence back into the product conversation.

Here’s how high-functioning teams help turn noise into vision:

Anchor Every Story in the “Why”

Don’t estimate a story until the reason for building it is crystal clear. The team needs more than a ticket—they need a purpose.

Push for questions like:

• Who is this for?

• What problem does it solve?

• How will we know if it worked?

Agile doesn’t fear change—but it does require clarity.

Use Sprint Goals as Guardrails

Every sprint should have a single, clearly articulated goal. This isn’t a formality—it’s a focus mechanism.

If new ideas surface mid-sprint, the team should be empowered to ask:

“Does this help us achieve the sprint goal?”

If the answer is no, it goes to the backlog. If it’s yes, it replaces something else. Trade-offs must be made visible. Agility doesn’t mean everything goes in—it means everything aligns.

Create Space for Exploration—Outside the Sprint

If Poh-Poh’s creativity is flooding sprint planning, give it a better outlet. Schedule roadmap review sessions where ideas can be brainstormed safely, shaped, and prioritized before they’re thrown into active development.

This lets the team engage in product thinking—without derailing delivery.

Turn Retros into Product Hygiene Checks

Retros aren’t just for process—they’re for product health, too.

Make space to reflect on direction:

• Was the goal clear?

• Did priorities shift mid-sprint?

• Were we solving real problems or building wishful features?

If these questions keep surfacing, the team doesn’t just have a process issue—it has a vision alignment problem. The retro is the space to start fixing it.

Co-Create Clarity Instead of Waiting for It

When Poh-Poh drops in with three overlapping epics and half a vision, don’t tune out—synthesize.

Teams can say:

“It sounds like these ideas are all related to reducing onboarding friction—should that be our Q2 focus?”

Use the team’s pattern recognition skills to shape Poh-Poh’s signal into structure.

Use Reflection, Not Resistance

Feedback doesn’t always have to be loud. Sometimes, the most effective coaching is simply holding up a mirror.

Instead of challenging ideas mid-meeting, follow up:

“We shifted sprint priorities again this week—can we talk about what’s driving that pattern?”

Poh-Poh doesn’t need correction in public. Poh-Poh needs space to reflect in private.

Agile doesn’t need a thought leader—it needs a thought partner. Helping Poh-Poh succeed is part of the team’s job—just like removing blockers or improving flow. Vision isn’t a solo sport. It’s a shared conversation.

And when it’s clear, focused, and anchored in value? That’s when Agile really delivers.

Poh-Poh doesn’t need to be reined in—just realigned. With the right structure, clarity, and collaboration, even the most chaotic vision can become focused. Agile teams thrive not by waiting for direction, but by helping shape it. Because when clarity meets collaboration, everyone ships better.