- One PO per Development Team instead of one PO per Product
- Multiple PO for multiple smaller related “products” (e.g. PO for Android PowerPoint, PO for iPhone PowerPoint, PO for Windows Desktop PowerPoint, PO for Mac PowerPoint, PO for PowerPoint 365)
- There is only ONE product here – PowerPoint. Android, iPhone, Windows Desktop, etc are different technology “channels” used to deliver the product)
- One PO per feature/component/epic (“feature” product owner, “component” Product Owner, “epic” product owner)
- One “onsite” PO & N “offshore” PO
- PO being the bottleneck in communication, acting as in intermediately between the team & stakeholders/customers increasing the number of “hops” in communication
- PO not having the authority to terminate the Sprint
- ex-BA now relabeled as PO – nothing changes in the work they do
- PO not from Product Management or Product Marketing (if building external facing product) or not from business (if building internal products)
- Relabeling “project managers” to PO
- “technical” Product Owner (usually from engineering/IT), “proxy” Product Owner, “functional” Product Owner ( i.e. functional managers are *relabeled* as Product Owner e.g. “Dev” Product Owner, “QA” Product Owner)
- PO not being a subject matter/domain expert
- PO having multiple Development Team level Product Backlog instead of having ONE product backlog and multiple teams pulling from them
- PO not understanding the customers/users of the Product and not understanding the market
- Others in the organization not respecting PO’s final decision on the Product Backlog
- PO spoon-feeding the Development Team with Product Backlog items (duh!! seriously? ) instead of them writing it
- “Product Owner” being a committee instead of a single person
- PO & Development Team member being the same person
- PO & Scrum Master being the same person
- PO managing “projects”,”programs” etc
- No Product Owner
- Outsourced PO/PO from service vendors when the client owns the budget
- PO not meeting with the Dev. Team face to face periodically (if not co-located)
- PO not able to effectively communicate his/her vision to the Dev. Team, SM, and to others in the organization
- PO not owning the budget or ROI of the outcomes / product
- “Regional” Product Owner – Example – PO for North America, PO for EMEA, PO for South America, etc
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Helping Teams and Organizations be Agile 
Great article
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nice comprehensive list, Ram. but I’m missing the “Why” level. what are the effects and consequences of each of the dysfunctions listed?
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@Agile_DNA – the consequences of all these dysfunctions are dysfunctional product ownership, and the manifestation of these dysfunctions will vary from organization to organization
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