I am glad to hear that Barak. Thanks for letting me know!

Thanks a lot! You helped me a lot!

Hi Barak,

Thanks for sharing your questions. Regarding the your issue, I recommend attentively listening to the individual whilst being non-judgemental and keeping an open mind, and using clarifying questions to check that you have correctly understood what the person has told you, as I discuss in more detail in the article “Listening Practices for Product People“. This assumes, however, that you have enough knowledge of the subject matter so you can take in the information the stakeholder shares.

When dealing with opinionated people who like to disagree, I like to suggest involving them in the decision-making process whilst at the same time, asking them to be collaborative and adhere to agreed ground rules. You can learn more about collaborative decisions in my book How to Lead in Product Management and my article “Use Decision Rules-to Make Better Product Decisions“.

Hope this helps!

1. If I have a stakeholder that I need to understand from him some business issue and I don’t succeed to understand anything from what he says, how can I deal with that issue?
2. How can I handle with stress people, or peoples who think that they know everything, never mind what I say they will disagree with me?

Hi Connie, Lovely story–thank you for sharing. Great to hear that thinking or at least imaging a positive trait of the difficult person has helped you. All the best!

Just thought I’d leave this here. 🙂

Hi Ynnon,

Thank you for sharing your challenge. There are two things you may want to try: First, arrange a one-on-one meeting with the Scrum Master. Kindly but honestly describe the behaviour you have seen and how it affects you and the team. Then ask the Scrum Master for his perspective. Listen with an open mind and try to understand why he does what he does: What are his interests and needs? What drives his behaviour? Finally, see if there are needs and interests that both of you share and that you can use to establish a healthier relationship. If this fails, or if you have already had such a meeting, then escalate the issue to your manager and involve HR.

Hope this helps!

Any advice in dealing with this situation will help. I am looking to avoid any deep conflict between the both of us, but history with him says it isn’t going to be easy.

Hi Idu,

Thank you for sharing your feedback and experience. It’s difficult for me to comment and advise without knowing more about your context. But generally speaking, it is up to the development team to decide if the stories are ready to be worked on, not the Scrum Master. Additionally, product backlog grooming is best done collaboratively with the team members helping you analyse user feedback, adapt the product backlog, and refine stories. Take a look at the following articles:

The Definition of Ready in Scrum
Grooming the Product Backlog
Every Great Product Owner Needs a Great ScrumMaster

Hope this helps!

Thanks for sharing this nice article … How do deal with SM bulling PO. Sharing my recent experience with tough Scrum Master. He always causes problem during all the Scrum ceremonies. For example:
1. During grooming – SM always says the stories not clear and the dev team shouldn’t take up, even though everyone on the team says they understand the story.
2. He requests the PO to give detailed user stories with designs. Same time SM says it’s technically not feasible during grooming. After lot of escalation from management, he agrees and completes the task within one sprint …