PM/PO Couples Counseling

Welcome and Introductions

Kenny Kranseler | 00:00–01:19
Welcome, everybody. You have dialed into a rather interesting webinar today. It’s a Product Manager, Product Owner, couples counseling. So we’ll figure out how we can improve the relationship between product managers and product owners through this session. It’ll be led by myself, Kenny Kranseler. I am a principal consultant and trainer at Productside living in Seattle, Washington.

And Roger’s the lead on this one. So, Roger, you want to introduce yourself?

Roger Snyder | 01:19–01:37
Yeah, so I’m Roger Snyder, also a principal consultant and trainer. I’ve been with Productside for nine years, based in California in the Santa Cruz Mountains near San Jose, California.

About Productside and Webinar Logistics

Kenny Kranseler | 01:37–04:01
And so now you know who’s leading it. So before we start the webinar itself, we’ll give a little bit of background on who is leading the webinar. And you are being welcomed by Productside. They’re the team behind today’s webinar. We’re a group that knows how hard it can be to deliver great products, products that people not only use, but truly love.

And so whether it’s doing things like aligning stakeholders or predicting customer needs or managing that endless backlog, we’ve probably seen it all and we can help your company improve how they deal with those things. That’s why we’re here. We want to be your outcome-driven product partner. And more than just delivering solutions to our customers, we make sure we deliver outcomes. We tailor the solutions to your specific need. We provide complete solutions that enable you to transform, whether it’s problems with strategy, problems with execution, we’re there to help you along the way.

Setting the Stage: Understanding the PM/PO Relationship

Roger Snyder | 04:01–05:40
All right, thank you, Kenny, very much for introductions. We’re going to do this webinar a little bit differently. We’re going to first start with a poll, and then we’ll surprise you with another kind of difference from normal webinars. But let’s start this poll because we want to know where are you all coming from? What perspectives are you bringing to this webinar? We’re hoping there’s a lot of product owners and product managers, of course. But we would love to see where you’re all from and what role you are playing right now.

Counseling Session Act I: The PM/PO Conflict

Roger Snyder | 05:40–07:04
All right, so 37% PMs, 20% POs, 23% in the combined role. You’re wearing both hats and some leaders as well. This is very good. Excellent. All right, so what we’re going to do is we’re going to actually kick this off today with a counseling session. True to the title of the webinar, we want to actually model for you what we sometimes hear are the challenges. And we’re going to follow a little script and we’ve asked Mateo from our team to join us today.

Kenny Kranseler | 07:04–08:13
Yeah, Roger, a few problems. We need to talk about priorities. I’ve got leadership pressing me about the roadmap. They want us focusing on this new customer segment that we talked about before. When I look at our sprint backlog, I don’t see anything moving that is close to that direction.

From Conflict to Understanding: Why PM/PO Alignment Matters

Roger Snyder | 10:16–11:35
Right now, maybe, hopefully, some of you are identifying with some of the things that you heard during the conversation. You’ve had pieces of those conversations before. So what we want to do today is talk about how to improve an understanding of the roles, talk about what the common relationship challenges are.

The Product Lifecycle Blueprint

Roger Snyder | 11:35–13:49
Product management and product owners should be aligning in their own product life cycles so they understand how each other is working. This is our Productside blueprint—a guide to product management thinking about the right issues and tasks at the right time. It starts from the very first idea and drives through a series of activities to build and take the product to market.

Shared Responsibilities and Role Clarity

Roger Snyder | 13:49–15:58
Product management and product ownership are a hand-and-glove relationship. They need to be closely knit, with product managers focusing on discovery and product owners focusing on delivery. These are equal responsibilities.

Common Relationship Challenges

Roger Snyder | 15:58–23:11
Let’s talk about the common relationship challenges—trust, priorities, ownership confusion, communication breakdowns, and environmental challenges. Product managers focus on innovation while product owners need predictability and stability. It’s a strategic versus tactical tension.

Organizational and Environmental Challenges

Roger Snyder | 23:11–25:45
Engineering-led, sales-led, and executive-driven cultures often drive PM/PO misalignment. We’ll talk about strategies for dealing with those dynamics and surviving in tough org contexts.

Building Solutions Together

Roger Snyder | 25:45–33:36
Let’s define and respect the roles. Product managers and owners live and die by each other’s success. You need to clarify ceremony roles and align sprint planning cadence, ensuring a shared process and ownership of outcomes.

Decision Rights and Escalation Practices

Roger Snyder | 33:36–36:02
Decision rights are critical. The product owner is responsible for backlog refinement; the product manager for roadmap alignment. Communication of bad news must be fast, not aged like wine or cheese.

The Outcome Tree: Aligning Around Impact

Roger Snyder | 36:02–39:16
An outcome tree connects customer outcomes to business goals. The PM and PO collaborate on the metrics, epics, and measurement of success—alignment around impact.

Collaboration and Communication Rituals

Roger Snyder | 39:16–45:27
Maintain regular one-on-one syncs, retrospectives, and shared rituals to sustain trust and alignment. Transparency and shared tools are key to partnership success.

Q&A: Working with Multiple Product Owners

Roger Snyder | 45:27–47:36
If you’re a PM working with multiple POs, build scalable communication, shared documentation, and cross-collaboration to prevent silos.

Counseling Session Act II: Resolution and Renewal

Kenny Kranseler | 47:36–49:12
We should start by going over that diagram you shared, Roger, and make sure we’re clear about who does what, and then agree on how we can help each other in specific areas. That would build more trust and transparency between us.

Announcements and Upcoming Events

Kenny Kranseler | 49:12–51:22
Before we get into Q&A, a few announcements. We have upcoming Productside courses in New York City, and the next webinar with Tom and Rina will focus on organizational design that drives impact.

Audience Q&A: Transitions and Career Growth

Roger Snyder | 51:22–57:27
We discussed reorg transitions, PM/PO role separation, and career paths for PMs, POs, and BAs. Emphasized supporting each other and building conscious collaboration techniques despite org lines.

Final Takeaways and Closing Remarks

Kenny Kranseler | 57:27–58:20
Don’t forget we have another webinar next week, and you’ll get a link to this recording to share with your PM/PO partners. Thanks everyone—see you next time!