1:1 Product Owner Coaching
One-on-one coaching for Product Owners on prioritization and stakeholder pushback.
Who This Is For
Product Owners — new to the role or experienced but stuck - who need to work through a real prioritization or stakeholder problem with someone, not sit through another framework overview.
Signs You Need This
- Your backlog keeps growing, but nothing on it feels prioritized
- You're new to product with no product background, improvising your way through stakeholder management
- Stakeholders walk over you in planning - everything gets added, and trust in the backlog is eroding
- You can't defend your backlog order out loud when a VP challenges it
- You spend more time defending decisions after the fact than shaping them before
How This Works
Cadence
Biweekly 1:1 sessions, built around whatever backlog or stakeholder situation is live for you that week.
Format
When it's useful, I sit in on a real refinement or review session and we debrief it right after.
Length
Typically scoped to a full quarter, around six sprints. Long enough to apply a framework across more than one cycle and adjust once you've taken real pushback, not just tried it once.
Focus
I teach frameworks where you need one, mentor where you need judgment, and coach where you already have the answer and need to trust it.
What Changes
- You run prioritization with an actual framework — value/effort, cost of delay — and can defend the ranking out loud when challenged
- You say no to a stakeholder ask in the moment, with a reason, instead of adding it and sorting it out later
- You write and defend a product goal that actually filters what goes into refinement, instead of running an endless task list
- You run stakeholder conversations proactively, ahead of planning, instead of reactively cleaning up after it
Questions
Our PO already went through PO training — what does 1:1 coaching add?
Training gives you the framework. Coaching applies it to your actual stakeholders and your actual backlog, where the framework meets a VP who doesn't want to hear "not this sprint."
What's the exit point?
A scoped engagement window with a named, observable change we check at the end — not an open-ended retainer. When you've got it, we stop.