Describe a time in which you were in conflict with a Product Owner. What did you do to resolve the issue?

Remember to select a conflict scenario that was professional and not personal in nature. While personal conflicts do arise in the workplace from time to time, it is best to describe conflicts about project scope, timing, feature implementation, etcetera.

Also, this question presents an excellent opportunity to demonstrate advanced leadership and facilitation skills. Scenarios that highlight your ability to empathize, mentor, or perform managerial duties are a good choice for this question.

"I ran into a conflict with the Product Owner on one of my teams last year. She was a strong analyst, but did not want to invest time in learning about out clients or their needs. She took their orders for feature requests without doing the analysis to translate their needs into a technically feasible plan. As a result, the user stories were missing the details our team needed to be successful. There was a constant flood of questions in sprint planning and we were carrying several stories over each sprint. The team was frustrated and the budget was suffering, but the team was hesitant to speak with her about it in reflection meetings.

I met with her offline to discuss the issue. She was resistant to feedback and communicated she was not interested in gaining knowledge about our customer's workflows and personas. I explained to her how much money was being wasted in story rework given the lack of analysis being done on the stories. I further explained that it is her role's responsibility as a product owner to become a subject matter expert that the cost of not doing it would ultimately affect our team's ability to deliver our projects. I also reminded her that I have a responsibility to manage her daily work and provide performance feedback toward her annual review, and I wanted her to have the best review possible.

She eventually agreed to do the work needed to improve the analysis. I offered to mentor her and we developed a solid action plan to get her up to speed and provide the team with the details necessary for success. Ultimately, I think she enjoyed learning about the work our customers do. She's doing a really fantastic job now, and I appreciate her willingness to change for the good of the team."