Scrum disempowers developers
&gt; the product owner often works alone and the development team simply receives a stream of backlog items that need to somehow be brought into a cohesive whole<p>This is the root of the problem in my opinion.<p>I am not interested in defending &quot;Scrum&quot;, I don&#x27;t like what I know about it, in the few experiments I&#x27;ve been involved in with it (not by choice), I agree it was disempowering to developers, trying to treat developers like commodities.<p>However, I am a fan of trying to do things agilely (iteratively, figuring out what to do next in relatively short chunks without trying to plan out the next year+).<p>In the experiences I&#x27;ve had where this _worked_ the product owner was _intimately_ involved with the development team, with lots of communication in both directions, with the development team&#x27;s info and feedback effecting how the product owner prioritized and determined (and changed, agilely) acceptance criteria.<p>The product owner had to embrace&#x2F;accept that this would be a significant time and energy commitment to them, they could not be looking to minimize their time here, and had to accept that &quot;with great power comes great responsibility&quot; -- that they needed feedback from developers to make these decisions properly.<p>On the flip side, through these good experiences, I also learned that a good product owner is _so important_ -- as a technical decision-maker I don&#x27;t _want_ to be responsible for determining product priorities or acceptance criteria. I want my feedback to be taken into account, but having someone else (who is good at it) be _responsible_ for it let&#x27;s me focus on applying technical excellence to achieve the goals set by the PO, and takes _so_ much pressure and anxiety off of me. Especially when I can trust them to know what they are doing it and do it well (just like they can trust me to execute well).<p>I _do_ think the development team needs a &quot;technical lead&quot; in addition to product owner, not just an amorphous bunch of people &quot;self-organizing&quot;.