Product Owner Survey Ranks Stakeholder Management as Most Critical and Most Challenging Skill

Scrum.org draws on its National Product Owner Survey in the Netherlands, where product owners have consistently named stakeholder management as the most critical and most challenging part of their role for years. The same data shows about one-third of a PO's workload is unplanned, ad hoc work, often starting with stakeholders who interrupt directly. The article argues that stakeholder management should be treated as core product ownership work rather than a soft skill.

Why it matters: Product owners and PMO leads who budget capacity without accounting for ad hoc stakeholder demands will keep missing sprint commitments, so the survey data offers a concrete basis for planning that time.