The Product Owner's primary accountability is to maximize the value of the product, a goal best achieved through empiricism. The Scrum framework is founded on transparency, inspection, and adaptation. By continuing to measure and publish the usage data (B), the Product Owner upholds the pillar of transparency. This allows all stakeholders, including the dissenting one, to inspect the same facts. This data-driven approach enables informed decisions (adaptation) about the product's future, ensuring that development effort is focused on features that deliver real value. While managing stakeholder relationships is crucial, it must not override the empirical process that is fundamental to Scrum's success and the PO's accountability.

A. Hiding the data violates the Scrum pillar of transparency, which erodes trust and prevents collective inspection and informed decision-making by all stakeholders.

C. This choice abandons empiricism in favor of a single stakeholder's opinion, directly contradicting the PO's accountability to maximize value based on evidence.

1. Schwaber

K.

& Sutherland

J. (2020). The Scrum Guide.

Page 3

"Scrum Theory": "Scrum is founded on empiricism and lean thinking. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is observed." This supports using the observed usage data to make decisions.

Page 4

"Transparency": "The emergent process and work must be visible to those performing the work as well as those receiving the work... Artifacts that have low transparency can lead to decisions that diminish value and increase risk. Transparency enables inspection." This supports publishing the data

not hiding it.

Page 5

"Product Owner": "The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team." This accountability is fulfilled by making data-driven decisions

not by appeasing stakeholders.

2. McGreal

D.

& Jocham

R. (2018). The Professional Product Owner: Leveraging Scrum as a Competitive Advantage. Addison-Wesley Professional.

Chapter 4

"Value

" Section "Evidence-Based Management

" p. 61: The text emphasizes using empirical measures to guide decisions

stating

"Without measurement

you are just another person with an opinion." This directly supports prioritizing verified data over a stakeholder's unsubstantiated belief.

3. Verwijs

C.

Russo

D.

& Stol

K. J. (2023). A Theory of Scrum Team Effectiveness. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology

32(4)

Article 95.

Section 3.2.1

"Valuable Product": The theory posits that effectiveness is linked to delivering a valuable product

which is assessed through "feedback from the relevant environment." The customer usage data is a direct form of this feedback

making it essential for the PO to use and share it. (https://doi.org/10.1145/3592659)