During the iteration cycle, there are some key meetings you can strongly encourage product owners to attend.

Feature overview (aka ‘Story time’) – In advance of an iteration, you may wish to have a business-oriented overview of a system feature. This is a great opportunity to have the product owner describe how an associated facet of the business works. Many misunderstandings get pre-empted when developers can picture the business context.

Iteration planning – Early in iteration planning, you can review the requirements and any mockups. The product owner may identify a misunderstanding that can be corrected before development begins.

Iteration review – The product owner should certainly be part of the iteration review, if at all possible. Here is where any misunderstandings become plain to see. If the product owner identifies course corrections at the end of every iteration, they can be implemented quickly and efficiently in the next iteration, keeping the project from straying off-course.

Note: Product owner involvement in iteration meetings becomes even more meaningful when iterations are kept short. Ideally, one week is best since it allows course correction very often.

For these iteration meetings, you may be able to request some extra flexibility from the remote team members. Could they come in very early or be available late so that the product owner can meet at a more convenient time? Depending of the product owner and the company culture, that may be important.