The Ihsan Agile Product Steward (IAPS)

Strengthening Product Decisions Under Uncertainty

The Ihsan Agile Product Steward (IAPS) is responsible for ensuring that uncertainty introduced during delivery is visible, owned, and responsibly acted upon.

Where many Agile roles focus on how work flows, the Product Steward attends to what decisions are made, what risks are introduced, and who will bear their consequences.

The Product Steward answers the question:

“When we accept this trade-off, who will be affected — and have they been informed?”

What is the Ihsan Agile Product Steward (IAPS)?

1. Complementary, Not Replacement

The Ihsan Agile Product Steward does not replace Product Owners, Product Managers, or business leads.

Instead, the role strengthens product decision-making by ensuring that ethical responsibility, long-term impact, and stakeholder awareness are not lost under delivery pressure.

In many teams, this responsibility already exists implicitly.
The Product Steward makes it explicit, visible, and teachable.

2. Focused on Decisions, Not Process

The Product Steward is not a facilitation role.

While the Ihsan Agile Facilitator attends to how teams work together, the Product Steward attends to:

which trade-offs are accepted
which limitations or shortcuts are introduced
which risks are transferred to users, maintainers, or communities

This reflects a core insight of Ihsan Agile: ethical failure in delivery rarely comes from intent, but from undisclosed uncertainty.

3. Values-Driven Grounded in Ihsān and Stewardship (Amānah)

In Islamic ethical reasoning, people are stewards, not owners.

Applied to product delivery, this means:

we do not merely optimise for speed or output
we are accountable for what others inherit from our decisions

The Product Steward helps teams practice ihsān by recognising that:

hiding uncertainty creates jahālah (harmful ignorance)
transferring risk without disclosure creates gharar (unjust uncertainty)
disclosure is not paperwork, but an ethical act

Visibility is not the end. Visibility is what makes responsibility unavoidable.

Transparency with customers builds long term trust and willingness to improve products that help them.

4. Framework-Agnostic
Whether your team uses Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, or Scrumban, the IAPS role adapts to embed Islamic values into your existing ways of working.

Four Key Characteristics

The Ihsan Agile Product Steward embeds ethical responsibility into everyday product decisions through five core responsibilities:

1. Reframe Technical Debt as Technical Disclosure

The Product Steward shifts language and practice away from:

“We’ll pay this back later”
“The team can manage the interest”

Toward:

What uncertainty are we introducing now?
Who will bear it?
What must be disclosed for consent to be meaningful?

This reframing aligns Agile practice with Islamic principles of fairness, trust, and justice.

2. Maintain the Technical Uncertainty Register

The Product Steward ensures that known limitations, assumptions, and risks are:

documented
traceable
reviewed intentionally

The Technical Uncertainty Register is not a backlog of shame.
It is a record of moral accountability and trust, making it clear what is known, what is deferred, and why.

3. Ensure Affected Stakeholders Are Informed

Disclosure that only satisfies internal process is not sufficient.

The Product Steward ensures that:

uncertainty is visible to those who will bear its consequences
stakeholders can give informed consent
risks are not silently transferred to users or future teams

This may include users, maintainers, partners, beneficiaries, or regulators — depending on context.

4. Centre Maslahah in Product Trade-offs

Product decisions are rarely between “good” and “bad”.
They are trade-offs under constraint.

The Product Steward helps teams ask:

Does this decision create genuine benefit?
Who benefits — and who may be harmed?
Is harm proportionate, mitigated, and openly acknowledged?

Maṣlaḥah (public good) becomes a decision lens, not an after-the-fact justification.

5. Steward Long-Term Care Beyond the Sprint

Many harms in software arise not immediately, but later:

when systems scale
when teams change
when shortcuts become foundations

The Product Steward holds responsibility for:

future maintainers
long-term sustainability
reputational and ethical consequences

This is not resistance to delivery.
It is care for what delivery creates.

Core Responsibilities of the Product Steward

What the Product Steward Is Not

Not bureaucracy — adds clarity, not paperwork
Not compliance — focuses on substance, not box-ticking
Not anti-delivery — enables confident decisions under pressure
Not moral policing — responsibility, not judgement

The role exists because delivery systems shape behaviour, and ethical responsibility needs a clear place to live within them.

You should consider becoming an Ihsan Agile Product Steward if you are:

a Product Owner or Product Manager in a Muslim-led organisation
a founder balancing speed, ethics, and long-term trust
a delivery lead making frequent trade-offs under pressure
a charity or fintech leader responsible for user impact
a technologist concerned with what others inherit from your decisions

No formal Agile certification is required.

What matters is:

respect from stakeholders
willingness to hold responsibility openly
grounding in Islamic ethical principles
comfort naming uncertainty rather than hiding it

Who Should Become an IAPS

Six Core Capabilities You'll Develop:

Through practicing the Ihsan Agile Product Steward role, you will develop six core capabilities that strengthen ethical, confident product leadership under pressure.

1. Holding Product Trade-offs Openly

Learn to name trade-offs explicitly — not to avoid them, but to ensure they are understood, owned, and justified.

You’ll practice making decisions that teams can stand behind months later, not just at sprint review.

2. Recognising Ethical Risk in Ordinary Decisions

Develop the ability to spot ethical dimensions in upstream and downstream delivery decisions:

scope cuts
technical shortcuts
UX dark patterns
data assumptions
silent defaults

This mirrors the IAF’s “ethical reflex” section, but in Product space.

3. Managing Uncertainty Without Hiding It

Learn how to:

document uncertainty without overburdening teams
distinguish acceptable uncertainty from harmful gharar
prevent ignorance (jahālah) from being transferred downstream

This is decision hygiene, not risk aversion.

4. Facilitating Informed Stakeholder Consent

Build skill in explaining trade-offs honestly to:

users
partners
beneficiaries
boards or funders

You’ll learn how to say: “Here is what we know, what we don’t, and what this means for you.”

5. Stewarding Long-Term Product Care

Learn to think beyond:

the sprint
the roadmap
the current team

And instead ask: “What will someone inherit from this decision?”

This capability is where amānah becomes operational.

6. Balancing Speed, Value, and Responsibility

Develop the confidence to deliver under pressure without collapsing responsibility.

The goal is not slower delivery — it is durable value that does not generate hidden harm.

Core capabilities developed as an IAPS

Scenario 1: Product Steward in a Scrum Team (Islamic Fintech)

Context:
A team is building a zakat and savings app. To meet launch deadlines, they simplify eligibility checks and defer edge-case validation.

Without a Product Steward:

limitations remain undocumented
marketing promises full coverage
customer support absorbs confusion later
reputational trust erodes quietly

With a Product Steward:

limitations are recorded in the Technical Uncertainty Register
stakeholders approve messaging that reflects current reality
users are informed of known constraints
a clear plan exists for addressing gaps

Result:
The product launches on time without misrepresentation, and trust is preserved even where functionality is incomplete.

Scenario 2: Product Steward in a Kanban Team (Islamic Charity)

Context:
A charity uses Kanban to coordinate services across regions. Data quality varies, and reporting assumptions are reused without review.