Utility-billing stakeholders skip the Product Owner and escalate new requests to the CIO every morning, creating drive-by interruptions. What should the Product Owner do?

Chaotic escalation often signals missing transparency, not a need to conceal work. A clear intake and a predictable communication cadence let stakeholders see how requests are captured, ordered, and forecast without using the CIO as a ticket desk. The Product Owner still decides order; visibility reduces political shortcuts. Hiding the backlog or banning conversation outside one event creates more escalation, not less.