Thank you so much Robert for your response and your support!

Yes, this is how I started out (though it was some years ago now). At the time I was indeed lumped with many of the duties due to a PO since we didn’t have one (we had a product manager but he had other jobs). I also continued as test lead for a further year. It was a very busy time!

You are so right that the whole thing got conflated, though I knew my theory.

I didn’t appreciate how much these melded roles had come to feel “normal” until I changed jobs and had a real (and very good) PO to work with.

Hmm.. maybe there’s a blog post in that somewhere… thanks for the idea!