Course Description

The Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) course is an interactive class introducing the concepts of Agile business leadership using the Scrum framework. This is an important first step in the journey towards a more adaptive form of business leadership focused on the business outcomes that matter so you can satisfy the needs of the customers and users.

The activities, tools, and techniques covered in this workshop will enable  you to grow revenue, boost innovation, and increase customer satisfaction while delivering and sustaining a high quality product. The Live Online edition of this course includes:

• Guided preparation work to get you ready
• Three virtual classroom sessions of four-hours each
• Lots of collaboration time with your classmates
• An opportunity to reflect between sessions with short readings
• One-hour follow up Q&A session with your instructor after the course

Upon completion of this two-day training, you will be designated a Certified Scrum Product Owner by the Scrum Alliance® and receive a two-year membership with the Scrum Alliance.

What You Will Learn

Through original content, interactive simulations, and real-world case studies you will learn how to:

• Establish a powerful vision that inspires your product team
• Apply the right frameworks to identify and align with the needs of your core customers
• Create high-impact features that maximize value while minimizing time-to-market and risk
• Deliver incremental value by leveraging the appropriate blend of the Scrum framework and modern product management practices
• Keep stakeholders engaged with collaborative frameworks for roadmapping and iterative release plans

Topics Covered

Product Vision – A clear, shared vision is crucial for successful Scrum and Agile teams. We’ll walk through techniques to help unify your team, stakeholders, and customers around the right vision for your product or service.

Prune the Product Tree  – Roadmaps are an important link between Product Vision and the Product Backlog. Unfortunately, many roadmaps are not much more than a slide with dates and bullet pointed features, which doesn’t provide any context. Learn how to use the Prune the Product Tree, an Innovation Game®, to collaborate with customers to build a real roadmap.

Product Backlog Basics – Learn the simple rules associated with a Product Backlog as well as a set of key practices for using a Product Backlog to develop consensus among the stakeholders on what will be delivered. Other topics we cover include:

• Writing User Stories
• Acceptance Criteria
• Vertically Slicing User Stories
• Product Backlog Refinement

Ordering the Product Backlog – The core of the Product Owner’s job is to order and prioritize among the many great things we could do and help the Development Team focus only on what is most important. Many traditional prioritization techniques are too slow for most Scrum Teams, so many Product Owners order the Product Backlog solely on intuition or by responding to the currently squeaky wheel. Learn a prioritization framework that helps you visualize the relative importance of your customer segments, internal & external stakeholders, corporate strategy, and maintain clean code.

Agile Release Planning – Believe it or not, we’ve heard many times the misinformed statement: “We’re Agile, so we don’t really plan.” Not only is this inconsistent with the Agile Manifesto, it is usually just bad business. In our experience, the best Scrum teams create a plan and expect it to change as work begins!

• Learn the nuts and bolts of managing stakeholder expectations with an Agile release plan
• Learn how and when to it makes sense to update the release plan

Working in Sprints – the Product Owner role doesn’t end once the Product Backlog is ready for Sprint Planning. Your team will be most effective if you are available during the Sprint to provide feedback at key points.

• Learn how the Product Owner works with Development Teams  during the Sprint
• Explore best practices in balancing time among the Development Team, stakeholders, and customers

What You Will Receive

This course focuses on interaction — we only use lectures to cover the basic terms and concepts. Most class time is dedicated to fun exercises, engaging discussion, and team collaboration. We focus on practical solutions to real-world, Product Owner challenges drawn from decades of experience as product managers, Agile coaches and Product Owners in Agile environments.

• A vivid student workbook full of custom exercises, activities and course summaries that capture the essential points you need to learn and comprehend.
• A two-year membership in the Scrum Alliance
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified Scrum Product Owner
• Fourteen SEUs/PDUs