The Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) course is a two day intensive introduction on product visioning, feature exploration and requirement management based on the Scrum framework. The course illustrates how Scrum and agile product management practices are applied by Product Owner and Scrum teams to validate ideas, evolve requirements, and deliver potentially shippable products in frequent, time-boxed iterations.

The course uses a combination of lectures, role-plays and exercises to impart understanding on the roles and activities the Product Owner and his/her team. The Scrum framework is applied in a mini-project simulation where the concepts of user stories, agile estimation, and release planning are practiced.

Who Should Attend

The course is open to all. There are no prerequisites or pre-reading required. All you need is an open mind, a desire to succeed, and maybe a pen.

In our experience people with the following background, get the most benefit from attending:

Prospective Product Owners wanting to prepare for their upcoming role
Practicing Product Owners wanting to hone their craft
Traditional Product Managers wanting to know what all this Product Ownership business is about
ScrumMasters wanting to broaden their knowledge of Scrum
Managers of all kinds wanting to improve how they select, work with and manage Product Owners
Stakeholders of all kinds wanting to better understand Scrum from a business perspective and how to get their needs met
Customers wanting to better understand how Scrum works and what is expected of them
UX, UI, & BA – a trio of roles long neglected by Agile. Whether you’re wanting to learn how to work with, or become a Product Owner, this course will give you the practical and definitive answers you’ve been looking for.
Traditional Project Managers wanting to better integrate with existing Scrum Teams or wanting to pivot into Product Ownership.
Anybody curious about Design Thinking in general or more specifically how it works with Scrum.

Certification

The participant is expected to complete the following to be CSPO certified:

Self-study the prerequisite reading provided prior to the course participation
Attend the course with not lower than 75% attendance.
Participate in the group discussions and exercises during the class.
Register with Scrum Alliance

The certificate is achieved through course completion. There is no test or exam.

Detailed Agenda

A Product Owners Perspective on Scrum

Learn how to see Scrum not as a series of baffling rituals and obscure artefacts, but rather from the Product Owner’s perspective; as a tool that helps you stick to schedules, manage risks and generate business value quickly and effectively.

Working productively with other members of your Team
Working effectively with your ScrumMaster
Keeping stakeholders, users and customers happy
Implementing Product Ownership well in any context
Scaling the Product Owner Role efficiently and effectively

How Organisational and Industry Context Affects Product Ownership

You will learn:

How your context shapes your implementation of the Scrum Framework
Tools to help you best implement Product Ownership in your context whilst still retaining as many core benefits as possible
How your implementation affects the kinds of benefits you should expect to get from Scrum. What you should expect will get better, and what might stay the same.

The Fundamentals of Design Thinking

Design thinking is more than just beards and buzzwords, it’s a proven way of approaching product development and problem solving that produces great results and fits together beautifully with Scrum.

Learn:

What Design Thinking actually is
The Benefits of taking a Design Thinking Approach
How Design Thinking differs from typical enterprise approaches
Important ways in which Traditional Design and Design Thinking differ
How Design Thinking implementations can go wrong (pitfalls to avoid!)
How to use Scrum and Design Thinking together
The Role of the Product Owner in Design Thinking

Product Ownership Practices

Goal Setting and Vision Crafting
User Stories
Creating, maintaining and estimating a Product Backlog
Steering with Sprint Review
Tracking, Managing and Reporting on Progress

Release Planning

The afternoon of Day Two is given over to our exclusive Release Planning Exercise.

“Release Planning” is the glue that bridges the gap between Agile and the Enterprise. It’s the process that provides the answer to the question some believe is unanswerable with Scrum:

“What am I going to get and when am I going to get it?”

Working as a team, students will be given the opportunity to apply everything they’ve learned so far and maybe even gain a few new insights to boot!

Our Release Planning Exercise is hands on and concrete. It makes the abstract real and joins up the dots.

We’ll start with a vision and end with not just a backlog, but a plan that we’ll have confidence in executing on.