Certified Scrum Product Owner®

What to Expect

We take training and learning seriously. We respect the investment of both time and money that you are making to advance your skills. As such, we use the latest training approaches and techniques. We also bring energy and fun to ensure you have the best possible experience and learn as much as possible. In this course, you can expect:

• Brain-friendly training to dramatically increase learning and retention (instructors are Certified Training from the Back of the Room Trainers).
• Opportunities throughout the course to focus on your real-world situations.
• In-depth engagement with your instructors and fellow attendees. If you are looking for a dry lecture (we use zero slides), this class is NOT for you!
• Interactive, fun, and experiential learning — increasing safety and retention — laughing helps learning.
• Challenging work with others that focuses on your real organizational issues.

Virtual Training:

• All of our training happens virtually with interactive tools and learning canvases. When we reach a point we can safely consider in-person travel to your location, we will. Feel free to inquire about this!
• We have specifically designed all of our training for live-instructor, virtually led classes. We know there are virtual training skeptics. Some have tried virtual training and just watched piles of videos or listened as people clicked through slides. We don’t ever use slides and never use more than 10 minutes of videos per class!
• We work through in-depth and fun (really) exercises throughout the course in small groups.
• But don’t just take our word for it – we are 100% glad to take you through a live lesson and show you how we teach. If it works for you, great! We can discuss moving forward. If not, we can point you to someone that is a better fit based on your needs – no joke!
• Additionally, we send every student (direct to their home or shipping location) a color, in-depth course workbook and materials. We considered just sending some electronic files, but we have had way too many students reach out to thank us for something “real” in a virtual world.

Learning Objectives

• Examine where typical product owner (product manager) roles align with the Scrum Framework
• Compare the types of business decisions you and your organization make and decide if those are sufficient
• Illustrate how risks and assumptions are handled in Scrum by product owners (product managers); summarize how agile adds value and the types of value
• Review common reasons why visions and product goals are not motivating and discuss characteristics that make up good visions
• Compare types of stakeholders and contrast stakeholder analysis approaches
• Learn how customer segmentation is often done wrong and a better approach to understanding customer needs
• Analyze a case study for stakeholders jobs, pains and gains, and review the impact in your work
• Learn the key attributes of a product backlog and analyze a bad product backlog and find errors
• Explore the differences between products and projects and how they impact risk
• Uncover the simplicity and challenge of handling multiple products in one backlog with one or more teams

• Take an in-depth look at backlog refinement and what it means to have backlog items ready for sprint planning 
• Illustrate the typical problems with ‘epics’ and why they don’t typically add any value; then learn about a better option to help slice epics 
• Analyze a project request for valuable features, then create detailed assessments and a feature backlog
• Break down features into stories and compile a list of user stories
• Slice user stories into smaller parts, using multiple refinement approaches; explain what a vertical slice is and its value
• Learn exactly what the definition of done should be, why it is challenging, and understand the pros and cons of multiple definitions of done
• Learn why a product backlog is almost never sufficient and how roadmaps, release maps, and Product Boards present much more clarity and content for teams, product owners (product managers), and stakeholders — and how to create one

This course is designed for anyone who

• Wants a clear, no-nonsense understanding of what the scrum product owner does and how they do it in practice. 
• Is frustrated by traditional project expectations when they are supposed to be using an agile approach – they don’t seem to align.
• Needs to bring new ideas, tools, and practices to their organization and scrum teams that will help everyone focus and deliver.
• Enjoys learning, challenging themselves, and has an interest in finding ways to improve.

Who Should Attend

This course should be attended by anyone who wants to understand what the product owner role is and how the product owner does their job.

• Product Owners, Product Managers, Business Analysts, QA Testers
• Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters 
• Scrum team members, agile team members
•  Managers, directors, and others tasked with helping teams succeed with scrum and agile (very hard to do if you do not understand it)
• Anyone outside of software or IT: Our product owner training covers topics and examples that are applicable to those outside of software. We also offer training specifically geared to product management and product ownership outside of software. Ask us about this version of the course when you contact us.