Certified Scrum Product Owner

In this two-day, interactive training we’ll teach you everything you need to know to become an effective Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO).

The Basics

Becoming a Certified Scrum Product Owner is like becoming a Jedi, but slightly less nerdy and pseudo-spiritual. It’s not about learning to wield power, but about learning to harness the power that exists all around you.

A Product Owner is essential for every Scrum team. He or she buffers the team from other, often less Agile stakeholders. It is the Product Owner who helps the team deliver the features that make the most impact, and to deliver them as needed. Product Owners take control of planning and scheduling, and they take responsibility for facilitating team (and, by extension, product) successes.

They may, or may not, need a lightsaber *.

As a CSPO, you’ll get access to planning and communications tools that help cut through complexity, allowing you to reliably distinguish real value from noise. We’ll teach you to protect yourself and your team from risk, to learn from experience, and to iterate towards solid improvement.

All graduates receive:

• Adam’s Scrum Kickoff Planner
• Access to a regular series of open Q&A conference calls
• 14 Project Management Institute Professional Development Units (PDUs)*
• 16 Scrum Education Units from the Scrum Alliance
• A two-year Scrum Alliance Membership
• Additional mentorship, as needed, to pass the ScrumMaster Certification test
• Adam’s personal telephone number — If you run into a Scrum-related situation, he’s only a text away!

In terms of format, Adam uses Scrum to teach Scrum, blending your training with practical experience. The course is split into two focused work periods — or ‘sprints’ — each lasting a day. Each sprint has its own backlog (a detailed description of required accomplishments) and you’ll track your progress towards your certification using burndown charts.

Learning the language of Scrum is part of the course, so don’t worry if all that sounds jargon heavy.

The training maintains a comfortable, sustainable pace as required by Scrum. Each sprint includes at least two mini-breaks (at around 10:30am and 2:30pm) and a longer lunch break (around noon). If you need a personal break at any other time, you’re welcome to take it. Just don’t miss more than 60 minutes of the two-day workshop or we can’t certify you.

* lightsaber not included in CSPO training.

What You’ll Learn

Adam’s CSM class covers all the topics required by the Scrum Alliance, including:

• Understanding Agile: Scrum is just one of many Agile approaches. We’ll discuss what all Agile approaches share in common and what makes an approach Agile.
• Scrum Framework Overview: We’ll teach you the Scrum workflow to build your understanding of the whole process and the details of each step.
• Scrum Roles & Responsibilities: What does a ScrumMaster do? What makes for an effective Product Owner? Get familiar with the roles required to run Scrum and learn how to tackle the responsibilities of each.
• Product Vision and Roadmap: A product vision describes why a product is being undertaken and what the desired end is. By communicating that vision to stakeholders, it allows stakeholders to add to rather than inhibit momentum. This is some of the bread & butter of acting as a successful Product Owner. We’ll learn ways of creating useful Product Visions and roadmaps.
• Building and Maintaining Product Backlogs: Product backlogs are the Scrum version of a product-centric to-do list. Learn how to prioritize and breakdown looming tasks into manageable user stories the team can tackle.
• Scrum Meetings: Learn the ins and outs of each scrum meeting type — sprint planning, daily standup, sprint review, sprint retrospective, and backlog refinement — along with which invites (or forbids) Product Owner involvement.
• Scrum Artifacts: Discover how teams use product backlogs, sprint backlogs, sprint burndowns, and release burndowns, plus other optional artifacts such as task boards.
• Release Management: As a Product Owner you’ll need to be prepared to answer pressing stakeholder questions such as “when will this set of features be done?” and “how much will it cost us?” We teach you how to collect the necessary data from your team, allowing you to respond with increased accuracy and alacrity.

Still have questions?

Do I need to know anything about Scrum before I attend class?

No prior knowledge of Scrum is required. If you’d like to make the most of our time together, however, we encourage you to complete these interactive training modules beforehand. Doing so should only take you about ninety minutes.

Is food included?

Yes. And it is delicious. We provide a light breakfast, snacks, and a full lunch.

We will do our best to take dietary requests into consideration. You are also welcome to bring in your own food if you prefer.

Who should attend?

While this training is specifically geared for those looking to take a Product Owner role, it is appropriate for anyone interested in applying the Scrum framework effectively and learning more about Agile. We welcome the technical and non-technical; absolute beginners and those with more experience; introverts and extroverts; managers, executives, owners, developers, designers, and most multicellular life forms.