Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)

Please note that Scrum WithStyle is in the process of evolving to become Adapt WithStyle.

Certified Scrum Product Owner^® (CSPO^®) is a globally recognised certification from the Scrum Alliance. Participants are required to fulfil the requirements defined by Scrum Alliance and are validated by the trainer as having met the learning objectives during the course. Whilst some prior coursework including reading and video material is required, there is no post-course exam. Full attendance of both course days is required to earn certification.

This course qualifies Project Management Professionals (PMPs) for 14 PDUs as approved by the Project Management Institute (PMI).

 

Live Virtual Training

There's no need to worry about missing out compared with in-person training. This course is not a series of pre-recorded videos that you passively watch. This CSPO is a live interactive virtual experience with the trainer coming to you live from Sydney, Australia. It covers all the same learning objectives as our in-person CSPOs - just using a different interaction medium. As a bonus, you will come away with a lot of practical techniques for remote working!

You can expect a highly interactive virtual learning experience with continuous live video amongst all participants. The course is designed to exploit the potential of state-of-the-art online collaboration tools as well as leveraging research-based adult eLearning approaches to maximise learner interaction and retention.

 

Session Themes

Just as themes on a Product Backlog tie together items in a meaningful way, themes tie together our course content as follows.

1. Scrum for Product Owners: sharpen your understanding of Scrum – especially the principles, events and artefacts of most importance to a Product Owner.
2. The Product Owner Role: clarify the full breadth and depth of the Product Owner role well beyond The Scrum Guide before discovering a customer and creating a shared Product Vision.
3. Product Strategy: do business impact mapping, hypothesis testing, segmentation and Agile roadmapping to shift the paradigm to outcomes and impacts over outputs.
4. Prioritisation: practice telling user stories, framing meaningful Sprint Goals, ordering using multiple value dimensions, fore-casting and making trade-off decisions.

 

Initial Course Backlog

Please note that the following backlog does not detail the many group discussions and exercises that we run throughout the course.

Scrum for Product Owners

• Scrum Concepts – understand how to use Agile and Scrum values to guide you, as well as how to exploit the strengths of Iterative and Increment Development and Empirical Process and Product Control.
• Scrum Artefacts and Events – discover how all elements of the Scrum framework fit together as well as how to use the Scrum Artefacts and time-boxing to be effective in the Product Owner role.
• Scrum Roles – understand the responsibilities that the Product Owner has in respect to the Scrum Events and how a Product Owner collaborates with other Scrum Team members to produce product Increments.

The Product Owner Role

• The Product Owner Role – compare your current Product Owner setup the Scrum ideal plus clarify specific Product Owner responsibilities, relationships with other players, anti-patterns and ways to scale-up Product Ownership well beyond what appears in The Scrum Guide.
• Jobs To Be Done – use JTBD to enhance user/customer empathy and more effectively discover needs, value propositions and product opportunities.
• Product Vision – create a shared vision in dialogue with a real customer and learn about techniques to do this with teams and stakeholders.
• Segmentation – identify customer segments to target in incremental product development and user roles to be used in user stories.

Product Discovery

• Impact-based Scope Management – create an Impact Map with which to manage scope and elevate thinking and conversations from outputs to business impacts and user outcomes.
• Hypothesis Validation – construct well-formed desirability hypotheses and tests to validate these.
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP) – gain insight into how successful Product entrepreneurs use Lean Startup MVPs for radically de-risking product discovery rather than delivery.
• Discovery and Product Backlog Refinement – learn about numerous techniques for working effectively with stakeholders, refining Product Backlog with team members, connecting team members with users and keeping the Product Backlog well organised.
• Roadmapping – create a product roadmap that is actually Agile-friendly rather than another form of rigid and restrictive Gantt chart.

Prioritisation

• User Stories and Product Backlog Items – practice improving the quality of Product Backlog Items and acceptance criteria as well as discovering how the User Story technique goes well beyond what is written/typed into a tool.
• Sprint Goal Formulation – practice constructing compelling Sprint Goals that engage stakeholders and energise purposeful teamwork.
• Product Economics – learn about concepts such as Cost of Delay, Total Cost of Ownership, Self-funding and Break-even point projections.
• Product Backlog Ordering – calculate relative ROI across multiple dimensions of value in a real Product Backlog as well as adding several complimentary prioritisation tools to your toolkit.
• Progress Tracking – make release projections and identify quantified Product Owner trade-offs using an Enhanced Release Burndown or Burn-up chart.
• Next Steps – identify a practical next step and someone to support you in following through with it.

 

Addressing the big Product Owner challenges to boost your career

The Product Owners that we work with are encountering many challenges that limit their effectiveness. These include poor understanding of the role, lack of empowerment, lack of product management techniques for working with product vision and strategy as well as too much time consumed by ineffective stakeholder meetings and detailed story clarification. All this whilst trying to make difficult Product steering decisions in an environment of uncertainty!

Scrum WithStyle's Certified Scrum Product Owner course addresses all of the above challenges head-on and from personal experience. We debunk Product Owner role myths, explore practical ways to increase empowerment, apply multiple techniques for working at the strategic and vision levels as well as ways to make user, customer and other stakeholder interactions more productive whilst delegating much of the heavy lifting on detail appropriately.

Product Owners and the professionals that coach, support and manage them will leave this course with deep insights, many practical tools and a spark of inspiration toward taking their career from requirement specifier to product leader and entrepreneur.

 

Inclusions

• 16 contact hours of training - with an Agile practitioner with over 19 years of experience and Certified Scrum Trainer since 2008.
• CSPO Certification - for participants who meet the criteria with the Scrum Alliance.
• 2 yrs active accreditation - with option to renew through Scrum Alliance.
• All course material - PDF export of the entire Miro workspace including all course material and output from group exercises.
• Personal Workbook - containing your notes.
• Product Owner Responsibilities List – a compilation from authoritative sources that goes well beyond that found in The Scrum Guide.
• Example Checklist for Product Owners - unique to Scrum WithStyle used to self-assess your current fulfillment of the Product Owner role.
• Impact Mapping facilitation guide – full of tips for facilitating these game-changing workshops with stakeholders.
• Product Backlog ROI prioritisation template - a sophisticated Product Backlog with a generic prioritisation formula allowing you to prioritise by relative ROI across multiple dimensions of value.
• Story Splitting resources – multiple resources including over 30 ways to split Product Backlog Items.
• Ongoing Support – ask questions any time ongoing in the Scrum WithStyle Alumni workspace on Slack.

 

Registration

Click the "REGISTER" button to complete your registration.

If you are registering for an in-person training course you will be guided through our registration and check-out process. Prices are in New Zealand dollars and you can use a credit card to secure your registration.

If you are registering for a live online training course you will be taken to Eventbrite to continue your registration. Prices will be in Australian dollars and you can use a credit card. If you want to arrange invoicing for the online course, please contact us at training@equinox.co.nz prior to registering.

Terms & Conditions can be found on the first page of the booking transaction at Eventbrite.com.

 

What participants are saying

All of these reviews are of our virtual online CSPO experience.

 

"Amazing. I found this incredibly valuable. It was great learning that what I thought I knew based on previous experience was not necessarily correct and am glad to have learnt that before I kick off my Product Owner role! Some great tips and tricks and learnings. The breakout groups were incredibly valuable for me, I had some really great people in mine who shared a wealth of knowledge and experience.”

- Briony Willing, Content Designer

 

"Really engaging, and educational for all levels of PO."

- Blake Lahiff, Product Owner at OneBlink

 

 

"Very insightful, engaging and highly valuable - as a Product Designer and involved with Agile concepts/engagements each day this has solidified my knowledge and taken the rough edges off of my understanding of things."

- Brian Lyall, User Experience Practice Lead at Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI)

 

"Highly interactive and practical, a down to earth view of how POs fit into a Scrum team."

- Matthew Williams, Co-Founder/Technical Director at Spotto

 

"If you'd like to learn about Scrum and Agile, and how the PO fits into it along with what's good vs bad practice, tools and techniques to use, different frameworks, models etc., then this course is for you!

I personally learnt a lot from this course and I'm looking forward to applying it in my workplace.

Thanks heaps to Rowan and everyone else involved! I reckon this course has been adapted to an online version quite well, all things considered. Loved hearing from others in the session and knowing that a lot of us are in the same boat when it comes to this product world!"

- Kavi Kishore, Business Analyst at Xero

 

Audience

This course is particularly suitable for those shaping the product/solution from a business perspective. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Product Owners
• Product Managers
• Product executives
• Business Owners
• Business Analysts

This course is also highly relevant to those involved in coaching a Product Owner to be effective in their role. This includes:

• ScrumMasters
• Development Managers
• Iteration Managers
• Project Managers

Product Owners coming from business areas of the organisation may have a deep understanding of the business and experience with customer and value-based decision-making yet a limited familiarity with the project management issues to be managed to achieve successful delivery. Conversely, Product Owners coming from a project management or technical background may have plenty of experience with delivery concerns such as quality and risk management but less familiarity with how to ascertain value and make business decisions. For these reasons, this course covers both the Product Management (determining the right product) and the Project Management (successful execution) components of the Product Owner’s role.

 

Pre-requisites

Whilst there are no formal training pre-requisites for the CSPO course, it is expected that participants have an appreciation of the challenges involved in product development or business solution delivery from a stakeholder or management perspective.

 

Preparation

A little well targeted preparation enables participants to accelerate their learning. See our Virtual CSPO Preparation page.

 

Your Certified Scrum Trainer - Rowan Bunning

Rowan Bunning has played the role of Product Owner whilst Product Manager in a tech. start-up beginning in 2004. As a Scrum Master he has coached executive-level business owners to be highly effective Product Owners. These experiences enable him to speak from first-hand experience and illustrate through story telling what is possible when a Product Owner is fully empowered and skilled.

Having led almost 400 Scrum certification courses since 2008, Rowan is one of the most experienced Scrum Trainers in the region.

Rowan has worked in pure-play product development without projects – an environment in which Agile and Product Ownership are particularly effective. His training examines how top tech. companies do product innovation. If you work in a corporate project environment, many of the same techniques can be applied and can be game-changing.

Real world stories and hard-won advice from Rowan’s hands-on Product Owner experience make this training compelling. Small group exercises through the course using a broad selection of the most powerful tools for Product Owners make it highly practical with numerous tools and reference material to immediately apply in your work.