Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO)

Course Overview

Learn To Maximize Value

Being a professional Product Owner encompasses more than writing requirements or managing a Product Backlog. Product Owners need to have a concrete understanding of all product management aspects, including but not limited to product ownership, that drives value from their products. 

Professional Scrum Product OwnerTM (PSPO) is a course that focuses on all of these areas to teach students how to maximize the value of products and systems. PSPO is the cutting-edge course for Product Owners, Agile product managers and anyone responsible for a product’s success in the market. In this course, students will develop and solidify their knowledge of being a Product Owner through instruction and team-based exercises.

The course also includes a free attempt at the globally recognized Professional Scrum Product Owner I certification exam (PSPO I).

What You Will Learn

​Over the course, students will develop and solidify their knowledge of being a Product Owner through instruction and team-based exercises. The breadth of the role’s responsibilities in delivering a successful product will become more clear from an Agile perspective. Metrics are identified to track the creation of value and the successful delivery of the product to the marketplace.

The PSPO course is much more than just a set of slides and an instructor. In this course, students work on real-life cases with other classmates together as a team. This course is made up of discussions and hands-on exercises.

View the different Focus Areas covered within this class and others.

Course Objectives

Students are challenged to think in terms of Scrum and the Scrum principles to better understand what to do when they return to their workplaces, and their specific challenges.

• Students will have a clear understanding of the mechanics of Scrum and how the Product Owner role fits in.
  
• Students can act as a Product Owner for Scrum Teams and stakeholders.
  
• Students can effectively increase the business agility of their organization.
  

Course Description

Being a professional Product Owner encompasses more than writing requirements or managing a Product Backlog. Product Owners need to have a concrete understanding of all product management aspects, including but not limited to product ownership, that drive value from their products.

The Professional Scrum Product Owner course focuses on all of these areas to teach students how to maximize the value of software products and systems.

PSPO is the cutting-edge course for Product Owners, Agile product managers, and anyone responsible for a software product’s success in the market. In this course, students will develop and solidify their knowledge of being a Product Owner through instruction and team-based exercises. The breadth of the role’s responsibilities in delivering a successful product will become more clear from an Agile perspective. Metrics are identified to track the creation of value and the successful delivery of the product to the marketplace.

The PSPO course is much more than just a set of slides and an instructor. In this course, students work on real-life cases with other classmates together as a team. This course is made up of discussions and hands-on exercises based upon real-life cases.

Who Should Attend?

The PSPO course may be interesting to all involved in software development upon the Scrum framework but has been specifically conceived for those responsible for products from a business and product management perspective and taking up the highly accountable role of Scrum Product Owner.

Course Topics

• Agile Product Management
  
• Value-Driven Development
  
• Scrum Principles & Empiricism
  
• The Scrum Framework
  
• Product Backlog Management
  
• Release Management
  

Certification Assessments

All participants completing the PSPO course receive one password to take the PSPO I assessment. PSPO class participants who attempt the PSPO I assessment within 14 days of receiving their free password and do not score at least 85% will be granted a 2nd attempt at no additional cost. As a student of the PSPO class, you are also entitled to a discount on the PSPO II assessment. 

Why Scrum.org

Scrum.org provides the highest quality Scrum training, training materials, and certified Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) to teach them. Our training materials are created and maintained by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber, Scrum.org, and the community of PSTs who teach the courses, helping to ensure that they are in tune with what’s happening in software development organizations and always up-to-date with the latest practices.

Professional Scrum Trainers bring their own style and experience to the courses but use the same materials so that students are learning from the same content regardless of who teaches the course or where it is taught around the world.  Read more about the differences.

An Overview

Each Scrum.org course is assigned 2 stewards.  The steward is ultimately responsible for collecting input on the course materials, both those that exist and potentially additions to be made, reviewing that input with the community along with Ken Schwaber and providing updates as required. 

Each course is stored in GitHub, allowing version control, feedback mechanisms, distribution, and much more, not unlike the code that Scrum Teams deliver for their products.  Through GitHub capabilities, a PST can submit feedback on course materials, its delivery content, speaker notes, exercises, and much more.  With over 290 PSTs around the world teaching the materials, that provides a fantastic number of people to provide excellent feedback to improve the content and quality of the courseware.   Don McGreal and Ralph Jocham explain the course.

PMI PDU Credits

Students of Scrum.org courses are able to claim Project Management Institute (PMI) PDU credit: 14 PDUs after attending a 2/3 day Professional Scrum Master II (PSM II) workshop. Please note that PMI PDUs are earned for course attendance and not for passing a Scrum.org assessment. Students can claim PDUs under PMI's "Education courses provided by other third-party providers” category. You can claim your PDUs online at https://ccrs.pmi.org.

Are you ready?

The advice to prepare is to watch: 

• Product Owner, in a Nutshell - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502ILHjX9EE
• a video on common misperceptions of a Product Owner - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr2rjaGmUzo
• Scrum Tapas videos at https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=scrum+tapas+scrum.org especially video recordings by Steve Porter

and slowly & carefully read:

• the agile manifesto (values and principles pages, particularly the principles pages) - http://agilemanifesto.org/
• the scrum guide and read the history at https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html
• Bonus points if you already read Liberating Structures for large group facilitation - http://www.liberatingstructures.com/ls/. Extra bonus points if you install and play with the Liberating Structures app; it's free.

Arriving at a workshop without having slowly and carefully read the Scrum Guide shows disrespect to other attendees. Respect is one of the five Scrum Values.

Pricing

Pricing excludes UK VAT. UK VAT only applies for orders from the UK, VAT does not apply outside the UK. To request a manual invoice simply email info@orderlydisruption.com with the subject "manual invoice" -- payment would then be made via an electronic transfer, a Paypal transaction, or an over-the-phone card payment. Without exception, all seats for a booking must be prepaid to confirm that booking.

About the trainer

John Coleman

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John Coleman is an active practitioner with 15+ years of experience in growing sustainable agility. Learn from John's breadth & depth of current case studies with the "old reliable", the latest trends, and some leading & not yet well-known patterns. 

Why John Coleman?

Every PST has his/her own strengths. John Coleman is one of the few LeSS-Friendly Scrum Trainers. He regularly interviews leading lights on his YouTube channel. His podcast, XAgility™ consists of wisdom from some of the most famous faces in the agile world. His Agility Island podcast is dedicated to active practitioners of scrum as well as those looking to understand more complex topics. John is a prolific blogger on advanced topics, and he leads content creation for Scrum, Lean UX, measurement, Kanban, scaling, de-scaling, Executives, people & change. John teaches Marshall Goldsmith's techniques at all of his workshops in a #payitforward fashion. All of John's workshops feature Liberating Structures. John Coleman offers a number of practice tests where they are needed. John's client base consists mainly of non-native English speakers (English is the 3rd/4th language) in continental Europe. John's clients give rave reviews on Trustpilot, Google, and VocalReferences, and they get great results as long as they also put the effort in.

Review & Ratings for John Coleman of Orderly Disruption on Google, VocalReferences & Trustpilot

Reviews & Ratings for all of John Coleman's workshops are available on: 

• Google - http://bit.ly/GoogleJohnC
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• TrustPilot - https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.ace.works
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• Vocal References - http://bit.ly/VocalRJohnC
  
  ​

It's not just about Reviews & Ratings 

Reviews & ratings are limited by nature. John needs to understand if the learning made a real difference back in the office. So, John checks in up to 12-18 months later. He sees a pattern of improvement and regularly gets pleasant vibes from successful agility inspired by ideas in the workshops. For example, see this experience report.

Content writing

John Coleman is a Professional Scrum Trainer, a candidate LeSS trainer / LeSS Friendly Scrum Trainer, organizer of ELNA (Executive Leadership Network for Adaptiveness), co-author of Kanban Guide, and author of Kanban for Complexity™ aka Kanplexity™ with lots of attribution to Dave Snowden & Cognitive Edge for Cynefin and related theory. See https://kanbanguides.org. 

John did one of the most comprehensive comparisons/contrast of the scaling/descaling frameworks at https://valueglide.com/blog and https://orderlydisruption.com/blogs/grow-agility-for-your-why/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-preamble-to-1-of-4  ("Mirror Mirror" series). John Coleman's blog posts on executives, Scrum, Kanban, Nexus Vs. LeSS, are available at https://bit.ly/JohnColemanBlog. John blogs prolifically at orderlydisruption.com, valueglide.com, thinkers360,  Medium, CIO Water Cooler, and The Digital Transformation People. 

Practicing what he preaches, except he doesn't preach -- he doesn't sell, huh?

John helps teams, managers, leaders, change agents, and execs. He can answer all sorts of up-to-date questions with ease. John coaches, teaches, and consults for sustainable growth of agility in non-software as well as software. He created Broad and Deep agility (BaDa) on top of the shoulders of existing theory & practice. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUen2CeyTDk. John himself is broad & deep from the points of view of agility, people & change.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

John is a systems thinker who happens to be a huge fan of Cynefin and sees the benefits of both, erring on the side of Cynefin where they clash. Most importantly, John takes an independent view. John is also a people & change thinker; he uses Spiral Dynamics Integral (certified to level 2) and other models; even if they are criticized in some quarters as pseudoscience, John finds aspects of Spiral Dynamics helpful in structuring better conversations with people. 

More proof he knows what he's talking about, and has done what he talks about

John's Scrum+Kanban Nexus+ case studies can be found (international payments company, European bank) at https://www.valueglide.com/blog/nexus-nexus-and-scrum.org-certifications. 

John is grateful to be part of Marshall Goldsmith's #payitforward campaign and, in so doing, offers free coaching/mentoring/co-training to a selection of potential agility chefs. John is a member of the #MarshallGoldsmithLead60 group, a cohort from the 16,000+ #MarshallGoldsmith100CoachesApplicants. It was a privilege for John to be one of a lucky group of 60 people; Marshall Goldsmith himself taught that group in Salt Lake City in February 2018. All of John's workshops #payitforward Marshall Goldsmith content, including Marshall's advice to John himself.

Client list

John typically practiced with many of his clients for 18+ months. He is switching to shorter-term engagements. John's client list (directly or indirectly) includes Japanese Tobacco International, Shell, Barclaycard, Vocalink Mastercard, Centrica / British Gas, the Musgrave Group, RR Donnelley, DELL, Nordic Aviation Services, 84.51, Intralinks, PaySafe, Vodafone, Ericsson, NASA, Sky, and BP.