Certified Scrum Product Owner™

Certified Scrum Product Owner™

Advance your career with high-value product management skills. CSPO® delves into the scrum framework, agile principles, and relentless focus on delivering customer value. Scrum Alliance-certified trainers have exceptional qualifications, including extensive product management experience. A two-year Scrum Alliance professional membership is included with your successful completion of this course.

About the course

This Certified Scrum Product Owner^® (CSPO) training course is an intensive two day workshop on one of the most critical roles defined by the world's most popular Agile framework: Scrum.

We use highly immersive adult learning techniques such as visual modelling, simulations, role-plays and 'Training from the Back of the Room' activities to enable self-directed learning and enhanced retention.

This course is organised and run using Scrum as a management framework. This allows for feedback and flexibility as well as experiencing Scrum in action throughout the course.

The Product Owner role is critical to maximising Return on Investment from agile product development / projects and is one of the most challenging yet rewarding of the agile roles. As the voice of the customer to the delivery team, a Product Owner needs to be able to work effectively not only with end users and other stakeholders but with the team on a daily basis.

This course provides guidance and practical tools for fulfilling the function of Product Ownership using the Scrum framework and a complimentary set of the most widely used Agile techniques including:

• Collaborative Envisioning,
• User Stories,
• Story Mapping,
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP) management,
• Techniques for soliciting customer/stakeholder input on priorities,
• Product Backlog management,
• Rolling Release management, and
• Release Burndown with scope tracking.

You will learn:

• The importance of iteration, learning and risk management in product development.
• What Scrum is and how a Product Owner works in this environment.
• What a Product Owner does and what it takes to perform the role well.
• How to create a shared vision.
• How to create and maintain a healthy Product Backlog.
• How to manage a Release to a successful outcome using agile techniques.

 

About certification

This Certified Scrum Product Owner training course is all-inclusive of a globally recognised certification with the Scrum Alliance for participants who fulfil the expectations of the trainer during the course. Whilst some pre-reading is required, there is no exam to complete after the training course.

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

 

Meet your trainer - Rowan Bunning

Rowan has trained well over 2,000 people on Certified Scrum courses in Australia and New Zealand since 2008 making him one of the most experienced Scrum trainers in the Australasian region.

Rowan worked as an Agile Coach at one of the top Scrum web design consultancies in Europe and an organisation that offered Agile training by Ken Schwaber and Mike Cohn (two of the most widely recognised names in the global Agile community).

Unlike many Agile Coaches and Trainers, Rowan not only has years of experience in Business/IT Project, but also in ongoing Product Development environments that have proven highly effective without using a project model. This allows Rowan to guide clients in combining the best of both worlds to achieve superior results.

Rowan draws from an extensive Agile toolset with a technical background using eXtreme Programming as well as expertise in Product Management, Lean, Lean Startup, Kanban and Cynefin. He is Cognitive Edge accredited and holds qualifications as a PRINCE2^® Practitioner and a trained Innovation Games^® facilitator.

A high proportion of Rowan's work is initiated via word-of-mouth recommendation from highly satisfied course participants.

 

Five reasons to do your Scrum training with Rowan Bunning

1. Practical guidance from first-hand experience. Over a decade implementing Scrum in dozens of organisations means that Rowan's guidance is grounded in real world challenges and is highly practical. He speaks from first-hand experience, having worked for years in each of the Scrum roles including ScrumMaster, Product Owner and Development Team Member as well as in a wide variety of other technical, leadership and coaching roles.
2. Insightful and inspiring. As past course participants testify, you can expect to take away many deep insights into the nature of Scrum and its potential to transform your organisation and your work life for the better. Stories of what others have achieved with Scrum are likely to inspire you to be a game changer yourself.
3. Authoritative, non-proprietary material. Unlike many other training providers who teach proprietary, non peer-reviewed method formulations marketed using the generic umbrella term 'Agile', Rowan's teaching is fully aligned with the authoritative definitions of the most widely used and peer-reviewed Agile frameworks (e.g. Scrum as per the definition endorsed by the Scrum Alliance^®) and techniques (e.g. User Stories and Story Point Estimation as per Mike Cohn).
4. Take away a comprehensive workbook. As a course participant you will receive a comprehensive course workbook including worksheets on key topics, detailed information on Scrum from a Product Owner's perspective, recommended reading and further resources to assist you post-course.
5. Post-course follow-up. Rowan can provide post-training coaching and has done so with a wide range of organisations in industries including banking, federal and state governments, health insurance, superannuation, salary packing, retail, manufacturing, building security, information security and media.

 

Testimonials from course participants

“Myself and the 5 Product Owners came away with some really useful methods for writing better stories. I’ll keep an eye out for more of your courses."

- Gameplay Producer, The Creative Assembly

“I have been lucky to have had Rowan as my coach for both CSM and CSPO ceritfications (in fact I chose him for the CSPO after the great experience I had on the CSM course). Rowan brings a wide range of experience in coaching scrum teams and in helping businesses with their introductions of scrum and other agile techniques. I can't recommend Rowan enough."

- Simon Waight, CSM, CSPO and Cloud Architect (blog)

“A fab overview for a non-software developer, and great to see the benefits of Scrum when waterfall is failing time and time again in your organisation!"

- Program Director - major projects, PTG Global

More testimonials...

 

Pricing

NZD $1,900 excl GST per person. This includes the following.

• Two full days training with a highly experienced agile practitioner.
• A printed course workbook including slides and worksheets.
• Full catering during the course including morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea.
• Certification as a Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) for participants who successfully meet expectations during the course.
• 2 years of membership with the Scrum Alliance.
• A letter of course completion that may be submitted to your employer and/or a professional body (PMI/ACS) for PDUs (available upon request).

 

Registration

Simply select the "Register Now!" button below to begin online registration through the Equinox IT website.
Alternatively, you can call Equinox on +64 9 307 9450
or email us at [email protected].

Dates:	26-27 Sep 2016
Location:	Auckland, New Zealand
Language:	English
Venue:	Auckland TBC Auckland, New Zealand 1010
Price:	NZD $1,900 excl GST

Initial course backlog

The following backlog provides an initial course agenda. Just like any good Agile initiative, the backlog that we choose to pull in can change as we inspect feedback from stakeholders and make adaptations to the backlog during the course.

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

Day 1: Scrum Framework and Product Owner Activities

• Agility: As a Product Owner, I want to understand what it really means to be Agile in order to profit in a turbulent business environment.
• The Scrum Framework: As a Product Owner, I want to understand the Scrum Framework, so that I can leverage it effectively in order to build my product.
• Completing the Scrum Puzzle: As a Product Owner, I want understand Scrum rituals, relationships with other participants and Scrum writings holistically from a Product Owner perspective so that I understand how I interact with other people and artefacts in Scrum environment.
• Product Backlog: As a Product Owner I want to understand what a good Product Backlog looks like, so that I can use it effectively to craft a successful product.
• Refining the Product Backlog: As a Product Owner I want to understand the criteria for a well refined backlog, so that I can keep mine in good shape.

• Sprint Planning: As a Product Owner I want to understanding my responsibilities in Sprint Planning, so as to get the best out of this key activity.
• Sprinting: As a Product Owner, I want to know what is expected of me during Sprints so I can behave in a way that is best aligned to the Scrum approach.
• Sprint Review: As a Product Owner I want to understand my role in Sprint Review, so as to get the best out of this key activity.
• The Product Owner Role: As a Product Owner, I want to understand the characteristics of a good Product Owner, so that I know what it takes to do the job well.
• Living the Scrum Values: As a Product Owner, I want to know what is valued as part of the Scrum approach so that I can use these values to guide me in my work.

Day 2: Full-day Product Development Simulation

• Envisioning: As a Product Owner I want to learn how to create a shared Vision, so that I create a motivating environment and have rich ongoing engagement with the vision.
• User Roles: As a Product Owner I want to have clarity on who we are building the solution for so we can solicit their input and address their specific needs.
• User Stories and Story Writing workshop: As a Product Owner, I want hands-on experience with User Stories, so that I have a technique for creating good Product Backlog Items.
• Story Mapping: As a Product Owner, I want to be able to plan releases in a collaborative way so that I can get the best ideas and buy-in from all key players.
• Splitting Stories As a Product Owner, I want a toolkit of techniques for splitting stories that I can use to keep my backlog well refined.
• Prioritisation tools: As a Product Owner, I want some techniques I can use to help me to order my Product Backlog effectively.
• Buy a Feature: As a Product Owner I want a technique for soliciting input from customers / stakeholders as to their interest in features so that I have richer information on their interests when prioritising.
• Release Burndown: As a Product Owner, I want to learn how to interpret and use a Release Burndown, so that I can control my product progress to release.
• Agile Release Management: As a Product Owner, I want to know how to manage my release so that our probability of success is maximised.

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,
• Business Owners, and
• 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,
• Iteration Managers, and
• 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 Owner 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.

Pre-reading

At minimum, it is expected that participants are familiar with the material in the Scrum Primer (3.2 Mb PDF).

Whilst not essential, participants can expect to get more out of the course having read the following book:

Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love by Roman Pichler, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2010.