Certified Scrum Product Owner®

Why take this course

Most new Product Owners inherit a backlog of requests and spend their days taking orders. The job is deciding: which problem is worth solving, what to learn before building, and what to say no to.

In this CSPO you carry one product of your own through the whole class, from idea to vision, Product Goals and a first release, so every technique is practiced on something real.

What you will be able to do afterwards

• Take one product of your own from idea to vision, Product Goals and a first release.
• Name the riskiest assumption in an idea, and design the smallest experiment that tests it.
• Separate what customers, users and the business each need, and rank it when they conflict.
• Order the backlog with PAIR™, Mark's model for triaging every request and moving it to sprint-ready.
• Show in dollars what a sprint spent on the wrong thing costs.

What your seat includes

• Live and online with Mark, capped at 12 seats.
• Two years of Scrum Alliance membership.
• Lifetime coaching with Mark. Email him, book a call, bring him the backlog nobody trusts. There is no end date on it.
• Hundreds of downloadable resources, kept current after you leave.
• A money-back guarantee.

How the time is spent

Live and online, built around one product you choose at the start and develop through the whole class.

Your product

• Ideation and problem framing.
• Customer, user and business outcomes, ranked when they conflict.
• Personas and customer discovery.
• A strategy canvas: the riskiest assumption, and the smallest experiment that tests it.
• Product vision, and sequential Product Goals with measures of success.

Your backlog

• Story mapping and building the Product Backlog.
• User stories, acceptance criteria and estimation.
• PAIR™, Mark's model for triaging every request and ordering the backlog from raw idea to imminent.
• Prioritizing on evidence rather than the highest-paid opinion in the room.

Delivery and economics

• Outcome-based release planning.
• Adaptive roadmaps and burn-up forecasting.
• The Product Owner's economics: what a sprint spent on the wrong thing costs.

Who this is for

• New and aspiring Product Owners and product managers moving into Scrum.
• Business analysts and project managers taking on product decisions.
• Scrum Masters and team leads who work closely with a Product Owner.
• Business leaders who sponsor products and want to know what to expect from the role.

Prerequisites

None. No prior Scrum or agile experience is required.

Who is teaching it

Mark Palmer is a Certified Scrum Trainer and a Certified Team Coach, a pairing most trainers do not hold. He has coached and trained at Capital One, State Street, Anthem, Phillips 66, SWIFT, and federal agencies in Defense, Justice, and Transportation. Before that he held the jobs his students hold, at Advance Auto Parts, Prison Fellowship, FamilyLife, and WMATA. He teaches every Great Fish class himself.

What is different about this class

• Twelve seats. Small enough that you are working, not watching.
• One real product, start to finish. Every exercise builds on the last one, on a product you chose.
• Coaching that outlasts the class. No end date, and it is with Mark rather than a support desk.