Certified Scrum Product Owner®

I took the "Virtual Certified Product Owner (CSPO)" workshop training with V. Lee Henson to help me learn about the Agile process and how I could implement it within my team, and I came out of the training learning nothing. This training was recommended to me by a friend from another group in my company that took it two years ago, and they said that it was very helpful for helping them shape how their team utilizes the Agile process in their workflows. As someone used to using waterfall for performing work tasks, I signed up for this training with the expectation of learning how to use the scrum framework, including: - Assigning scrum team roles - Holding meetings - Setting up backlogs - Performing sprints However, the class I received was not at all about Agile. Instead, V. focused solely on showing us how to use AI, creating and marketing products to consumers, and showing us things completely unrelated to the course material. 95% of the time spent during the course were V going on random tangents about politics (hyping up Elon, joking about blowing up the Strait of Hormutz, joking about children dying in mines, etc.), making offensive/inappropriate jokes (about women, people of color), telling us about his connections and accolades, grifting for his podcast and other courses, and showing us random unrelated videos. We spent maybe 45 minutes talking about Mitt Romney (?) and how V personally knew him and helped him learn Agile. After the first day, we only got 26/106 slides in. By the time we were 6 hours into the second day, we were 32/106 slides in! We had to speed through all of the slides within the last two hours, and had only a tiny bit of time to go into Q&A and asking the questions that would have actually helped my team. If I knew that this was how the training would have been, I would have advised my team against spending thousands of dollars on this course. This course was a colossal waste of company time and money, and I would advise against taking any course with V as its instructor.

The way that the instructor presented the course was built on a foundations of lies. The instructor delved into a plethora of stories and sidetracks that were unrelated to the course material. The break out activities were not all that useful either. He also appeared to misrepresent his business connections to various high profile individuals. There is something to keeping the mood light at a training course, but the instructor seemed to forget to cover the course material itself. I attended this course to learn about the Agile process, but instead was inundated with the previously mentioned items. The best part of the course, by far, was a 15 minute YouTube video (which was not made by the instructor) describing the Agile process. I still want to learn more about Agile, so I will have to obtain that knowledge elsewhere. Overall, this could have been a half day training course, rather than a two day slog.

This class was a disorganized mess. Learned nothing about agile for 90% of the time, and then the instructor tried to cram useful information into the last two hours.

So, I can count on one hand the number of worthwhile topics we discussed. Did we 'cover' everything, sure, but 90% of the class was filled with nonsense -- which really made the days drag. I don't feel as though I actually managed to learn anything through the miasma of ... jokes? It was hard to tell when Lee was being serious, or when he was being sarcastic -- but, he seemed to always double down on --perhaps-- lies about his personal life and then go on long tangents to justify or prove them (to the wall). ... For example, we all know what a Cameo is ... we are all familiar with the site where you can pay people to create little personalized messages for you -- did we have to watch all three of the cameos you had purchased? Ostensibly not, but, furthermore, did you have to double and triple down on the idea that you were personally friends with these people? Not at all. This was arguably one of the most unserious training courses I've ever taken.

everything was good

Great class content for the product ownership role, very well organized and Lee is a fabulous teacher.

Lee truly cared about each individual’s growth and super encouraging when just students have questions. I feel like I have an in depth understanding of how a product owner does and how they should approach their responsibilities.

Taking Lee’s course is a game changer! The material, his facilitation, the knowledge and wisdom he shares is 10/10. Highly recommend his courses to anyone who will listen. Thank you Lee!!! 🙏

Great teacher! Content was easy enough to understand!