Recommended Courses for Product Owners
Product Owners have to balance working with stakeholders, the Scrum Team and customers. They are accountable for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team.
Product Ownership requires a distinct set of capabilities and skills. Product Owners are also accountable for effective Product Backlog Management, and may do this work or delegate the responsibility to others. Product Backlog Management includes:
- Developing and explicitly communicating the Product Goal
- Creating and clearly communicating Product Backlog items
- Ordering Product Backlog items
- Ensuring that the Product Backlog is transparent, visible and understood
We have put together a series of courses to help you as a Product Owner be more effective and deliver greater value.
Core Courses for Product Owners
In the Professional Scrum Product Owner™ course, you will explore Professional Scrum and develop an understanding of the critical role that the Product Owner plays on the Scrum Team. There are many myths and misconceptions about the role of the Product Owner. The accountabilities of the Product Owner, however, go well beyond managing the Product Backlog and writing User Stories. The Product Owner is pivotal to bridging business strategy and product execution in order to help the Scrum Team create valuable products. Throughout the course you will learn a number of Product Ownership practices that you can use in your day-to-day activities while also receiving an introduction to Agile Product Management.
In the Professional Scrum Product Owner™ - Advanced course, focuses on helping you as an experienced Product Owner expand your ability to establish a vision, validate hypotheses, and ultimately deliver more value to stakeholders. The course goes beyond the topics explored in the Professional Scrum Product Owner class by deepening your understanding of the accountabilities through the exploration of the many stances of a professional Product Owner.
Students should have at least one year of Product Owner experience and a practical knowledge of Scrum in order to participate in and benefit from these exercises. Having previously taken the PSPO class is recommended, but not required.
In the Professional Scrum Product Backlog Management Skills™ course, participants will learn techniques and methods to effectively manage a Product Backlog that clearly expresses the future vision of the product and brings transparency to what is most valuable for the Scrum Team to work on to delight stakeholders and customers. Students will get hands-on experience with refinement techniques such as decomposing and slicing Product Backlog items, while learning how simplicity can cure complicated and complex Product Backlogs.
In the Professional Agile Leadership™ - Evidence-Based Management™ course Product Owners are often joined by Scrum Masters, coaches and consultants where you will experience how to work together toward continuously improving customer outcomes, organizational capabilities and business results. You will learn what EBM is and how to apply the framework to set clear goals and measures through a series of exercises. You will learn techniques that support a more agile mindset by shifting the conversation away from measuring progress purely through team performance metrics, toward a focus on customer-centricity and improving customer outcomes.
Additional Learning Opportunities Valuable for Product Owners
In the Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills™ course, Product Owners will develop a facilitator’s mindset, increase proficiency in facilitation skills, and learn when and how to select effective techniques for various circumstances to better solve problems, create a shared understanding and foster transparency. The course addresses a series of common Scrum-related scenarios while you learn to apply several facilitation techniques that you can add to your collection of agile practices. You will create and leave with your own facilitation “plan” to improve your next team, organization or stakeholder discussion by becoming a better facilitator.
In the Professional Scrum Master™ course, you will gain a strong understanding of Professional Scrum, an agile mindset. The course uses a combination of instructor-led and activity-based learning where you work together with other students in teams. Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) bring their own Scrum experiences and stories to the class and use their skills as professional trainers to deliver the material using their own unique delivery style. The result is an engaging, enjoyable learning experience where you will gain a deep understanding of Scrum theory, principles and why each element of the Scrum framework is important.