Professional Scrum Product Owner

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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 2-day 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 2 days, 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 drives value from their products.

The 2-day 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 over 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, review that input with the community along with Ken Schwaber and provide 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 a 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 two-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.

Offers

Before you buy, please check out the great value voucher offers for bulk buy or individual tickets for Diversity & Inclusion as per the definition at https://www.emccouncil.org/quality/diversity/. Go to https://orderlydisruption.com/pages/vouchers or email info@orderlydisruption.com with the subject line "vouchers". The EMCC definition is quite broad and if you have any doubts about your situation, you can always ask. Separately, bulk buy vouchers apply for all people though. Vouchers allow one to buy now at a discount and consume training within 12 months for any public workshop exclusively facilitated by John Coleman.

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. We have a savings scheme at https://orderlydisruption.com/pages/memberships . Direct debit is also available on request; email info@orderlydisruption.com with the subject "direct debit".

Please note: we offer 4 types of tickets: First Five, General Admission, Member of an under-represented group and country with a low GDP. To find out the requirements for each ticket type, click here. 

General Admission: 995 GBP

First Five: 820 GBP

Member of under-represented group: 795 GBP

Country with a low GDP ticket: 497.50 GBP

VAT is additional for UK customers only.

NON-UK CUSTOMERS PLEASE NOTE: VAT is deducted once address has been entered at checkout. 

Profile of the trainer

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. John is a prolific blogger on advanced topics, and he leads on 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 (based from 54+ reviews)  - http://bit.ly/GoogleJohnC
  

• TrustPilot (from 100+ reviews) - https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.ace.works
  
  

• Vocal References (from 140+ reviews) - 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 on 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, Medium, CIO Water Cooler, and The Digital Transformation People. 

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

John help teams, managers, leaders, change agents, and execs. He can answer all sorts of up to date questions with ease. John coaches, teaches, 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, and Ericsson. 

Workshop Environment

Assessment preparation tends not to be covered in the workshop. The workshop focuses on attendees getting ready to apply new skills back at work immediately after the workshop. There is an expectation that attendees will attend some free post-workshop Zoom calls and watch recordings of their own group (or previous groups) doing tough practice tests, sometimes including John Coleman's own practice tests which address the same learning outcomes, albeit from a different angle. John has an expectation that attendees will attend the calls, as assessment preparation does not scale on a 1:1 basis. Signing up to this workshop is effectively signing up to attend these calls.

Sometimes, John Coleman will have a co-trainer, someone who is already qualified or who is building up experience. Please let John Coleman know in advance if you need him to bring an assistant trainer who speaks your language via john@orderlydisruption.com; economics will hopefully be in our favor to allow that if there is enough demand.

Live Virtual

• Each segment is 60-75 mins long with 15-30 min breaks. Attendees have the choice of spreading the workshop over several days if advertized or if other attendees are ok with that —no recording of the workshop to improve openness. The workshop size is limited to 20 attendees.
• Workshop attendees will use Zoom/Teams, Mural, Slack, StoriesOnBoard, Strategyzer, Kanbanize/SwiftKanban, and John's physical flipcharts.
• Learning online is almost as effective as face to face. The critical difference is working together online; it takes longer to do things. A "funnel" gets added to the Kanban Board for optional best efforts additions to the official curriculum. Most questions will get answered to the satisfaction of the attendees, one way or the other. 

Rules to follow:

• cameras on
• mics on - let's avoid delayed interventions
• be on time for every segment
• no meetings/phone-calls/emails during the active segments
• be self-aware and conscious of the needs of others to have their say
• no hijacking of the agenda; a free coach session is on offer per attendee, use that instead.

FACE TO FACE

Classes are usually small, and even if not, John Coleman uses techniques that make a large class run very well, to a limit. John Coleman does not train class sizes over his operational limit so attendees can rightly get the full benefit of his classes.

Teas/coffees/snacks are provided mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Lunch is not provided and attendees have one hour for lunch. 

If you have specific requirements, e.g., you require a free place for an assistant, you require wheelchair accessible venue/room set-up etc., please let John Coleman know in advance via john@orderlydisruption.com.

The delivery content is a combination of slides, flip charts, and exercises. The focus is more on flip charts and exercises. The approach is a combination of experiential training and Training From The Back of The Room, regardless of the training course, while sticking to the Scrum.org learning objectives. Many practical problems get discussed. and more often than not, options to solve problems are presented. But some problems need sessions in themselves, and it would be unfair to distract the class if the entire class doesn't want to take that path and/or the trainer is getting concerned that the learning objectives might not be attained within the training course timebox. In addition, some topics could be completely outside the scope of the training class. To that end, some topics may need to be "parked". Some topics could be completely outside the scope of the training class. Best efforts are made to address "parked" topics during the workshop and/or subsequent video conference calls.

Location

Location is not 100% confirmed, it is an approximate location. Location cannot be finally booked until final numbers are known.

Let's err on the side of caution to cover all eventualities. Please only book travel one week in advance and use low-commitment accommodation bookings that allow cancellation 24 hours in advance without charges. Most accommodation booking websites allow 24-hour cancellation in advance, please select that option. Please book travel at the last responsible moment (one week to go, confirming with John Coleman at john@orderlydisruption.com). For example, for flight, consider using low-cost booking services such as Skyscanner or Kayak. 

A Scrum Reset is often needed in the workshop

If the class attendees demonstrate additional ability, bonus content may get covered. However, the class pace can get set to a slower pace by even one attendee who has not prepared for class, as per pre-class communications. While John Coleman's style is to assume zero knowledge, some attendees may have negative knowledge, preconceived ideas that are incorrect according to Scrum.org.

Negative knowledge creates drag for a training class, hence John Coleman sometimes performs pre-training-screening-calls. While there are no formal pre-requisites for Scrum.org classes, the trainer may request in pre-training phone calls that some attendees go to Profesional Scrum Foundations/Scrum Master (by any Scrum.org trainer) to ensure a smooth learning experience, even if the booked class ticket needs to be postponed to another date, refunding if necessary less banking fees. Either way at the beginning of each workshop, some kind of Scrum reset takes place to align attendees and reduce the potential for learning drag later.

Payment, fees & cancellation

• Payment in advance is required, no exceptions. All documentation requirements for invoice payment by the training date must be declared at the outset. 
• VAT additional for UK clients only. 
• No responsibility is taken for costs resulting from cancellation/postponement.
• A minimum quorum is needed for this class to proceed.
• It's unusual for courses to get canceled. Some classes require a minimum number of attendees. No responsibility is taken for costs resulting from cancellation/postponement.
• You may cancel up to the specified online ticketing deadline, and if so, depending on the payment engine/approach, the refund could have deductions for bank transfer fees.
• You may postpone your ticket with a minimum of three business days notice, thereafter your lack of attendance at the booked date will be treated as a cancellation with zero refund (due to planning & venue costs for class numbers). Best efforts would be made to fit you into a later workshop.
• Electronic manuals and Scrum.org assessment fees are included. Physical manuals are not provided.
• Teas/coffees/water & snacks are included, but special dietary needs may not be addressed by the snacks unless you advise (hopefully the location can oblige).
• Neither breakfast nor lunch is included.

GDPR etc.

Subject to GDPR or other regulations:

• Attendees may be asked to optionally consent to receive communications, e.g., follow-up email newsletters.
• A booking is not a guarantee of attendance. The trainer may need to contact attendees to assess their readiness for the training class. It is possible the trainer will recommend additional training / reading before you can be accepted into the booked class.
• In order to get an assessment, the trainer must submit your name and email address to Scrum.org; Scrum.org may in turn send you regular newsletters. 
• Attendees will be invited to a slack channel for the class to enable communications before, during, and after the class.
• Photographs and/or video permission will be requested in class for follow up marketing purposes.
• Reviews & Testimonials will be requested in class; you can add the same review and star rating to each of VocalReferences, TrustPilot, and Google, to be performed optionally in class. Attendees may also be asked to provide feedback to Scrum.org. For these requests, regardless of the response, additional bonus learning content will be delivered.
• A limited number of free of charge post training Zoom/alternative calls are offered. To book, attendees can arrange to meet me via  https://calendly.com/johncolemanagile 
• Attendees may be asked to join compatible communities, e.g., the LeSS community.
• See the privacy statement at orderlydisruption.com.