Beyond the framework
Agile Product Management is a fantastic, but also complex field and while a training course like Professional Scrum Product Owner is a good starting point, the role goes beyond the Scrum Framework.
In the Professional Scrum Product Owner – Advanced we look at the Stances of the Product Owner: How do you become a more effective visionary, customer representative, researcher, decision maker, collaborator and influencer?
Detailed description of the training:
Of course you already know Scrum, but as a Product Owner you are increasingly running into questions like:
- How do I deal with budgeting and finance?
- I want to make my product bigger without the complexity of scaling frameworks
- How do I demonstrate that I deliver value?
- The difference between creating for a customer what they ask for and what they need
- How can I grow my results?
- Integrity as a Product Owner and saying “no”
- Making better decisions
- Experimentation, stakeholder management and innovation
Who should follow this training?
The Professional Scrum Product Owner – Advanced is particularly suitable for Product Owners and Agile Product Managers but also if you want to help these people grow, for example as a Scrum Master or supervisor.
During the course, many cases are worked on in a team context. By sharing your experience you learn together and from each other, how you can deliver the best value.
What will you learn?
The learning objectives of this training focus on improving the different attitudes (“stances”) of the Product Owner:
Customer Representative
Focused on understanding customer problems, challenges and potential opportunities
Visionary
Communicates the vision, future state and possibilities in a way that promotes common understanding
Experimenter
Focused on innovation, testing hypotheses and validating potential value to drive product innovation
Influencer
Communicating with and influencing stakeholders, customers and developers to gain focus on a common goal
Collaborator
Always looking for input, ideas and feedback from others
Decision Maker
Focused on creating maximum impact by making clear choices and decisions
The Professional Scrum Product Owner Advanced is structured like this:
We begin the training with introductions and the case study OLD News. OLD News is a media company in stormy weather, trying to survive in today’s modern digital age. OLD News as a company, its employees, and you as a new, starting Product Owner at this company will face many challenges throughout the training.
Next, we dive into the six misunderstood and the six preferred attitudes of the Product Owner. You will be introduced to the different attitudes and given the opportunity to explore them, with a variety of assignments and cases to cover;
After introducing the “Stances of the Product Owner”, we will dive into the first stance; The Customer Representative. In this section, we will explore what it means to be a Product Owner who represents the customer. We will explore behaviors, tools, techniques, tips and tricks to better represent the customer as a Product Owner.
The “Visionary Product Owner” is the next section. In this section, we will explore the OLD News mission and vision together, as well as how to apply storytelling to more effectively communicate and sell your vision.
Now that we have a better understanding of the vision, it’s time to dive into the “Experiment” stance. As we explore different tools and techniques about experimentation, we will also gain a better understanding of how to conduct the right experiments.
As a Product Owner, you probably need to work as “the Influencer” with stakeholders all the time, understand their needs, understand what motivates, inspires and triggers them. But also how to say no more effectively. In this section we will share with you different tools, techniques, practices, stories and experiences to become more effective as an influencer of stakeholders.
However, influencing stakeholders is not the only thing you do as a Product Owner. There are many situations where you need to adopt the stance of “The Collaborator.” In this part of the course you will be introduced to concepts such as Agile Governance, Agile Contracting and Agile budgeting, and learn more about what it takes to be the “Collaborator”.
Ultimately, Product Ownership has a lot to do with being “The Decision Maker”. Making decisions about work to add to the Product Backlog is relatively easy. However, deciding on scaling, deciding on delegating work, deciding on expressing value and many other decisions are, maybe yours, maybe not yours, to make.
After all the interesting discussions, content and exercises over two days, it is now time to wrap up the training. As we make our way to the bar for a few drinks, we reflect back on two energetic, inspiring and valuable days, during which we all grew one step closer to becoming entrepreneurial Product Owners.
Assumed knowledge/experience:
Besides a theoretical understanding of Scrum, experience in the role of Product Owner is expected. Specifically, the training does not cover how Scrum works but how you can be effective in your role as Product Owner.
Training materials:
In addition to an unforgettable experience, each participant will of course receive a digital version of the learning materials used.
In case of a physical training, a photo report is made of all flipcharts made at the time of the training so you can always read them back. In case of a virtual classroom training we use a digital whiteboard which is also accessible after the training and is offered as a download.
Finally, there is a description with additional sources that can help you deepen your knowledge of the material.
Certification:
At this moment (Feb 2021) there are almost 100,000 people worldwide with a PSPO-I certificate. There are less than 2000 who have a PSPO-II certificate.
With this certificate you show to what extent you are familiar with the role of the Product Owner, and how you would react in real situations.
“Brilliant course by Chris. Lots of different training approaches utilised with lots of time to essentially practice some of the material being learnt. Chris is very knowledgable with real world experiences that were shared with delegates. The course was full of content with additional material sent on post the course. I can highly recommend Chris as a PST, I am sure his other courses are just as engaging and interesting.“
Product Dojo 