The Scrum Guide defines the Certified Scrum Product Owner® (CSPO®) role as follows:

The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.

The Product Owner is also accountable for effective Product Backlog management, which includes:

• Developing and explicitly communicating the Product Goal;
• Creating and clearly communicating Product Backlog items;
• Ordering Product Backlog items; and,
• Ensuring that the Product Backlog is transparent, visible and understood.

The Product Owner may do the above work or may delegate the responsibility to others. Regardless, the Product Owner remains accountable.

For Product Owners to succeed, the entire organization must respect their decisions. These decisions are visible in the content and ordering of the Product Backlog, and through the inspectable Increment at the Sprint Review.

The Product Owner is one person, not a committee. The Product Owner may represent the needs of many stakeholders in the Product Backlog. Those wanting to change the Product Backlog can do so by trying to convince the Product Owner.

If you’ve read that and wondered, “Okay, but how do we actually do it?”, welcome to one of the frustrations many people feel about the Scrum Guide and its limited practical instruction regarding Scrum Product Ownership. This is where CSPO certification becomes invaluable.

Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) training

In our Certified Scrum Product Owner training, you’ll learn how to craft and manage a Product Backlog (basically, a to-do list for your product), shape a clear vision for your product, foster effective collaboration with stakeholder, and work effectively with the Development Team to deliver quality products that delight your customers. Led by instructor Mark Levison, one of Canada’s longest-standing Scrum/Agile practitioners with a history dating back to 2001, before Scrum gained widespread popularity, our intensive two-day workshop will equip you with everything needed to attain Scrum Product Owner certification.

Our Certified Scrum Product Owner training isn’t about boring lectures. It’s all about hands-on learning. You roll up your sleeves and practice the role of Product Owner using Scrum principles so you understand and retain far more than just reading the theory. You can expect a mix of fun activities, exercises, discussions, and real-life examples to help you develop skills and strategies to use in real life once you leave the workshop. You’ll learn:

• How to craft and conduct experiments to identify the correct product for the need
• Tools and techniques to take you and your team from Product Vision through to Acceptance Criteria
• How to communicate with the team so you’re all building the same thing with the same understanding
• Insight into User Stories and how to use them effectively
• Strategies for engaging with stakeholders
• Forecasting tools
• and much more…

And because we’re all human and it’s easy to forget things you’ve learned in an intensive scrum training workshop, we provide ongoing support and resources, so you have information and help as you practice your new skills.

Our Certified Scrum Product Owner training goes far beyond a two-day workshop that teaches Scrum Guide theory, and it puts serious emphasis on understanding the how and why of Scrum Product Ownership, and not just the what. Couple the CSPO course with opportunities to stay engaged and informed through things like our “Three Percent Better” online community and our Lean Coffee virtual meetups for Scrum discussions with professionals. These will help ensure that you build a strong understanding of not only the Scrum Guide principles, but also how to implement them effectively in product management, to handle real world challenges and create ideal customer outcomes, not just produce widgets.

Should I do Certified ScrumMaster training (CSM) or Certified Scrum Product Owner training (CSPO) training?