This article is not for Product Owners as they must follow this training. I want to encourage Scrum Masters, business analysts, testers, developers to think about following this course.
From PSM to PSPO
My agile journey started with the PSM and PSD courses a few years ago. Then I became a Scrum Team member for some time and didn’t feel the need for more training. But when I started to become a full time Scrum Master I realized I needed more tools and practices to help my teams and specially the Product Owner and the organization around. I was facing questions like: how can I order my backlog? What are the key measures to show to management? How do I build my vision as a PO? And many others. Like many I started googling things and did my best to find and forge my tools. I quickly wanted more than that and went for a PSPO training.
Professional Scrum Product Owner
Like the PSM, the PSPO training is a 2 days course. As usual with Scrum.org the content and the structure are perfect and even with few years of experience using Scrum, having a people around sharing their own experiences and techniques is of great value.
Besides that, I came out of the training with a new understanding of the Product Owner job. She or he is not only the person with the vision we all think of. She is the captain, the leader, the beacon of one to multiple teams like a startup entrepreneur. It is a difficult position that needs a lot of support, empowerment, natural leadership and a very pragmatic approach. From the Scrum Team member point of view, you only see few aspects of the job and this is why we lack understanding of this role. For two days you can be in her-his shoes and see what you would do in some situations.
I won’t give you a list of all the practices you will cover but here are some of them: Impact Mapping, User Story Mapping, Key Value Areas through Evidence Based Management. Anyway except if you have a large agile community around you those trainings will bring you more than you think and remember how great was your PSM training experience and you’ll want to go to this one.
Scrum & More 