format: "syllabus/v1"
kind: "course"
code: "PSPO"
title: "Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) Course with Certification"
items:
  - type: "session"
    session:
      id: 1
      title: Agile Product Management I (Product vs. Project)
      duration: 120
      content: Students will be able to evaluate their current situation regarding product vs. project mindset and apply changes to move their organization more towards a product mindset.
      learningResources:
        - title: What’s Driving Your Need For Agility?
          link: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/whats-driving-your-need-agility
          duration: 11
          type: blog
          weight: 1
        - title: What is a Product?
          link: https://youtu.be/k1BXZk-iCMA
          duration: 7
          type: video
      assignment:
        title: How can you move more towards a product mindset?
        content: Create a definition of your product, identify where your organization stands regarding product vs. project mindset and execute at least one experiment to move more towards a product mindset.
        examples: |
          - Define who your users and buyers are and how they might describe your product.
          - Interview people inside your organization about their definition of your product and identify how these differ from your customers definition.
          - Facilitate a discussion with people in your organization about the impact the product mindset has on your product success.
          - Evaluate how much time your organization is spending in creating and maintaining project charters, project plans and milestones and form an opinion on how much this helps with achieving your business goals.
          - Evaluate how much time your organization is spending on discussing vision, value and doing validation and how adaptive your organization is to the insights generated by this.
          - Describe how your organization and the success of your product could benefit if you would adopt a product mindset.
          - Propose at least one change that will bring your organization closer to a product mindset and see how others in your organization are reacting to it.
          - Evaluate how you are living the Product Owner accountability and run one experiment that increases your proactiveness.
  - type: "session"
    session:
      id: 2
      title: Agile Product Management II (Business Strategy and Product Vision)
      duration: 120
      content: |
        Students will be able describe their business strategy and their product vision in order to make assumptions more explicit and start a conversation with their stakeholders on alignment.
      learningResources:
        - title: Crossing The Chasm – A Quick Summary
          link: https://www.themarketingstudent.com/crossing-the-chasm-summary/
          duration: 15
          type: newspaper
          weight: 1
        - title: "Geoffrey Moore, Crossing the Chasm: What's New, What's Not"
          link: https://youtu.be/Zwh8ThUqeC8
          duration: 15
          type: video
          weight: 1
        - title: 10 Tips for Product Owners on the Product Vision
          link: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/10-tips-product-owners-product-vision
          duration: 20
          type: blog
          weight: 1
        - title: How great leaders inspire action
          link: https://youtu.be/qp0HIF3SfI4
          duration: 18
          type: video
          weight: 1
      assignment:
        title: Making assumptions explicit
        content: Create a vision and business model for your product. Share and discuss with your team and stakeholders and identify which insights this conversation creates.
        examples: |
          - Develop a Business Strategy using Business Model Canvas.
          - Develop a Business Strategy using Lean Canvas.
          - Develop a Business Strategy using Value Proposition Canvas. 
          - Develop a Product Vision by creating a Product Box.
          - Develop a Product Vision using Product Vision Template.
          - Identify the various factors that sum up to the TOC of your product and quantify them.
          - Describe your technical strategy to manage your products TOC.
          - Identify if there are products in your organization that should better be discontinued. What is stopping you from doing so? How could you use business strategy and technical - strategy to support the case for excel or discontinue that product?
          - Discuss the Product Vision and your Business Strategy with the Scrum Team. Are they surprised? Is this changing their perspective? Are they offering additional insights?
          - Execute at least one experiment to validate underlying assumptions of your Product Vision and Business Strategy.
  - type: "session"
    session:
      id: 3
      title: Value-Driven Development
      duration: 120
      content: Students can initiate changes to their organization’s product management by better understanding what the value of their product is and how to measure it.
      learningResources:
        - title: The Elements of Value
          link: https://hbr.org/archive-toc/BR1609
          duration: 15
          type: newspaper
          weight: 1
        - title: "Empathy Driven Development: Rescuing Value From the Bermuda Triangle"
          link: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/empathy-driven-development-rescuing-value-bermuda-triangle
          duration: 15
          type: blog
          weight: 1
        - title: The Evidence-based Management Guide
          itemId: Rv0ZjvwYVy5
          duration: 10
          type: handshake-angle
        - title: 4 Steps to Optimize Product Value
          link: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/scrum-mastery-4-steps-optimize-product-value
          duration: 9
          type: blog
          weight: 1
        - title: "Outcome Mapping & Scrum: The Story of Amazing Decisions"
          link: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/outcome-mapping-scrum-story-amazing-decisions
          duration: 6
          type: blog
          weight: 1
        - title: Online Experimentation at Microsoft
          link: https://nakedalm-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/martin_nkdagility_com/EffbIG8QqBxKrJniI2wYossBSdCS1WVr2bEdTsYsoiFWzQ?e=6baWYU
          duration: 60
          type: file-pdf
          weight: 1
      assignment:
        title: Connect measures to value
        content: Take action towards more value-focused measures.
        examples: |
          - Facilitate a conversation vis various stakeholders to describe the value your product should deliver for the organization and how it can be measured.
          - List the metrics you are currently using in the context of your product and identify those that help to measure value.
          - Identify which of your metrics are leading indicators and which ones are lagging indicators. Try to list the underlying assumptions of leading indicators to signal improvements towards your goals.
          - Categorize your current metrics whether they are measuring resources, activities, output, outcome or impact.
          - Run an experiment to discontinue at least one metric that is not helping to increase transparency of your product.
          - Identify when the value of your product actually changed in the last 12 months.
          - Identify at least one experiment to deliver value through your product earlier and more frequent. Get approval from your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders to run the experiment.
          - Use the EBM Framework and assign your current metrics to the four Key Value Areas. Identify if you have some blind spots in these KVAs and propose metrics that could close these gaps. Discuss with your Scrum Team(s) and stakeholders what needs to be changed to measure these additional metrics.
          - Discuss with your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders which of your current metrics take a lot of effort to be measured and if you could stop using it or replace it with something simpler.
          - Identify which percentage of your budget actually helps to improve the value of your product vs. the percentage to obtain the current value. Propose at least one experiment to increase the first and get approval from your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders to run the experiment.
  - type: "session"
    session:
      id: 4
      title: Scrum Theory & Empiricism
      duration: 120
      content: The student is able to evaluate the concepts of complexity and empiricism in their context and determine with others in their organization how to deal with uncertainty in their environment.
      assignment:
        title: Put empiricism into action
        content: Create consensus with your stakeholders and your Scrum Team(s) how you can benefit from using an empirical approach.
        examples: |
          - Identify factors that contribute to the complexity of your situation and hold a presentation with your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders explaining why you think your situation is complex and facilitate a discussion how to deal with this complexity.
          - Together with your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders, identify influencing factors that influence your ability to deliver value. Categorize them how much predictable they are and how much control your team has, to influence them.
          - Facilitate a discussion with your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders about how much unpredictability is in your current plan to achieve your business goals and how you are currently managing this uncertainty.
          - Identify how you are creating transparency over your current goals and plan and run at least one experiment to increase this transparency.
          - Identify how frequently you are inspecting and updating your current goals and the plan to achieve them. What are events that trigger inspection? Run at least one experiment to do inspection and adaption more frequent, adding additional triggers or increase the effectiveness of inspection and adaption.
          - Visualize your current feedback loops from planning and delivering a change to your product, collecting user feedback and how this feedback is influencing product decisions. - Identify at least one experiment to shorten this feedback loop or make it more effective and get approval from your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders to execute the experiment.
          - Identify how long you are currently planning into the future. What are the oldest elements of your current plan and how likely is it that you will implement it.
          - Identify your current arrival and departure rate to your plan and compare them.
          - Identify one experiment that helps to reduce unplanned work or helps to reduce unpredictability and get approval from your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders to execute it.
          - Identify those stakeholders who expect guarantees or promises on delivery dates, identify their needs behind this request and discuss how these needs could be met in a more empirical manner.
  - type: "session"
    session:
      id: 5
      title: The Scrum Framework
      duration: 120
      content: The students will be able to explain to stakeholders the influence of uncertainty and complexity on product development risks and effectively communicate the utilization of Scrum and empiricism as strategies to mitigate such risks and improve value.
      learningResources:
        - title: The Scrum Guide
          itemId: 59gcHh1fYtC
          duration: 120
          type: handshake-angle
          weight: 1
        - title: E5 Powerful Things About the Sprint
          link: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/5-powerful-things-about-sprint
          duration: 5
          type: blog
          weight: 1
        - title: Six Reasons Why You Need to Pay More Attention to the Sprint Goal
          link: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/six-reasons-why-you-need-pay-more-attention-sprint-goal
          duration: 5
          type: blog
        - title: "Myth 3: In Scrum, releases are done only at the end of the Sprint"
          link: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/myth-3-scrum-releases-are-done-only-end-sprint
          duration: 5
          type: blog
          weight: 1
        - title: The Surprising Truth about what motivates us
          link: https://youtu.be/aJWH84Nwucc
          duration: 2
          type: video
          weight: 1
        - title: Ethics in Scrum
          link: https://youtu.be/Tw1gwc7rAVg
          duration: 6
          type: video
          weight: 1
        - title: The Importance of Product Backlog Transparency
          link: https://youtu.be/O3tqpvkvnSk
          duration: 6
          type: video
          weight: 1
        - title: "Myth 2: The Sprint Backlog can’t change during the Sprint "
          link: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/myth-2-sprint-backlog-cant-change-during-sprint
          duration: 5
          type: blog
          weight: 1
      assignment:
        title: Putting Product Owner accountability into action
        content: Inspect and adapt how your current process is helping in achieving your business goals and improve its effectiveness by comparing it to the concepts suggested by the Scrum Framework to identify improvement opportunities.
        examples: |
          - Discuss with your Scrum Team(s) where your current process is deviating from the Scrum Framework and run at least one experiment to adhere more to the rules defined by the Scrum Guide.
          - Discuss with your Scrum Team(s) if your increments are really Done and how this might impact your transparency in terms of achieving your business goals. Run at least one experiment to change your Definition of Done to increase this transparency.
          - Discuss with your Scrum Team(s) how your Sprint Goals help the team to focus during the Sprint and optimize the value. If you have more than one Sprint Goal, try to reduce it to one. If Sprint Goals are not effective enough to give guidance, make them more concrete or focused on value.
          - Discuss with your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders how the Sprint Goal from the last couple of Sprints where paying into your current Product Goal and therefore get you closer to your business goals.
          - Discuss with your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders how effective your Sprint Reviews are in inspecting and adapting your direction. Define at least one experiment to improve their effectiveness.
          - Hold a Sprint Retrospective with your Scrum Team(s) to identify how you could increase the team’s effectiveness in achieving business goals and agree on one experiment to improve.
  - type: "session"
    session:
      id: 6
      title: Product Backlog Management
      duration: 120
      content: Students will be able to identify opportunities to improve their current product management approach and how they might impact their ability to deliver value and come up with at least one improvement that they tried with their team(s) or stakeholders.
      learningResources:
        - title: What is Backlog Refinement?
          link: https://youtu.be/k0JzDpEwoVA
          duration: 6
          type: video
          weight: 1
        - title: Managing Risk
          link: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/managing-risk
          duration: 15
          type: blog
          weight: 1
        - title: "Thirty-Five: Exercise for Backlog Prioritization"
          link: https://www.tastycupcakes.org/2012/10/thirty-five/
          duration: 5
          type: excersize
        - title: What I’ve learnt about Sponsored Features in Product Management | by Jorge Gómez Sancha
          link: https://medium.com/@jorgesancha/what-ive-learnt-about-sponsored-features-in-product-management-3d5d2e7d2612
          duration: 15
          type: blog
          weight: 1
      assignment:
        title: Own your Product Backlog
        content: Inspect your current product management approach and identify opportunities to improve it in order to help better increasing the value of your product. Define experiment and get approval from your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders to execute as many of them as possible. Run at least one experiment to improve your product management approach and describe its impact.
        examples: |
          - Question the form and content of your current Product Backlog and rework it to help better focusing on creating value.
          - Reduce the size of your Product Backlog to increase transparency and describe the impact it has.
          - Create a Story Map to visualize how items on the Product Backlog help to achieve a specific goal of improvement and discuss it with your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders.
          - Revisit your Product Goal and Sprint Goal and discuss with your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders how they could be improved to better serve your product vision.
          - Run one experiment to improve your Product Backlog refinement and describe its impact.
          - Revisit your current approach to describe Product Backlog Items and run one experiment to improve it.
          - Discuss with your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders how you use the Definition of Done, Sprint Goal and Acceptance Criteria and run an experiment to improve them.
          - Discuss with your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders how you order your Product Backlog and run at least one experiment to change factors influencing the order.
          - Create a roadmap and discuss it with your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders in order to get feedback and increase transparency of your direction.
          - Revisit the process how you validate the value created by PBIs and run one experiment to improve transparency of real value created by PBIs.
          - Discuss with your Scrum Team(s) and your stakeholders which problem each PBI tries to solve and discuss if the problem is relevant enough.
          - Ask your Scrum Team(s) and Stakeholders to describe your Product Vision, Product Goal and current Sprint Goal and how they are related to validate alignment.
  - type: "session"
    session:
      id: 7
      title: Releases & Forecasting
      duration: 120
      content: Students will be able to have a conversation with their stakeholders about why forecasting should be different in a complex environment and how frequent releases can improve empiricism.
      learningResources:
        - title: Limiting Work in Progress (WIP) in Scrum with Kanban - What / When / Who / How
          link: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/limiting-work-progress-wip-scrum-kanban-what-when-who-how
          duration: 15
          type: blog
          weight: 1
        - title: The Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams
          itemId: Z3HzXH_nmmz
          duration: 15
          type: blog
          weight: 1
        - title: Work can flow across the Sprint boundary
          itemId: a7UMLdZeVYq
          duration: 5
          type: blog
      assignment:
        title: Strategize your releases
        content: Understand your stakeholders needs in forecasting and improve how to meet these needs in a way that is more in alignment with an empirical approach addressing the specific challenges in a complex environment.
        examples: |
          - Interview your stakeholders to better understand their needs with forecasting.
          - Discuss with your stakeholders complexity and empiricism to explain challenges with forecasting.
          - Define an experiment to meet your stakeholders need in an more empirical way and get approval from your stakeholders to run it.
          - Calculate flow-based forecasts for historic data you have gathered and compare it with your current forecasting approach and the real data. Present the results to your stakeholders to initiate a discussion on various forecasting approaches.
          - Evaluate time investment in forecasting and initiate a discussion with your stakeholders what would change if you would stop this investment completely.
          - Discuss with your Scrum Team(s) how much undone work and technical debt your product is currently holding and how much this impacts transparency. Run one experiment to increase transparency.
          - Run an experiment on communicating a bandwidth for a forecast instead of a specific deadline and degrees of certainty to your stakeholders.
          - Run an experiment to forecast a goal instead of the work to be done. 
          - Visualize your workflow around delivering valuable work and discuss it with your Scrum Team(s) and stakeholders.
          - Run an experiment to identify the smallest possible functionality to gather feedback instead of planning to build the full functionality.
          - Run an experiment to validate the value delivered with a release and compare it to expectations.
          - Discuss ways with your Scrum Team(s) and stakeholders to reduce your release cadence and get approval to run a specific experiment to shorten cycle time.
  - type: "session"
    session:
      id: 8
      title: Closing
      duration: 120
      content: As we conclude the Product Owner course, this final session is designed to reflect on your learning journey, consolidate key concepts, and prepare you to apply your new skills confidently within your team. We'll revisit the course highlights, address any remaining questions, and provide guidance on the next steps to continue your growth as a Scrum Master.
      learningResources:
        - title: The Scrum Guide
          itemId: 59gcHh1fYtC
          duration: 60
          type: handshake-angle
          weight: 1
        - title: The Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams
          itemId: Z3HzXH_nmmz
          duration: 15
          type: handshake-angle
          weight: 1
        - title: Take the Product Owner Open Assessment
          link: https://www.classmarker.com/online-test/start/?quiz=r4n5fac77a2b6d40
          duration: 30
          type: flask-vial
        - title: Product Owner Learning Path
          link: https://www.scrum.org/pathway/product-owner-learning-path/
          duration: 15
          type: waveform-lines
      assignment:
        title: Take the PSPO I assessment.
        content: |
          - Passing score: 85%
          - Time limit: 60 minutes
          - Number of Questions: 80
          - Format: Multiple Choice, Multiple Answer, True/False
          - Language:
            - English
            - 简体中文 (Simplified Chinese) available through www.scrum.org.cn
          - Free [Credly](https://www.credly.com/users/sign_in) digital credential included
          - Practice assignment[Scrum Open](https://www.scrum.org/open-assessments/scrum-open)
          - Passwords have no expiration date, but are valid for one attempt only
          - Lifetime certification - no annual renewal fee required
