Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO 1)

Developing People and Teams

Coaching and Mentoring:

A key aspect of servant leadership is the ability to coach and mentor the organization, the team, and the business. The objective of coaching and mentoring is to help people get better at their work, deliver more value, or resolve a conflict or problem. The practitioner should be able to coach as well as mentor. They should understand different formal  techniques and be able to apply those techniques in different complex situations.

Teaching:

The ability to inspire others to learn and share information in an effective, repeatable, and efficient manner is a key aspect to any agile practitioners’ skills. The practitioner should understand the value of teaching and appreciate the means of measuring the success of their teaching. They should understand different learning approaches and understand when to apply different techniques in different contexts.

Managing Products with Agility

Forecasting & Release Planning:

Complex problems and the application of an empirical process requires a specific way of planning, estimating, and forecasting. Practitioners should be able to apply agile forecasting and release planning techniques, and understand the value of different approaches. They should understand which approaches work better in different situations. They should also understand how releases should be planned while dealing with complexity, dependencies, and value creation.

Product Vision:

The Product Vision defines the purpose or goal that the product serves, and is defined by the “value” that the product strives to deliver. It should be the “true north” for the product and should not be affected by the day-to-day difficulties or challenges of delivery. The Product Vision only changes if the goal of the product changes, such as when a business pivot happens. Practitioners should be able to describe what a product vision is and what techniques should be employed to both build a vision and make it transparent. They should also understand how to use a Product Vision to drive strategy and execution, and how to build a vision that motivates, communicates, and provides constraints for delivery.

Product Value:

The ultimate goal is to deliver value to the customer and stakeholders. But value is complex, made up of long-term and short-term impact, internal and external value, and indirect and direct value. The practitioner should be able to understand how to define value for context, and apply it to the work they and the team do. They should be able to manage others’ understanding of value and apply different techniques and practices for defining, communicating and measuring value. They should understand the connection between value and empirical process, and how value should be the driving factor of the Product Vision.

Product Backlog Management:

The Product Backlog is a key artifact within Scrum. It is an ordered list that describes what is needed in the product. The Product Backlog provides transparency into what is happening to the product for the team, organization, and stakeholders. The practitioner should be able to describe what a Product Backlog is and apply a variety of techniques for managing the backlog. They should also understand how to make the Product Backlog transparent and how to manage stakeholder expectations associated with the backlog.

Business Strategy:

A product lives within the context of a business strategy. That strategy describes how the Product Vision will be executed in a broader context. A practitioner will understand techniques for exposing business strategy and show how it drives the product. They will understand approaches, such as Lean Startup and Design Thinking, and how those affect the flow of ideas from strategy to execution. They will understand how an empirical process affects the execution and feedback of a strategy.

Stakeholders & Customers:

Effectively working with stakeholders and customers is a key skill for both the Product Owner and the Development Team. Scrum changes the nature of the interactions, encouraging more frequent collaboration and more open dialogue. The practitioner will understand the implication moving to an Agile approach will have to their stakeholders and customers and also become familiar with practices that will help them work and collaborate in a more agile way.