Pre-course Reading: A-CSPO

This 2day workshop is part of the advanced Product Owner program so you are expected to spend significant time preparing yourself before the class, where we validate your learning and practice situations from the Product Owner journey. Certification is an optional part of this program and to get certified you have to: 

1. Demonstrate your knowledge/skills/experience as described in the Learning Objectives and get them validated by the trainer during the class.
2. Demonstrate at least 12-months of Product Owner experience by uploading your role-specific experience to your Scrum Alliance Profile (any time before or after the class).

Some topics may be well known and an internal part of your day-to-day work, some others may be new or bring a different perspective. Join the class with an open mind, the ways of learning are unexpected. 

Note that, an important part of the class is trainer learning validation. In case of gaps, you get feedback so you can inspect and adapt on that part and demonstrate your learning. If the gaps are too big to inspect and adapt in two days, it may end up with some recommended follow-up learning/coaching followed by trainer validation. However this is a possibility, it is not expected to happen too often and most of the active Product Owners will make it if they do the class preparation well. 

Please spend time reading through given concepts and reflect on them. You are encouraged to join local meetups and work on specific learning objectives with a group of Agile enthusiasts there.

The questions in italic shall help you to cross-check your understanding.

Agile and Scrum Background

• Refresh your memory: Scrum Guide and Agile Manifesto.

Product Owner Core Competencies

• The Scrum Product Owner role on one page: https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/one-page-product-owner/ (What are your strengths and what are your weaknesses?)

• Harmful Misconceptions About Product Owner Role (How many dysfunctions you can see at your organization?) Choose video or comics:
  • Video https://youtu.be/cr2rjaGmUzo
  • Comics: https://seattlescrum.com/downloads/Why-Scrum-Isnt-Making-Your-Company-Very-Agile-v2.pdf

• The Innovation Games book - get ideas on some creative approaches

• Engaging and Involving Stakeholders in Your Watershed: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-11/documents/stakeholderguide_0.pdf

• Technical debt (Understand the impact of the Technical debt):
  • https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html
  • https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebtQuadrant.html

• Feature teams (understand the difference and benefits): 
  • Feature Team: https://less.works/less/structure/feature-teams.html
  • Stop Managing Dependencies! https://co-learning.be/blog/stop-managing-dependencies/19012016

• Extreme Programming (be familiar with the technical practices and why they are useful): https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/xp/#q=~(infinite~false~filters~(postType~(~'post~'aa_book~'aa_event_session~'aa_experience_report~'aa_glossary~'aa_research_paper~'aa_video)~tags~(~'xp))~searchTerm~'~sort~false~sortDirection~'asc~page~1)  

• Additional Reading (if you want to go deeper):
  • Book: Agile Product Management with Scrum, Roman Pichler
  • Book: Innovation Game, Luke Hohmann

Advanced Purpose and Strategy

• https://www.devmynd.com/blog/2014-2-agile-product-design-recap/
• https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/goal-oriented-agile-product-roadmap/
• https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/product-roadmap-vs-release-plan/
• https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/make-your-product-stand-out-with-the-strategy-canvas/
• https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/combining-lean-startup-and-scrum/
• Additional Reading:
  • Book: Strategize - Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age, Roman Pichler
  • Book: Impact Mapping, Gojko Adzic
  • Book: User Story Mapping, Jeff Patton

Empathizing with Customers and Users

• https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10330-connect-with-customers.html
• https://uxmag.com/articles/customer-experience-is-the-future-of-design
• https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/beyond-product-demo-validation-techniques-in-scrum/
• https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/amazing-interaction-design/
• https://www.sailthru.com/marketing-blog/written-customer-journey-mapping-need-to-know/
• http://www.jpattonassociates.com/the-new-backlog/

Advanced Product Assumption Validation

• https://medium.com/@_sidharth_m_/beginners-guide-to-lean-ux-defined-explained-228d18940acb
• http://www.instigatorblog.com/good-hypotheses/2011/05/05/
• https://www.jrothman.com/mpd/2018/07/shorter-feedback-loops-help-us-learn-faster/
• https://medium.com/design-ibm/kano-model-ways-to-use-it-and-not-use-it-1d205a9cf808
• https://co-learning.be/resources/split-patterns-for-backlogitems 
• The Lean Startup Summary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSaIOCHbuYw 
• The Lean Startup Book, Eric Ries