Scrum is conquering the world of project management methodologies. Scrum is not a process as such but a set of practices supporting the agile philosophy. Badly run Scrum projects do just as lousy as any traditional run project. So how do we run a successful Scrum project, which promises to deliver more functionality at a better quality and quicker compared to what we are used to.

The product owner is one of the key factors and probably the most important role in Scrum. With a bad product owner your chances of a happy team and ecstatic customers are practically non existent and thus the chances of project challenges or even failure are high. Learn how to be a good product owner, how to guide and steer the project and bridge the gap between business and development.

• Introduction
  • Scrum overview: Roles, Artifacts, Meetings
  • Agile Manifesto: values & principles
• Product Owner
  • Responsibilities and Duties 
  • Authority & strategies for dealing with multiple stake holders

• Envisioning the product
• Product Backlog
  • User Stories and how detailed these should be or rather not be (requirements vs. specifications or “The wisdom of many is preferable to the brilliance of one”)
  • User Epics and the Story Map (structuring the linear Product Backlog for better understanding)
  • What criteria define a good user story (INVEST) and when is a user story considered READY
  • How to deal with dependencies between user stories
  • When to write enabling specifications
  • How to incorporate technical stories (typically originating from the team)
  • Prioritization
  • Understanding how the team (and only the team) estimates effort in Story Points
  • Product Backlog Grooming and the price of quality
• In-Sprint feature testing
• Delaying decisions to the “last responsible moment”
• Interfacing to other, possibly non-Scrum, projects and systems
• Collaboration with the team (sprint planning meetings & demos)
• Definition of DONE & the price of non functional requirements
• Pros and cons of electronic tools
• Reading the scrum board & burndown chart
• Calculating a teams velocity and using this for long-term release planning
• Common Product Owner mistakes
• How to initiate a Scrum project (“Sprint 0”)

Learning Objectives

• Understand the authority, duties and responsibilities of a Product Owner
• Learn how to build and prioritize a Product Backlog
• Learning the value of a self organizing team and why it is so important to “let go”
• Learn to embrace change instead of negotiating contracts
• Tracking and reporting on a projects progress
• Release planning (short, medium and long term)

Mandatory Course Preparation

• Reading the “Scrum Primer”
• Reading the Agile Manifesto

Trainer
Klaus Bucka-Lassen, Partner at aragost Trifork, Certified Scrum Master, Scrum Coach and Co-Trainer with Jeff Sutherland.

Language
English or german. The hand-outs are in English.