The Product Owner (PO) Crash Course

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Level up your product ownership (PO) skill set by learning foundational practices in backlog refinement and planning

14-15 December 2022 (14-18h CET)
Location: Live Online Event (@YOUR DIGITAL WORKPLACE)
Presented in English by Howard Podeswa
Price: 640 EUR (excl. 21% VAT)

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 Learning Objectives

What is this training about, and why is it important?

Attend this course to level up your product ownership (PO) skill set. Learn to apply key tools and techniques, including:

• how to prepare features to minimize errors, rework and delays,
• how to structure change requests into epics, features and stories,
• how to specify acceptance criteria using ATDD/BDD, and
• how to split stories using SAFe and Lawrence patterns

If you are a Product Owner, Product Manager, or a Team/Business Analyst new to agile development, this course is for you. No prior experience necessary. This course is delivered live online by Howard Podeswa himself, and will be highly interactive and hands-on using Zoom, a collaborative whiteboard and break-out sessions. The templates and artifacts from this course will be made available for use in your organization.

What you will learn and how you can apply it

• Understand the PO role within an agile organization and how it is impacted by popular agile frameworks and practices, including Kanban, Scrum, XP, DevOps, SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), and ATDD (Acceptance test–driven development)
• Be able to prepare features effectively to focus the team on work of the highest value, and reduce rework and delays
• Be able to specify acceptance criteria using ATDD/BDD (behaviour-driven development)
• Be able to split features into small stories that deliver value
• Be able to use the WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) approach to prioritize stories
• Be able to use Story Maps to plan the iterations of a release cycle or PI (program increment)

This Training is for you because ...

• You are a new to the Product Owner role. This training is a crash course in the key practices you'll need to hit the ground running
• You are a seasoned analyst or other IT professional transitioning to an agile role as PO, Proxy PO or team analyst. This course helps you upskill for your new environment

 Full Programme

• Module 1: Introduction to PO Analysis (POA) and Planning
• What is Product Ownership?
• What is Agile Planning and Analysis?
• POs in the Agile Organization
• Why Planning and Analysis are Critical to the Success of an Agile Organization
• The PO-BA (Business Analyst) Collaboration
• Foundational Practices
 

• Module 2: Refining (Grooming) the Product Backlog - Part A: ATDD/BDD
• Backlog Refinement: What, When, Why?
• Agile requirements units: PBI (product backlog item), epic, feature, story
• Writing Effective Stories: INVEST (a good user story should be Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable), templates
• ATDD Practices
• BDD/Gherkin Syntax

• Module 3: Refining (Grooming) the Product Backlog - Part B: Prioritizing and Splitting Backlog Items
• Prioritizing and estimating with WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) and Cost of Delay
• Patterns for Splitting Stories (SAFe/Lawrence/Podeswa)
• Overview of other analysis techniques in feature refinement and release plan preparation
 

• Module 4: Preparing for a New Release Cycle (Quarterly Preparation)
• Adaptive vs. Predictive Planning Approaches
• Lean Startup MVP (Minimum Viable Product) Process
• Flow-based (Kanban) vs. timeboxed planning (Scrum, SAFe): When to use which?
• Kanban Boards
• Release and Epic Planning with Story Mapping

Recommended Reading (but not required when attending this training):

• The Agile Guide to Business Analysis and Planning: From Strategic Plan to Continuous Value Delivery by Howard Podeswa (Pearson/Addison Wesley, 2021)
• The 2020 Scrum Guide by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland (scrum.org)
• Accelerate: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations by Nicole J. Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim

 Speakers

Howard Podeswa is a thought leader in the intersection of agile and business analysis. For over twenty years, he has been helping large organizations adapt and optimize their business analysis and planning practices for agile software development approaches. He is the author of UML for the IT Business Analyst, 2nd Ed. (2009), The Business Analyst's Handbook (2008), and The Agile Guide to Business Analysis and Planning: From Strategic Plan to Continuous Value Delivery (2021, Pearson). At Noble Inc., he has provided agile and business analysis services to clients worldwide, including the International Standards Organization (ISO), Moody's, the Mayo Clinic, TELUS, TD Bank, LabCorp, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Mawer Investment Management Ltd., Bell Nexia, and REI Coop.

Howard is a widely requested speaker at international BA and agile events, including European BA Day (Frankfurt, 2019), the Toronto Agile Community Conference (2015), the BBC Conference (2016, 2014), the agile Norway Developers Conference (NDC 2013), the BA Forum (Poland) and BA World conferences across North America. He is also a professional artist whose works have been shown extensively in commercial and public galleries. His exhibitions include "A Brief History" (Kelowna Gallery, Koffler Gallery) and "Still Life with Paper" (Birch Contemporary).

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