The Product Owner (PO)
Crash Course

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

Date: On demand
Location: IRL or virtual
Presented in English by Howard Podeswa

Duration: 8 hours (delivered in 1 day IRL; 2 half-days when virtual)

Price: $TBD USD (excl. taxes)

Contact us about delivering this course to your organization

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

  • Understand how to use Story Maps to plan incremental delivery over 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

    • Overview: Release and Epic Planning with Story Mapping

Recommended reading (but not required to attend this course)

Add me to the waiting list for the next public session (TBD)