Advanced Product Owner (2 days)

Advanced Product Owner – Optimizing Requirements Management and Planning

Overview
This 2-day course is aimed at organizations already actively using lean/agile methods for Software Development or IT Operations. It covers advanced topics concerning the Product Owner role including advanced topics in defining user stories, spikes and acceptance criteria, managing technical tasks, Specification by Example, Acceptance Test Driven Development, Prioritisation based on project economics, Scaling the PO role and Scrum Events for large programs, and in depth Release Planning. For Product Owners and ScrumMasters who are looking to fully realize the benefits of agile in complex environments this course is essential to success.

Target Audience
This intensive course is intended for Product Owners, Project Managers and Scrum Masters as well as Change Agents working in established Lean/Agile environments. It assumes a working understanding of Agile methods like Scrum and the Lean concepts underpinning these methods.

Learning Outcomes
After completing this course you will understand

• How to craft incremental requirements and Minimal Marketable Features using Stories and Specification by Example.
• How to define Acceptance Criteria and develop Acceptance Tests from them
• Rightsizing Stories using Progressive Elaboration and Splitting Techniques
• Quantifying the value, cost and risk of user stories
• Prioritisation based on the Return on Investment, Cost of Delay and Net Present Value
• Defining Minimal Viable Products, Product Vision, Roadmap and Releases
• Using the Agile Release Train to co-ordinate work across multiple teams and functions
• Goal based Scope Definition and Landing Zones
• Running Release Planning Events
• The Product Owner Role in large, enterprise environments: Internal & External Facing
• Product Owner Committees and Product Management
• Scaling Scrum Events; Tools for Scaling
• Identifying and Working with Stakeholders: The PO role and responsibilities

 

Course Outline:
Writing User Stories, Acceptance Criteria and Defining Spikes.

• From themes to epics/features to user stories and spikes – Late Elaboration for Agility
• From Iterative to Incremental Development: Defining Incremental Features
• User Stories to Drive Value Focused Innovation
• Defining the ‘User’ – personas, roles; Understanding Business Value
• User Story Forms
• Acceptance Criteria and Acceptance Test Driven Development
• Applying User Stories where there is no user and no story
• The INVEST criteria for user stories; Knowing a Bad User Story
• Techniques for splitting stories

Prioritisation with Multiple Stakeholders, teams & Product Owners

• The key role of Prioritization in agile development
• Inputs to Prioritisation: Cost/Benefit/Risk/Dependencies
• Small investments – making estimation & priority less painful
• Multivariate decision making – finding a common Unit Of Measure
• Defining & Measuring Business Value (RoI, NPV, EVM)
• Defining & Measuring Risk Severity
• Prioritisation by RoI – Weaknesses of this approach
• Defining a strategy for temporally sensitive prioritisation
• Introducing Cost of Delay (CoD) and Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)
• The Kano Model for Feature Prioritisation

Release Planning

• The Product Vision, Roadmap and Release Plan
• Agile Release Train, Minimal Marketable Features and Minimum Viable Product
• Running a Release Planning Event
• Goal based Scope Definition: Landing Zones and Release Goals

Scaling the PO role and Scrum Events

• Scrum: The Embedded Product Owner role
• Product Owner Committees & Hierarchies : Chief PO, Product Manager, Product Line Manager
• Dual Roles: Team Facing vs. Market Facing POs, Product Owner and Product Manager
• Defining and working with stakeholders: Users vs. Customers vs. Sponsors
• Responsibilities: Team Product Owner and Product Manager
• Inputs to the Product Owner: The voices of the business, users and architects/technical.
• Scaling Scrum: Scrum of Scrums, Sprint Planning, Backlog Grooming, Retrospectives, Reviews, Team boards, Metrics, Cadence, Collaboration

 

Training will include presentation of concepts and practices, examples of application, interactive exercises and in-depth discussions. 

For further details of our services in Lean/Agile software development methods contact services@agileinnovation.ie. We specialize in embedded coaching and training in Scrum, Kanban and Lean.