A Certified Scrum Product Owner, or a CSPO, is someone who’s professionally trained by a Certified Scrum Trainer and recognised by the Scrum Alliance. He is familiar with all the principles of Scrum agile framework – its techniques and practices. He is the key bridge between the clients and the development team. He is the equivalent of a project manager who is in-charge of overseeing the projects and ensuring that the deliverables are according to standard and meet the requirements of the customer.
Therefore, he plays the role of a business analyst and project assessment manager for the clients, business manager, project stakeholder and process owner for the development team. The value of a CSPO is not so much in the certification he holds as much as how well he is able to implement those principles in the organisation.
As a certified Scrum product owner, you ensure that the operation of the project goes smoothly and without hitches that the team can’t manage. You act as the mediator between the clients and the development team. You need to ensure that the client requirements are adequately managed by the development team
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A product owner is fulcrum in any development cycle of a product. Essentially, he operates as a value analyst, ensuring that the deliverable is marked to standard and provides value. While he is from internal personnel, he operates as the project’s key stakeholder. The scope of his duties is not restricted to participating in the product life cycle. He acts as a business analyst, a market strategist, a customer liaison, and project leader. He develops a vision, puts forward proposals regarding the final deliverable and kick-starts the agile development cycle.
Apart from the apparent value addition in terms of your service to your clients, a CSPO Certification helps you in managing your teams and knowing your boundaries better. You will be able to manage the product backlog along the lines of product roadmap ensuring that no untoward delays or obstacles come in the development cycle. A CSPO certification helps in establishing efficient communication channels with all the stakeholders including ScrumMasters, Clients and the Board.
Primarily, it helps in clear articulation and documentation so that the clients’ needs are recorded accurately and the team members understand what is expected of them. This certification helps you identify and quantify value as a product owner helping you distinguish yourself as a person who means business and who delivers better business.
There are no major pre-requisites for becoming a CSPO. One should have working knowledge of Scrum. The certification process is much the same as it is for a ScrumMaster or a Scrum Developer. You would need to attend a two-day training program with any trainer that is recognised by the Scrum Alliance. Unlike others though, there are no exams here. Your certification is valid for two years. For renewal, you would need to clock in at least 20 SEUs in the last two years.
Beyond mainstream certification, CSPO equips himself with accurate foresight, better decision-making skills and effective communication with all the stakeholders in the process. Therefore, the career paths for a certified Scrum Product Owner are not set. Each organisation applies its Scrum Philosophy in a different way. This just means that the CSPO roles and responsibilities are versatile and there’s a need to adapt to the organisation’s requirements. That being said, there are some career paths that a CSPO would definitely be considered for
Achieving a consensus with the clients regarding what they want and what your team can do requires an understanding of the market, understanding of the capabilities of your team members, the trade-off between the time that is actually required to be invested on the project, and the deadlines that the customer wants it delivered within.
As a project manager, you are in charge of seeing a project to its execution and that’s an important function in the business. CSPO roles and responsibilities include planning for the project, budgeting resources, bringing in personnel, planning Sprints, encouraging sprint planning among a lot of other duties.
A CSPO negotiates all these and more and once the final product is ready, he needs to act as a quality assurance and a product manager as well, to understand whether the final product meets the clients’ requirements or not. He is the supreme authority over the development team in terms of the deliverable.
The core CSPO roles and responsibilities include effective communication and management with all the people in the organisation and establishing an effective network of interaction so that the process becomes leaner and the model becomes sustainable. As a C-Level officer, he’d oversee all the duties including building fraternal relationships between all the teams.
Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org provide all the training material, resources, a list of accredited partners, practice exams, and other FAQs for this certification. In addition, all the training providers like World of Scrum, KnowledgeHut, Udemy, Simpli Learn provide the necessary training required for the exam