Whether Certified Product Owner class is worth taking

March 16, 2008 by Artem Marchenko

Disclaimer: I came to the class, because I already knew Mike as one of the best trainers I've ever seen. I have also been to several other classes by him. It might have made my opinion biased.

Since after I went to product management and found out that Scrum Alliance started offering the Certified Product Owner (CPO) classes I was thinking about taking this class, but was not really sure. After all I did know what Scrum was about, had quite some practical and consulting Scrum Master experience, I was even educating some Product Owners around. What new could the Product Owner class offer to me?

Value

This week I devoted two days of my Oslo trip to the CPO class by Mike Cohn and can share the impressions with you. The class goes deep into the needs of the Scrum Product Owner and covers pretty much everything a decent agile leader would need. It includes general overview of Scrum, techniques for coming up with the vision, building a solid product backlog, effectively guiding a cross functional team, etc., etc. There is nothing like the practical experiences and plenty of exercises included make you feel the real "product ownership" as much as it can be done in a classroom.

The bottom line for me is that the CPO class is well worth its money and is clearly distinct from the old good Certified Scrum Master (CSM) class. CPO won't provide you with as solid understanding of the Scrum process mechanics as CSM, but will arm you exceptionally well for playing the Product Owner role efficiently. It is hardly possible to start implementing Scrum with the amount of knowledge offered by the CPO class. However, once you get the process started, CPO will help you get most of the development effort. Highly recommended for those in charge of the success of the software based products.

What is in it for you?

What would you expect from the CPO class? Also if you are interested in knowing more about the course, feel free to ask in the comments, I will try replying as accurately as my memory allows for.

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