What And Why PSPO?

PSPO stands for Professional Scrum Product Owner, a course and certification offered by Scrum.org. The Scrum.org mission is “To Improve the profession of Software Development”. With due respect to other certification bodies let me give you an overview of the Professional Scrum Product Owner course and certificate offered by Scrum.org. 

It’s up to an individual and organization to decide which training course and certification works best for them.


 

1. PSPO is a two days course and is made up of discussions and hands on exercises. Some of the exercises are very hard lessons.
2. The course has been created by Ken Schwaber, the co-creator of Scrum framework along with other Professional Scrum Trainers working with Scrum.org.
3. There will not be any ball game or flying plane activity. Software development and Product Ownership role is not that simple. The two days are going to be really exhaustive so be ready for it.
4. The course covers the following topics 
   • Agile Product Management
   • Value Driven Development
   • Scrum Principles and Empiricism
   • The Scrum Framework
   • Product Backlog Management
   • Release Management
5. Scrum.org has kept the training and certification separate. You don’t have to attend a training for appearing in the assessment, this is applicable for all certifications offered by Scrum.org. However, attending a training generally helps.
6. Once you pass the assessment and earn the certificate, its validity is life long, no renewal required. Contrary to other organization and certification authorities which require renewal on every/alternate year.
7. The assessment contains 80 questions to be completed in 60 minutes, less than a minute per question. It really tests your knowledge about Scrum and Product Ownership.
8. The passing mark is 85%, its really tougher than other available options. You and your organization have to decide if you need certification just for marking an item in your ToDo list to Done or you really want to train and assess your people and get benefit out of it.
9. Attending a PSPO training class will provide the following benefits to participants, these are not applicable to students who directly appear for the assessment without attending a training class
   • A free attempt of PSPO-I of $200
   • Another free attempt of PSPO-I ($200) will be provided if the participant made his first attempt within 14 days of completing the class and unfortunately doesn’t pass.
   • A $200 discount on PSPO-II, which is next level on your Product Ownership journey, it’s a subjective exam and difficult than PSPO-I
   • Participants will get 14 PDUs/SEUs

Interested in attending a PSPO training, here is the schedule

Please read more about the PSPO course.