A Detailed Guide on CSPO Certification

Agile teams are willing to address the altering industry dynamics. They need to be strongly involved in the business to ensure the success of the product. These teams feel that the collaboration and commitment coming from managers and stakeholders is not easy. At this point, the Product Owner comes into the picture.

The Product Owner creates value for the product, analyses every stage of the product development, and acts as a bridge between the team and the stakeholders. The PO will focus on the needs rather than following a textbook approach to accomplish the tasks. PO’s role is more powerful and versatile so that it is accessible by those working in the Agile team. Those who are interested in business analysis, project management, or marketing of the product can be a good fit to become Product Owners.

The Certified Scrum Product Owner course can help Product Owners build their careers with the necessary knowledge. Moving ahead let’s explore what is CSPO course, its advantages, prerequisites, skills, and much more.

What is Certified Scrum Product Owner  (CSPO) certification?

Scrum Alliance provides the CSPO certification in London for those who want to be a product owner in the Scrum team. Industries like Information Technology, Automobile, Infrastructure, Manufacturing and many others have recognized this certification globally. The certification covers topics like: Agile, Scrum fundamentals, and majority of non-Scrum topics that include: Product Discovery, Product Vision, Product Roadmap, Release Planning, Estimation, use stories, burndown and burn up charts etc.

Basically, this course focuses on helping students understand the role of Product Owner in depth. It does so by  going through characteristics, Rights, Responsibilities, some common anti-patterns, what makes a Product Owner great Product Owner etc. The students who are willing to build great products, willing to work with stakeholders, have entrepreneurial mindset, have innovative ideas to solve the problems are the best fit.

Why Become a CSPO certified individual?

Being an inferior product owner in the market is not a competitive advantage. If there are frequent releases of features that consumers may not like, then it is not a strategic advantage. Instead, all of them are reducing the investment yields. Hence, the need for a Certified Scrum Product Owner credential comes into play.

Certified Scrum Product Owners are good at prioritizing work to be completed and evaluating if each step aligns properly with the product and organization’s mission, plan, purpose, or target. Hence, they add great value to the production team.  They are aware of how the workpieces come together because of the team collaboration, product stakeholders, and consumers. Proper time management, resources, and relevant experience adds value to both the company and the customers.

CSPOs bridge the gap between consumers and teams. They calibrate and coordinate activities so that they are inclined with consumer value. The product owners provide competitive edge and enhanced customer loyalty during the process. They create value at every stage where both the organization and client will support each increment. As these product owners achieve their objectives, goals, and mission, the employee loyalty and productivity increases.

Advantages of the Certification

• You can understand the method to deliver a product iteratively and incrementally using scrum.
• You can understand stakeholder expectations by closely working with them and best ways to work with the development teams.
• The certification provides good credibility as it is recognized globally. Additionally, the resume will also have weightage that adds value.
• Certified Scrum Product Owner certified students can handle various groupd of people, offer a goal, and command over the product development. Hence, they are always in demand.
• The certified students can micromanage tasks using sprints and also use scrum tools like breakdown analysis for better productivity.
• With this certification, individuals can get a raise and a better job opportunity.
• This certification increases the value of certified professionals with information about the scrum network and inner working of a business.

Prerequisites of Certification

Currently, there are no exams associated with this certification. The training is of 16 hours led by a Certified Scrum Trainer. This training is enough to obtain the credential from Scrum Alliance. There are no prerequisites for attending the training program. But it is beneficial to read the Scrum Guide and Agile Manifesto before beginning the class to understand the concepts better. After completing the certification, individuals can add it to their resume so that recruiters can be aware of the candidate’s added knowledge.

Skills to become CSPO Certified

Becoming a CSPO will help the candidates develop new skills and gain the necessary knowledge.

• Product Skill Development

The candidates can learn new concepts of scrum and all the associated terms to build the skills of a product owner.

• Team Leader

Candidates can broaden their knowledge to attain a vision and lead the team to enhance the product value.

• Communication Skills

Communication is the basic need to deal within the team and outside the team. These skills help gain better clarity and increase business value.

• Good Planning Skills

Curate plans to achieve bigger goals and implement them efficiently to become a successful product owner.

• Scrum Execution

Implement the scrum functionality with advances knowledge and expand the areas of opportunities with the knowledge gained.

• Manage Risks

Have a far vision and calculate the risks through different techniques for better analysis and better results.

• Increased ROI

Implement several methods of execution to adopt a course of action for obtaining better business value and ROI.

• Enhance Productivity

Perform goal-oriented actions to enhance productivity.

How to get the certification?

As mentioned earlier, it is a 2 day classroom training program. The validity of this certificate is 2 years. After completion of this certification, the candidate can either do the next level A-CSPO that automatically renews the CSPO or the candidate can show 20SEUs and pay 100 USD to renew the next two years. The candidate can follow the below steps to get obtain the certification of Scrum Product Owner.

• Begin the journey by choosing a good Registered Education Provider (REP) of Scrum Alliance.
• Understand the fundamentals of Scrum concepts and their terminologies used.
• The certified scrum trainers provide necessary information in the two-day workshop.
• The trainers will update the details by adding recommendations for Scrum Alliance.
• The individual who applied will get an acceptance mail from aScrum Alliance with all the details of the account.
• Candidates can then login with the credentials in the welcome email and accept the license.
• Finally, the candidate will obtain the certification.

Eligibility

There is no such specific criteria to join the Certified Scrum Product Owner  certification program. But the individual should have a little familiarity with the basics of Scrum concepts as it will benefit the candidate.

Levels of Scrum product owner

• Level 1: Business Analyst
• Level 2: Senior Business analyst
• Level 3: Product Owner
• Level 4: Senior Product Owner.

Job roles

• Agile Coach
• Product Manager
• Technical Program Manager
• Senior Product Manager
• Project Manager
• Product Owner.

Who can attend?

• Project Managers
• Managers- Software Development
• Software Developers
• Developers
• Architects – Software Development
• Software Testers
• Product Owners
• Product Managers
• Team leads/ Team managers.

The CSPO certification is identified globally for the role of a product owner. Certified professions can stand unique in the organization and contribute for the betterment of the company.