This adaptive learning online course looks at product planning in the context of Business Agility. While The Scrum Guide focuses on the work of the Product Owner and the Scrum Team once they start sprinting, an effective Product Owner needs to be actively involved in the higher levels of product planning that set the context for her decisions about the ordering of the Product Backlog.

Synchronizing between the objectives at higher and lower levels of product planning is a key skill for Product Owners. Keeping the Scrum Team business-aligned creates an environment in which the team can be truly self-organizing. They can be given problems to solve rather than tasks to perform and can react quickly to the changes that are inevitable in the increasingly complex world in which we live. Continuous product discovery is enabled in which the Scrum Team – led by its Product Owner – collaborates with the product’s stakeholders to converge on solutions that deliver the required outcomes.
 

• Upgrade your Product Owner’s skills – while day-to-day, Product Owners are focused on the ordering of their Product Backlogs, they can only do this confidently in the context of a clear product vision and a product strategy that are aligned with the business strategy of the wider organization.
• Learn How to Keep Your Scrum Team Aligned with the Business – and how such alignment is essential for team autonomy
• Understand the Importance of Outcome-driven Approaches – and the need to break from a culture that focuses on maximizing the number of features rather than the value to be delivered.
• Recognize How Identifying Measurable Goals Communicate Value – to deliver maximum customer value a Product Owner must be able to communicate value propositions to the entire stakeholder community at every level of product planning.

Whether a Product Owner, Product Manager, Portfolio Manager, Program Manager or a Business Analyst, or someone who needs to understand Agile product planning, then this course is for you.
 

After completing this adaptive learning course, you will have learned that an effective Product Owner needs to be involved at all levels of product planning, including product envisioning, product strategy, release planning and Sprint planning, and have learned tools and techniques that will enable them to be better Product Owners.

You will know how to validate assumptions about a product idea and its impact on the world, take that idea forward in collaboration with stakeholders and Developers and, with them, converge on a solution that delights your company’s customers.

You’ll be able to:

• Focus the Team and stakeholders on outcomes rather than simply outputs
• Bridge the ‘Product Management Vacuum’
• Navigate from Business Strategy down to Sprint Planning
• Articulate concrete goals at every level of product planning
• Progressively refine objectives through a ‘Chain of Goals’
• Facilitate product envisioning workshops
• Create visualisations of the future state of a problem-solving product – the Product Vision
• Concretize a product strategy in the form of User and Business Goals to be met
• Populate an Outcome-based Roadmap
• Discover features for release with Kano models, User Story Maps and Impact Maps
• Choose the most appropriate techniques for your own context such as innovation ambition matrix, empathy map

The Agile Product Planning course has six modules, with a total of 58 learning objectives and 168 probes.

• Delivering value means achieving outcomes
• Defining ‘value proposition’
• Communicating value through concrete, measurable goals
• Continuous product discovery through fast feedback loops

• The different perspectives that different stakeholders have of value
• Techniques for navigating different stakeholder perspectives
• Prioritising customer value to achieve business objectives
• Core principles of Agile development that emphasize customer value

• Levels of product planning
• Navigating from a Business Strategy down to Sprint Planning
• Progressively refining a Chain of Goals
• Synchronizing goals to keep the self-organizing Scrum Team business-aligned

• Product Vision as an aspirational goal
• Product envisioning workshops
• Product vision statements, Product Box vision, Cover Story vision and the Elevator statement
• Comparing potential features for their impact with Kano model

• Product strategies for different inception points in a product’s lifecycle
• Contrasting user goals with business goals
• Aligning technical strategy with business strategy
• Principles of continuous product discovery

• Outcome-based Roadmaps
• Focusing on solving customers’ problems with Release Goals
• Validating potential deliverables with Impact Maps
• Ensuring usability as well as value with User Story maps

• High-quality instruction with slideshows and short videos, supported by an audible coach’s text created by Agile expert and Certified Scrum Trainer, Alan O’Callaghan
• Multiple probes for each Learning Objective
• Immediate feedback to answers, including remediation where appropriate