This morning I got a message from the Scrum Alliance folks.  I got my “official” Certified Product Owner info. The course was a good one. Mike Cohn and Ken Schwaber have been getting firms running using scrum for a long time. I have done it for some years - but their experience was extremely helpful. They were happy to answer any questions, specific - hard ones.

Good stuff. Even though I have been doing it for years, I still recommend a formal effort for anyone practicing scrum.

-Chris

I thought this was particularly amusing. I am a huge scrum believer. I am also responsible for promoting scrum within my organization. I really, really believe in it - really …. BUT … The terminology is sometimes hard to get over for people. I thought this pic was really - really funny

I am happy to be going to a Certified Scrum Product Owner Course this week in Boston. Having done the scrum thing for a number of years now, I am looking forward to speaking with and thanking the 2 people giving the course Ken Schwaber and Mike Cohn.

Ken Schwaber is one of the folks to really started scrum. Without Ken’s writings and efforts - many more of my projects would have been less successful. Scrum has been a key part of my software belief system for some ~4 years now.

Mike Cohn on the other hand has had a profound impact on how I have been doing “requirements”, software planning and estimation. I look at Mike’s work as a sort of 2nd generation of stuff on top of scrum. Mike’s work in using user stories as the product backlog has been instrumental in how I view “requirements”/ feature management - product backlog development. This set of work has built upon the initial “scrum stuff” in a way that has really helped deliver software.

This particular course is focused on the product owner role. I have been spending lots of time “getting together meaningful product backlogs” for all of the teams moving to scrum at my current firm. It is an interesting effort and challenge. I am also trying to coordinated stuff between multiple product backlogs, deal with lots of “technical focused teams”, “infrastructure teams” etc. In a big firm - there is a lot going on! It seems this course is right in the space I need some extra guidance. I think I am aware of all of the writing, newsgroups etc - and these resources have been extremely valueable in going about my business. I have all of the “textbook answers” - now - where the rubber meets the road in daily life - any extra guidance would be great.

-Chris