The Professional Product Owner’s Guide to Maximizing Value with Scrum “This book presents a method of communicating our desires, cogently, coherently, and with a minimum of fuss and bother.” —Ken Schwaber, Chairman & Founder, Scrum.org The role of the Product Owner is more crucial than ever. But it’s about much more than mechanics: it’s about taking accountability and refocusing on value as the primary objective of all you do. In The Professional Product Owner, two leading experts in successful Scrum product ownership show exactly how to do this. You’ll learn how to identify where value can be found, measure it, and maximize it throughout your entire product lifecycle. Drawing on their combined 40+ years of experience in using agile and Scrum in product management, Don McGreal and Ralph Jocham guide you through all facets of envisioning, emerging, and maturing a product using the Scrum framework. McGreal and Jocham discuss strategy, showing how to connect Vision, Value, and Validation in ROI-focused agile product management. They lay out Scrum best-practices for managing complexity and continuously delivering value, and they define the concrete practices and tools you can use to manage Product Backlogs and release plans, all with the goal of making you a more successful Product Owner. Throughout, the authors share revealing personal experiences that illuminate obstacles to success and show how they can be overcome. Define success from the “outside in,” using external customer-driven measurements to guide development and maximize value Bring empowerment and entrepreneurship to the Product Owner’s role, and align everyone behind a shared business model Use Evidence-Based Management (EBMgt) to invest in the right places, make smarter decisions, and reduce risk Effectively apply Scrum’s Product Owner role, artifacts, and events Populate and manage Product Backlogs, and use just-in-time specifications Plan and manage releases, improve transparency, and reduce technical debt Scale your product, not your Scrum Use Scrum to inject autonomy, mastery, and purpose into your product team’s work Whatever your role in product management or agile development, this guide will help you deliver products that offer more value, more rapidly, and more often. Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

The brain of a Scrum Team is the Product Owner. Product Owners maximize the value of the product and optimize the work of the Development Team. It is essential for the professionals playing this role to standardize their knowledge of product ownership and benchmark their learning. This book is a clear and concise guide to those preparing for Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner 1 (PSPO 1) assessment certification. The book covers the thorough scope of assessment areas and provides more than 120 practice questions.

“Our job as Scrum professionals is to continually improve our ability to use Scrum to deliver products and services that help customers achieve valuable outcomes. This book will help you to improve your ability to apply Scrum.” –From the Foreword by Ken Schwaber, co-author of Scrum Mastering Professional Scrum is for anyone who wants to deliver increased value by using Scrum more effectively. Leading Scrum practitioners Stephanie Ockerman and Simon Reindl draw on years of Scrum training and coaching to help you return to first principles and apply Scrum with the professionalism required to achieve its transformative potential. The authors aim to help you focus on proven Scrum approaches for improving quality, getting and using fast feedback, and becoming more adaptable, instead of “going through the motions” and settling for only modest improvements. Whether you’re a Scrum Master, Development Team member, or Product Owner, you’ll find practical advice for facing challenges with transparency and courage, overcoming a wide array of common challenges, and continually improving your Scrum practice. Realistically assess your current Scrum practice, and identify areas for improvement Recognize what a great Scrum Team looks like and get there Focus on “Done”–not “sort-of-Done” or “almost-Done” Measure and optimize the value delivered by every Product Increment Improve the way you plan, develop, and grow Clear away wider organizational impediments to agility and professionalism Overcome common misconceptions that stand in the way of progress Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

This pocket guide is the one book to read for everyone who wants to learn about Scrum. The book covers all roles, rules and the main principles underpinning Scrum, and is based on the Scrum Guide Edition 2013. A broader context to this fundamental description of Scrum is given by describing the past and the future of Scrum. The author, Gunther Verheyen, has created a concise, yet complete and passionate reference about Scrum. The book demonstrates his core view that Scrum is about a journey, a journey of discovery and fun. He designed the book to be a helpful guide on that journey. Ken Schwaber, Scrum co-creator says that this book currently is the best available description of Scrum around. The book combines some rare characteristics: • It describes Scrum in its entirety, yet places it in a broader context (of past and future). • The author focuses on the subject, Scrum, in a way that it truly supports the reader. The book has a language and style in line with the philosophy of Scrum. • The book shows the playfulness of Scrum. David Starr and Ralph Jocham, Professional Scrum trainers and early agile adopters, say that this is the ultimate book to be advised as follow-up book to the students they teach Scrum to and to teams and managers of organizations that they coach Scrum to.

The First Guide to Scrum-Based Agile Product Management In Agile Product Management with Scrum, leading Scrum consultant Roman Pichler uses real-world examples to demonstrate how product owners can create successful products with Scrum. He describes a broad range of agile product management practices, including making agile product discovery work, taking advantage of emergent requirements, creating the minimal marketable product, leveraging early customer feedback, and working closely with the development team. Benefitting from Pichler’s extensive experience, you’ll learn how Scrum product ownership differs from traditional product management and how to avoid and overcome the common challenges that Scrum product owners face. Coverage includes Understanding the product owner’s role: what product owners do, how they do it, and the surprising implications Envisioning the product: creating a compelling product vision to galvanize and guide the team and stakeholders Grooming the product backlog: managing the product backlog effectively even for the most complex products Planning the release: bringing clarity to scheduling, budgeting, and functionality decisions Collaborating in sprint meetings: understanding the product owner’s role in sprint meetings, including the dos and don’ts Transitioning into product ownership: succeeding as a product owner and establishing the role in the enterprise This book is an indispensable resource for anyone who works as a product owner, or expects to do so, as well as executives and coaches interested in establishing agile product management.

Practical, Proven Tools for Leading and Empowering High-Performing Agile Teams A leader is like a farmer, who doesn’t grow crops by pulling them but instead creates the perfect environment for the crops to grow and thrive. If you lead in organizations that have adopted agile methods, you know it’s crucial to create the right environment for your agile teams. Traditional tools such as Gantt charts, detailed plans, and internal KPIs aren’t adequate for complex and fast-changing markets, but merely trusting employees and teams to self-manage is insufficient as well. In Agile Leadership Toolkit, longtime agile leader Peter Koning provides a practical and invaluable steering wheel for agile leaders and their teams. Drawing on his extensive experience helping leaders drive more value from agile, Koning offers a comprehensive toolkit for continuously improving your environment, including structures, metrics, meeting techniques, and governance for creating thriving teams that build disruptive products and services. Koning thoughtfully explains how to lead agile teams at large scale and how team members fit into both the team and the wider organization. Architect environments that help teams learn, grow, and flourish for the long term Get timely feedback everyone can use to improve Co-create goals focused on the customer, not the internal organization Help teams brainstorm and visualize the value of their work to the customer Facilitate team ownership and accelerate team learning Support culture change, and design healthier team habits Make bigger changes faster This actionable guide is for leaders at all levels—whether you’re supervising your first agile team, responsible for multiple teams, or lead the entire company. Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

Hiren Doshi, Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer & Coach in his book, Scrum Insights for Practitioners: The Scrum Guide Companion helps the practitioners master the Scrum framework by gaining in-depth practical insights and helps answer questions like: What are some common myths, mysteries, and misconceptions of Scrum? The Scrum Guide recommends three to nine members in a Development Team, but we have fifteen members. Is this Scrum? Can you share some tactics to do effective Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, and Product Backlog Refinement? My designation is development manager. Does this mean I have no role in Scrum? How is Scrum Empirical? Can Scrum Master and Product Owner be the same person? We don't have a Scrum Master. Are we still practicing Scrum? What does Self-Organization really mean? How does Scrum embrace the four values and twelve principles of the Agile Manifesto? Please share a case study on Scrum based product development? Recommendations for the book from the Scrum champions Take advantage of Hiren's vast experience and avoid making the common errors people make as they begin their journey. This book contains a wealth of practical information that will be useful to readers as they work to implement the basic theory found in The Scrum Guide-Steve Porter, team member, Scrum.org In his book Scrum Insights for Practitioners, Hiren has extended the core rules of The Scrum Guide with practices he has found useful. Hiren answers questions regarding Scrum that potentially remain unanswered even after one reads The Scrum Guide. Hiren dismantles common misconceptions about Scrum, regardless of the source of such misconceptions. Hiren elaborates on basic information provided in The Scrum Guide, as well as on the principles underlying Scrum-Gunther Verheyen, Author of "Scrum - A Pocket Guide, a Smart Travel Companion" Hiren Doshi has written a fine companion to The Scrum Guide, filling in some of the intentional gaps left in the Scrum framework. Using this companion along with The Scrum Guide will undoubtedly improve the outlook for those teams that internalize its teachings."-Charles Bradley, ScrumCrazy.com This book will help you understand the nuances of Scrum. It takes a very practical approach toward implementing Scrum without compromising on its values and principles. A useful and handy reference for Scrum practitioners!-Gopinath R, Agile coach and practitioner