Effective Product Owner
Be the Product Owner for Successful Agile Teams
Guide your team from vision to delivery with practical techniques and AI-enhanced exercises.
- Create an inspiring vision and turn it into actionable goals.
- Master backlog refinement and prioritization.
- Build stronger relationships with stakeholders and your Scrum team.
Chosen by companies in SaaS, Healthcare, Government, Consulting, Financial Services, Retail, Energy, Aerospace and more.
Taught by People Who Helped Shape Scrum
Mountain Goat Software was founded by Mike Cohn, a co-founder of both the Scrum Alliance and the Agile Alliance, and author of some of the most influential books in Agile software development, including User Stories Applied, Agile Estimating & Planning, and Succeeding with Agile.
For more than 25 years, Mountain Goat Software has helped teams and organizations adopt Scrum in ways that actually work—across industries, team types, and organizational cultures.
When you train with Mountain Goat, you’re learning from people who have:
- Helped define modern Agile practice
- Guided thousands of teams
- Seen what works, and what doesn’t, over decades
Why Take Effective Product Owner?
This course equips you to balance vision with detail, prioritize for value, and build delivery plans stakeholders trust. With a customizable agenda, you’ll focus on the skills important to your role including story writing, backlog refinement, and stakeholder engagement.
The agenda for the Effective Product Owner course is a customizable version of our Certified Scrum Product Owner course. You will work with your instructor to select the content that best meets your needs.
How We Approach Teaching Effective Product Ownership
Product Ownership Is About Decisions, Not Documentation
A Product Owner’s job is not to keep artifacts updated. It is to make good product decisions, especially when the right answer is not obvious.
Refinement Should Create Clarity, Not Churn
We treat backlog refinement as an ongoing way to get work ready at the right time, not as endless rewriting or premature detail.
Prioritization Should Create Focus, Not Sprawl
Effective Product Owners do more than rank requests. They create focus by making tradeoffs, saying no, and keeping the backlog aligned to what matters most.
The Course Should Fit the Team, Not the Other Way Around
Because this is a private course, we can emphasize the skills your team needs most—whether that is stronger stories, better planning, sharper prioritization, or more confident stakeholder conversations.
What You'll Be Able to Do
Use story mapping and story-writing workshops to build and prioritize your product backlog.
Uncover users' and stakeholders' true needs
Create delivery plans that balance near- and long-term goals.
Your Mountain Goat Instructors
Mountain Goat has handpicked instructors that share our training values. These are people with deep experience, who are leading teams with agile today and can give you real-world answers about what does and doesn’t work.
Mike Cohn
With 20+ years of agile training experience, Mike has honed a talent for explaining agile concepts with clear illustrations and real-life examples. Participants enjoy his passion for teaching the agile methodologies in a relatable and digestible way.
Read more...Mike is CEO of Mountain Goat Software, and one of the industry’s most well-respected Certified Scrum Trainers. He is the author of User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development, Agile Estimating and Planning, and Succeeding with Agile. He is a co-founder and former board member of the Scrum Alliance, and a co-founder of the non-profit Agile Alliance, home of the Agile Manifesto.
Scrum Certifications include: CSM, CST, CSPO, A-CSM, CSP-SM, CSP-PO
Lance Dacy
As a Certified Scrum Trainer, Lance has trained and coached teams through many successful Scrum implementations since 2011, from Fortune 20 companies to small start-ups. Lance is also experienced in showing agile coaches and managers how to help cross functional, self-organizing teams deliver high value for customers as early as possible by using Scrum.
Read more...Lance is a true evangelist for Scrum, having founded the successful DFW Scrum User Group in Dallas as an outlet for professional networking and a community sounding-board for Scrum. He has a fun and generous personality, and shares his passion for Scrum in every course.
Scrum Certifications include: CSM, CST, CSPO, CAL-1, A-CSM, A-CSPO, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, Path to CSP Educator, Scrum Foundations Educator.
Brian Milner
Starting out as a developer, Brian worked up through management layers, then transitioned to Scrum Master, then Coach and now Certified Scrum Trainer. His practical experience in both waterfall and agile organizations helps him clarify what works and what doesn’t, plus he has many years’ experience helping teams transition to agile.
Read more...Brian also brings more than 20 years of software development experience to his classes. People remark on his ability to answer even tough questions with ease, enthusiasm, and insight.
Scrum Certifications include: CSM, CST, CSPO, CAL-Educator, CAL-1, A-CSM, A-CSPO, CSP-CM, CSP-PO, Path to CSP Educator, Scrum Foundations Educator.
Scott Dunn
Scott Dunn has more than 20 years of experience in management, project management (PMP), engagement management, and software development (MCSD). He’s worked in a variety of areas and industries from social media to mortgage banking, healthcare, defense, e-commerce, plus state and local government sectors.
Read more...He has helped coach and train at dozens of companies transitioning to an agile approach using Scrum. Clients have included EMC/Dell Technologies, Yahoo!, LaserFiche, Kaiser Permanente, Rovi/Tivo, eBay, and GE Healthcare.
Scott is passionate about strengths-based teams and solutions-based approaches to people and organizational issues. He is an enthusiastic and encouraging trainer.
Scrum Certifications include: CSM, CST, CSD, CSPO, CEC, Educator-CAL, CAL-1, CAL, A-CSM, A-CSD, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, CSP-D, Path to CSP Educator, CSD Educator, Scrum Foundations Educator.
Lucy O’Keefe
Lucy has been a developer, Product Owner and Scrum Master in many scrum teams during her 28 years of IT experience. This brings a valuable perspective to the Teaching Assistant role as she helps students have a great training experience.
Read more...“I just love it when I see the light bulb go off during a class and know that the student really gets it.”
Lucy also brings a rich travel experience to her role. She is originally from Brazil, lived in Italy during high school and then came to the US for college—where she lived in the same dorm as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson! These days she resides in Charlotte, NC with her two wonderful dogs Chloe and Ollie.
Cort Sharp
Cort has degrees in physics and computer science, as well as experience coding and QA testing. If you’ve taken a live, online course with us you may have seen Cort in his producer’s role, making sure things run smoothly and students have a great experience. He also acts as Scrum Master for the team of producers, making sure that they have the support needed to do their work with confidence.
Read more...“It’s awesome being able to end a 2-day class with people shocked at how quickly it went by and how engaging and fun it was.”
In addition to his love for agile, Cort is also a serious swimmer and has been coaching swimmers for 5 years. He once met Michael Phelps and a wingspan comparison ensued. Cort’s was longer, but it is believed Phelps was gracious about the defeat and no longer holds it against Cort.
Join thousands of Scrum Masters, agile practitioners, and leaders who have learned Scrum with Mountain Goat Software—and applied it successfully in the real world.
Course Includes:
Course Outline
Scrum Overview
- Agile
- Scrum
The Product Owner
- What Is a Product Owner?
- Characteristics
- Responsibilities
- Product Owners in Different Contexts
- Quarterly Activities
- Involvement over Time
- Asking for Clarifications, Not Changes
- Dealing with Difficult Situations
- Business Analysts & Product Managers
- Scaling the Product Owner Role
Visioning
- Specifying the Problem, Not the Solution
- Creating a Concise Vision
- Five Techniques for Communicating Vision
Customers and Users
- Validating Assumptions
- User Roles
- User Role Modeling
- Personas
- Roles vs. Personas
- Decorated Roles & Extreme Characters
The Product Backlog
- What Is a Product Backlog?
- Progressive Elaboration
- Product Backlog Refinement
- User Stories
- Adding Detail to User Stories
- Job Stories
- Technical Stories
- Themes & Epics
- Splitting Stories with the SPIDR Approach
- Who Contributes Items?
- Story Writing Workshop
- Story Mapping
Prioritizing
- Key Concepts in Prioritization
- Factors in Prioritization
- Formal Approaches
- What Different Stakeholders Value
- Collaborative Prioritization Techniques
Planning
- Accuracy and Precision
- Velocity
- Using a Velocity Range
- Fixed-Date Plans
- Fixed-Scope Plans
Developers
- Responsibilities
- Component and Feature Teams
The Scrum Master
- Responsibilities
- Description of Role
Got a Question?
What happens when you contact us?
- We’ll get back to you within a day.
- Answer your training questions and discuss any custom needs.
- Recommend the best agile training path for your teams and goals.
- Want to talk to someone? Schedule a call.