Being a Product Owner with No Direction From Above with Richard Cheng

What do you do when you're a Product Owner who gets no direction or support from above? You and the other POs are each told your product is the top priority for the organization but there are not enough developers to do the work. You don't have clarity on company strategy or what the stakeholders want. 

In this episode, Richard Cheng is back for a discussion about how a PO can survive given the challenges listed above.

The intro to this podcast includes details of some new things I'm working on - The Agile Network, my new Art of War for Collaboration course, and the Guided Personal Kanban courses I'm doing for Modus Institute; as well as the podcasting I did at Agile 2024, so.. here are links for that stuff. 

You can find the podcast here.

Links from Dave's Intro

• The Agile Network* https://theagilenetwork.com/

*If you’d like a discount on an annual membership or want to try a month for free, send an email to dave@theageilnetwork.com and let me know.

• Agile 2024 Interviews: https://drunkenpm.blogspot.com/2024/07/agile-2024-all-interviews.html
• The Art of War for Collaboration Course https://modusinstitute.com/course/art-of-war-collaboration
• Guided Personal Kanban (September 2024) https://modusinstitute.com/course/guided-pk-sep-usa
• Public Scrum Training CSM/CSPO/A-CSPO https://www.scrumalliance.org/courses-events/search?tr=14153&cnty=US

How to Pick the Right Scrum Training For You with Vic Bonacci

Vic Bonacci joins me for a conversation about what factors you should consider when signing up for a Scrum Certification (or really any kind of certification) class. Price is definitely a factor, but not the only one that matters. You are making a huge investment of time and money. Choose wisely.

You can find the podcast here.

Becoming a Certified Scrum Trainer w/ Anderson Hummel

Last fall Anderson Diniz Hummel became a Certified Scrum Trainer. This means that he has been approved by the Scrum Alliance to teach Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Product Owner classes. The journey to becoming a CST is never easy and never as quick as anyone would like and for Anderson, it was over three years from the time he first started working on it. (And this is after already having taught at the University level for a number of years.)

During the recent holidays Anderson and I had a conversation about what his journey to CST was like. We recorded this in hopes of helping offer some encouragement, advice and support for others who are headed down the path.



To help provide some background about the CST designation, according to the Scrum Alliance’s 2018 State of Scrum Report, there are over 500,000 certified practitioners of Scrum worldwide. Within that community, only 234 people are certified by the Scrum Alliance as being allowed to teach Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Product Owner classes. So, it is a rare certification to have and many people who begin heading down the path do not have a great understanding of what to expect. Hopefully this interview will help with that.

SHOW NOTES

• 00:09 Podcast Begins - What’s up with Anderson
• 01:56 Anderson’s background as a teacher and how that led to him applying for Certified Scrum Trainer
• 03:10 How is teaching Certified Scrum classes different than teaching at the University level
• 04:39 Anderson’s 3 year journey to become a Certified Scrum Trainer
• 10:17 Being a CST is a lot more than just teaching Scrum correctly
• 11:36 How Anderson went from failing art exams in school to excelling at creating art in his classes
• 15:45 How big a role does experience working on Scrum teams play into teaching CSM and CSPO classes
• 19:25 Anderson’s advice for coaches who want to become Certified Scrum Trainers
• 25:20 Understanding how teaching all day impacts you as a human and planning recovery time
• 27:32 A word of caution for new CSTs who try to book too many back to back classes
• 29:32 Parting words of encouragement and advice for CST candidates
• 32:25 Getting in touch with Anderson
• 32:27 Interview Ends

ANDERSON's ARTWORK

CST CERTIFICATION

https://www.scrumalliance.org/certifications/trainers/cst-certification

CONTACTING ANDERSON

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/andersonhummel/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/anderson_hummel

Tips for New ScrumMasters with Richard Cheng

You’ve taken CSM Training and passed the Exam. Now what?
In this podcast Certified Scrum Trainers Richard Cheng and Dave Prior share their thoughts on most important things that Certified Scrum Master students can do to be successful Scrum Masters once they have completed the training and passed the CSM Assessment Exam. The podcast includes an exploration of why each of the recommendations is critical to making Scrum work and both Richard and Dave share examples from their experiences in the field working with teams who did, and did not have these practices in play.


Links Mentioned in the Podcast
Geoffrey Moore Vision Statement https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/05/09/product-vision/
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore http://amzn.to/2h3ruRS
Roman Pichler’s website (where you can find the tools we mentioned) http://www.romanpichler.com
Roman Pichler’s books https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Pichler/e/B00359XCV2/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1482305119&sr=8-1

Contact Info
Richard Cheng
Works for Excella Consulting https://www.excella.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RichardKCheng
Email: richard.cheng@excella.com


Dave Prior
Works for LeadingAgile http://www.leadingagile.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/mrsungo
Email: mrsungo@gmail.com
Blog: http://drunkenpm.blogspot.com

Music
The music featured in the podcast was downloaded from The Free Music Archive http://freemusicarchive.org
Intro Song
Cash Rules by Ari de Niro. For more info: http://www.needledrop.co/wp/artists/ari-de-niro/ or http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ari_de_Niro/
Outro Song
Cherry Skies  - The New Mystical Troubadours. Find them here: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_New_Mystikal_Troubadours/