A course based credential for Product Owners. Scrum Alliance awards it for attending a sixteen hour course taught by a Certified Scrum Trainer, and states that no test is required to earn it.
Set by the training company Scrum Alliance publishes no single price. The independent training company handles registration, payment and accommodations, so the fee varies by trainer, country and delivery format. Scrum Alliance states that the registration payment covers the sixteen hour course, the Scrum Alliance account and certification, a complimentary two year membership and the training materials the trainer provides.
Format
A sixteen hour course taught by a Certified Scrum Trainer, delivered live online or in person. There is no test and nothing to sit afterwards, since attending the course results in certification. The candidate then accepts the licence agreement in their Scrum Alliance account and downloads the certificate and digital badge.
Pass mark
There is no pass mark because there is no test. Scrum Alliance states that at this time no test is required to earn the CSPO.
Prerequisites
None. Scrum Alliance sets no prerequisites for joining a CSPO course and suggests that anyone new to scrum read the Scrum Guide first.
Renewal
Two year term. The holder renews either by taking any new Scrum Alliance certification course, which renews every Scrum Alliance certification they hold, or by logging 20 Scrum Education Units and paying the $100 foundational renewal fee. Each hour of qualifying continuing education counts as one SEU. An SEU must carry an activity date within the two and a half years before the certification expires, and the holder may claim each one for a single renewal.
Based on
The Scrum Alliance CSPO Learning Objectives and the Scrum Foundations Learning Objectives, which draw on the 2020 Scrum Guide, the Manifesto for Agile Software Development and the Scrum values
What it covers
What the course covers. The CSPO is earned by attending a course, not by passing anything. Scrum Alliance states plainly that no test is required and that successfully attending the sixteen hour course taught by a Certified Scrum Trainer results in certification. No amount of private study earns it. The questions here are knowledge checks on the material a course must cover, so a candidate arrives knowing the vocabulary and can spend the 16 hours on the parts that need a room full of people.
Every CSPO course must cover two published sets of learning objectives. The Scrum Foundations set holds scrum theory, the scrum team, the events with their timeboxes and the three artifacts with their commitments. The five CSPO objectives are product owner core competencies, goal setting and planning, understanding customers and users, validating product assumptions and working with the product backlog. Trainers may add ancillary topics of their own and must clearly indicate them as ancillary. The weights below show how much of the published objectives each area accounts for. There is no exam behind them.
Delivery sits with independent trainers, so the depth of a course depends on the trainer running it. The published learning objectives set the minimum every course must reach, and what a trainer adds beyond that is their own. Reading the Scrum Guide beforehand and bringing a real product to work on turns the two days into something usable.
The syllabus5 domains · free
Scrum Alliance’s own domains. Each opens its own page listing the concepts beneath it, and each concept has a page of its own.
Three Sprints into a new product, usage data shows that the feature the team has been building for six weeks is opened by four per cent of users. The Product Owner suggests carrying on because the work is nearly finished and stopping now would waste the effort so far. Which response is most consistent with empiricism?
AFinish the feature, because abandoning nearly complete work wastes the investment already made.
BAdapt the Product Backlog now on the basis of what has been observed, and treat the six weeks as already spent regardless of the decision.
CContinue for one more Sprint and decide at the Sprint Review after that.
DEscalate to the sponsor who requested the feature and follow their decision.