If you have never been a part of software delivery and want
to enter this world as a scrum master or product owner then this blog is just
for you. As a newbie SM or PO in software delivery, it might be good for you to
take a couple of courses to understand basics of software delivery. The goal of
these is not for you to learn coding although it is a very good segway should
you be intrigued. These courses are not Nirvana! They will set the path though
to help you understand where to look. There are many skills that are
interchangeably used between scrum master and product owner. These are courses
I found online (Not all of it is free) but there is a lot of material on this
on the internet. You can go thru the course content and find free articles/content
online. Take your pick.
Scrum master and product owner training
There are several avenues to get certified as a scrum master
or product owner. Some of them are as below –
- Scrum.org’s PSM or PSPO – These certifications do not expire and are a little more work than CSM. IN my opinion this makes sense because these principles and techniques are not dependent on technology or industry. It is also cheaper than CSM/CSPO at least in North America.
- ScrumAlliance.org’s CSM or CSPO – The certification is valid for 2 years and has to be renewed. The test is relatively easier.
It is best if you can get your company sponsor these certifications.
If your company doesn’t sponsor it or you are unemployed and trying to get in –
Go for scrum.org.
Software Development Life Cycles
Although as scrum master or product owner, you would be
working on agile methodology, it would be useful to learn more about other
methodologies. You can employ techniques of different methodologies based on
your situation. Every methodology has its pros and cons.
- Waterfall – Traditionally companies used waterfall for software development. What this meant was that it took months or years to release software to production, costing business several million dollars. Companies are now mostly switching over to agile because of faster feedback and better transparency.
- Agile – In order to shorten the feedback loops, agile came into existence.
a.
Scrum
b.
Kanban
c.
Pair programming
System Analysis skills
In order to understand your
ecosystem of teams (dependencies and stakeholders), some level of system analysis
skills is needed. The product owner role requires more of your analytical
skills. This is just entry level stuff. In a later post, we will talk in depth
about that.
There are several technologies
like .Net, Java etc. and even open source ones which are springing up daily.
RELAX – You are not expected to learn these technologies. You need to learn the
concepts so that you can understand the work to be done. For instance you can
write an API in Java as well as .Net. As long as you understand the various
components you are covered.
- https://www.udemy.com/business-analysis-ba/
- https://www.udemy.com/process-mapping-process-flowcharts/
- Basics of Application Programming Interface (API) - https://www.udemy.com/course/learn-and-understand-apis-and-restful-apis/
- User Interface (UI) - https://www.udemy.com/design-rules/?couponCode=
Agile management tools
Companies use several tools to manage their backlog. These
are very easy to use but very powerful. For many companies these are the
popular choices. AS a product owner/scrum master, you will have to be
proficient with these tools to enable your teams and improve productivity.
- Atlassian’s JIRA and confluence - https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence
- Asana – https://asana.com/
- Trello – https://trello.com/en
All of these have similar features and there are several
companies that have free/paid plugins on top of these tools. As you advance,
you will try out these plugins. These are easy to learn.
Hope that this helps you get started.
Disclaimer - The links provided in this post are based on personal experience only. Please use at your own discretion.
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