Product Owner Key Skills Training – Impact Mapping, Story Mapping and Valuable User Stories Training

Do you find it challenging to break down user stories into manageable, valuable increments? Are you struggling with prioritizing stories or securing commitments from business stakeholders on their goals? If you face difficulties in determining when a story is complete, or if you need to manage and understand the scope of multiple stories to achieve a business objective, this workshop is for you. Join us for an engaging, interactive session where you will learn the art of optimizing user stories for maximum business impact. Bring your product owners and business sponsors to master practical techniques in story prioritization, estimation, and strategic planning, ensuring your team delivers effectively and efficiently. 

Course Objectives

In this interactive workshop led by Gojko Adzic, participants will explore key skills essential for Product Owners, focusing on Impact Mapping, Story Mapping, and crafting valuable user stories. By the end of this course, participants will be able to: 

• Efficient Backlog Management: Effectively refine large backlogs and identify key user stories.
• Effective Stakeholder Prioritization: Master techniques to align and prioritize stakeholder interests for project success.
• Strategic Project Visioning: Develop skills to create a unified project vision for more focused development efforts.
• Outcome-Focused Reporting: Establish reporting mechanisms that emphasize outcomes over mere activity.
• Flexible Scope Management: Equip business sponsors to embrace agile flexibility, avoiding traditional pitfalls.
• Value-Based Prioritization: Prioritize user stories based on their potential to impact business goals.
• Impact Mapping Techniques: Conduct impact mapping sessions to link stories directly with business outcomes.
• Splitting Complex Stories: Learn to divide complex stories into smaller, actionable, valuable tasks.
• Technical Balance: Avoid the trap of overemphasis on technical details that do not add user value.
• User Story Mapping Mastery: Utilize user story mapping to better plan and visualize project workflows.

Our Course includes

• Impact Mapping Book: "Impact Mapping: Making a Big Impact with Software Products and Projects" by Gojko Adzic. This book offers strategic insights into aligning business objectives with software development.
• Humans vs Computers Book: Another valuable resource from Gojko Adzic, this book delves into the challenges of human-computer interactions and offers solutions to common software design problems.
• Fifty Quick Ideas Book: "Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve Your User Stories" by Gojko Adzic. Enhance your skills in crafting effective and actionable user stories with this practical guide.
• Exclusive Mailing List Access: Stay connected with access to a dedicated mailing list for ongoing support and answers to your future questions.
• Curated Recommendations: Receive a curated list of Gojko’s recommended readings, including influential books, insightful articles, and must-see presentations.
• Printed Handouts: Detailed handouts are provided for all participants, containing key information from the workshop for easy reference and review.
• Full-Day Catering: Enjoy beverages, snacks, and a catered lunch throughout the day to enhance your learning experience.

Target Audience

• Product Owners - Looking to improve their skills in prioritizing user stories, aligning stakeholder expectations, and ensuring valuable, user-centered product outcomes.
• Business Analysts - Who want to strengthen their approach to defining requirements and bridging the communication gap between stakeholders and development teams through structured techniques like impact mapping and story mapping.
• Developers and UX Designers - Interested in understanding how to contribute to the story mapping and impact mapping processes, allowing for better collaboration with product owners and alignment with business goals. 
• Stakeholders and Business Sponsors - Who wish to engage in agile processes more effectively, gain a clearer understanding of the product’s strategic direction, and see how to achieve valuable, incremental releases.
• Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters - Seeking effective tools to facilitate backlog refinement, improve team alignment, and guide product owners in delivering maximum business value.

This course benefits anyone involved in agile product development who wants to achieve better outcomes through improved prioritization, clearer user stories, and actionable feedback. 

Course Outline Product Owner Key Skills Training:Modules and Key Topics

Day 1:

• Morning Sessions: 
  • Managing a Large Backlog: Strategies for handling large backlogs and competing stakeholder demands. 
  • Capturing Real Value: Techniques for describing and capturing real value in small user stories that fit into a larger project vision. 
  • Measuring Progress: Alternatives to story points for measuring progress and recognizing true success over mere activity. 

• Afternoon Sessions: 
  • Avoiding Water-Scrum-Fall: How to prevent dependencies from obstructing agile releases. 
  • Introduction to Impact Mapping: Using impact mapping to facilitate discussions on value and success. 
  • Conducting Impact Mapping Sessions: Hands-on training to run effective impact mapping sessions.
  • Using Impact Maps: Techniques for aligning stakeholders and aiding in product discovery. 

Day 2:

• Morning Sessions: 
  • Feedback from Users: Methods for gathering and interpreting user feedback effectively, avoiding misleading insights. 
  • Splitting Complex Stories: Techniques to break down large, complex stories into manageable tasks. 
  • Avoiding Technical Stories: Strategies to stay focused on user value and avoid getting bogged down by technical tasks.

• • Afternoon Sessions:
    • Incorporating User Research: How to integrate user research findings into release planning. 
    • Using Story Maps for Release Planning: Applying story maps to plan releases, especially when managing high-risk situations. 
    • Facilitating Story Mapping Workshops: Best practices for conducting successful story mapping workshops and avoiding common pitfalls.

Trainer: Gojko Adzic

Gojko is a strategic software delivery consultant who works with ambitious teams to improve the quality of their software products and processes. He specialises in agile and lean quality improvement, in particular agile testing, specification by example and behaviour driven development.

Gojko’s book Specification by Example was awarded the #2 spot on the top 100 agile books for 2012 and won the Jolt Award for the best book of 2012. In 2011, he was voted by peers as the most influential agile testing professional, and his blog won the UK agile award for the best online publication in 2010.