PSPO II study guide
PSPO II · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
Professional Scrum Product Owner II (PSPO II) sits in the middle of Scrum.org's Product Owner certification path, which the Scrum.org site describes as offering "fundamental, advanced & distinguished levels of Product Owner knowledge in levels I, II & III". Level I confirms that you know the vocabulary of Product Ownership; level II probes whether you can exercise judgment with it - ordering a Product Backlog when every stakeholder claims priority, weighing customer input against empirical evidence, and steering a product by outcomes rather than by output. The PSPO II study guide has 5 sections and about 1,765 words.
01Understanding and Applying the Scrum Framework
Scrum is a lightweight framework for addressing complex adaptive problems while delivering value. It rests on empirical process control - transparency, inspection, adaptation - and is upheld by the Scrum Values: commitment, focus, openness, respect, courage.
372 words, about 2 min02Product Ownership and Product Management
The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team. That accountability is expressed through effective Product Backlog management: developing and communicating the Product Goal, creating and clearly communicating backlog items, ordering them, and ensuring the backlog is transparent, visible and understood.
357 words, about 2 min03Managing Products with Agility: Product Backlog and Value
The Product Backlog is an emergent, ordered list of what is needed to improve the product - the single source of work undertaken by the Scrum Team. It is never complete.
350 words, about 2 min04Stakeholders, Customers and Users
Users interact with the product. Customers choose and often pay for it - they may never use it.
343 words, about 2 min05Evidence-Based Management and Empirical Value Measurement
Evidence-Based Management (EBM) is a framework for improving value delivery under uncertainty by grounding decisions in evidence. Its logic is empirical: set a goal, make the current state and the desired state transparent, form hypotheses, run small experiments, inspect results, adapt.
343 words, about 2 min