8 min read
Private CSPO Class for Your Team: Online or On-Site?
How a private CSPO class works for a team, online or on-site: a pre-call with leaders, the class, and a follow-up with leaders and the cohort.
A private Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) class beats sending people to a public one, because the whole team learns the same toolbox together and then connects it to its own work. It is less about Scrum itself and more about real-world methods you can apply right after the class, with the right environment and cover from above. Online or on-site both work, as long as the whole group is in the same kind of room. I run either one, and I do not run hybrid.
The short version:
- A private class has three parts: a pre-call with your leaders, the class itself, and a follow-up of a few hours with the leaders and the cohort.
- In class, people learn the concepts and practice them in a non-work setting. In the debrief after each section, we connect them to the team’s real work, so people start forming ideas for when they are back at their desks.
- Teams of 4 to 24 work. For small teams, 6 to 12 is the sweet spot.
- Online on Zoom and on-site are both real options. Pick one for the whole group.
- On-site, travel outside Richmond is a fixed fee, quoted up front.
- For current pricing, go to my training page. I keep prices there so this page never goes stale.
I’m Michael Vizdos, a Certified Scrum Trainer® (CST) since 2006, one of the first 25 in the world. My Certified ScrumMaster license is #72, one of the first 75 ever issued (my Scrum Alliance profile). A recent two-day private CSPO class, initiated by the organization’s CIO, is the example below.
Why train a team together instead of sending people to a public class?
In a public class, each person learns the material and then goes home to a team that did not hear it. The language, the exercises and the “aha” moments stay with one person, who has to explain them to everyone else.
When the team takes the class together, they leave with the same words and the same tools. They also find out where they disagree in a room where it is safe to disagree, with a trainer there to help. Most of the value of a private class is in those conversations.
A private class also keeps the team’s context in mind. We do not work the team’s actual problems in the room. People learn the concepts first and practice them in a setting where nothing at work is at stake. Then, in the debrief after each section, we make soft connections to the real work together. The agenda is the same every time, but the experience is not: it depends on the group and on each person in the room, and on how their conversations flow. That is the main reason I recommend it for a team that has to ship something together next month. If you are one person on your own, a seat in a public class is the better fit.
How many people is the right number?
My private classes work for teams of 4 to 24. If you have a small team, 6 to 12 is the sweet spot: everyone gets a turn to speak, the group still splits into two working teams, and nobody can hide.
Online or on-site?
Both. This is a real choice, not a compromise.
- Online works well for teams spread across offices or time zones. I use Zoom, including its built-in whiteboards, plus Google Docs and Slides. Two days can also be run as four half days, which is easier on calendars.
- On-site is better when the team already sits together and you want the room to do some of the work. I fly in the morning before. Travel outside Richmond is additional, a fixed fee quoted up front.
Choose one for the whole group. A class with half the team in a room and half on a screen is a worse experience for everyone, so I do not teach it.
Why the pre-call and the follow-up matter
Before the class, online or on-site, I talk with your leaders. It is a conversation about their needs: for themselves, for the organization and for the team members who will attend. I do not turn that into class content about your team’s problems. I carry it with me so the debriefs land closer to home.
After the class, I spend a few hours with the leaders and the cohort. We go through the real-world issues people run into, what they try, and what is stuck. Then we decide what comes next. That is where the concepts meet the real work.
What does a CSPO class actually cover?
A CSPO class is about the Product Owner: the one person accountable for maximizing the value of the product. We spend little time on Scrum theory. Most of the time goes to a toolbox of methods you can use as soon as the class ends. In the private classes I run, the team covers:
- Finding out what customers need before building anything, with short interviews and design thinking tools.
- Building and ordering a Product Backlog by value, including the small share of work that delivers most of it.
- Writing user stories with acceptance criteria and a Definition of Done.
- Story mapping, so a big request becomes something a team can finish in a Sprint.
- Practicing the Scrum events on a small, real exercise.
- Role-playing “Stan,” a senior leader whose pointed questions can look like resistance, to spot dysfunctional leadership behavior and practice dealing with it. We also bring Stan in when the group evaluates A3s. See why leaders like Stan ask what they ask.
- What authority, availability and accountability a Product Owner needs, and what to do when the organization has not given them. See Our Product Owner Can’t Make Decisions.
What does a private CSPO class look like?
Here is a recent example. I taught a two-day private CSPO class on Zoom for a cross-functional group of six, with a co-facilitator. The organization’s CIO initiated it and recommended the first attendees, and that mattered: it showed the group that leadership at the top backed what needed to happen after the class. People came from different parts of the organization, including data, marketing and finance systems work. I have left out the client’s name and details.
A few things from those two days:
- Debriefs connected the exercises to their work. In a debrief exercise, the two working teams each picked an obstacle from their own organization, one about too many overlapping tools and trackers and one about moving to a new financial management system. Each wrote a one-page proposal and presented it with the cost and the benefit to a mock sponsor, in short timed rounds.
- Not all their work fits in a Sprint. Some of the team’s daily work is support that has to be delivered right away. We did not pretend otherwise. We talked about how a product backlog could hold the larger data and automation work while the daily support stays outside it, and about embedding data people on product teams.
- They built something on day two. Both teams used story mapping to take an idea to a small mobile app prototype in three short Sprints, with a test card saying how they would know it worked. Then each team showed its prototype.
- It ended with next steps. Participants left with a plan to show their prototypes to the CIO who initiated the class, and a follow-up coaching session was planned for about two weeks after.
I am not claiming a business result from those two days. The point of the follow-up is to find out what happens when the team tries the tools on real work, and to decide what to do next. That is why the follow-up is part of my private classes.
What do people write down at the end?
At the end of the class, each person adds their own “aha moments” to a shared board, sorted into tools, actions and questions. These are from a recent online CSPO class, in the participants’ own words, with the organization left out. They are representative of what I see across classes.
- Tools: “Dig deeper into a customer problem. Find out what they need a solution for.” “Solutions are not endpoints.” “Pareto ordering.” “Power of the prototype.”
- Actions: “Need business leadership alignment and buy in.” “We need to educate the business on the PO role and needs/authority.” “Start slow to work faster.”
- Questions: “Is this always a full-time role?” “Can people do PO and other roles at the same time?” “How do we help senior leaders think it’s their own idea?”
Most of the questions are about what happens after the class: leadership support, the Product Owner’s authority, getting the roles filled. That is the part a class cannot fix.
What a class cannot change
A private class gives a team a toolbox. It cannot change what the team goes back to. A team that returns to an organization running Scrum in ways that work against it will find the tools hard to use, however well the class went. A team whose senior leaders give it cover, like the CIO in the example above, has a much better chance. That is why I talk with your leaders before the class and spend time with them and the cohort after it.
What does a private class include?
- Two days (or four half days) of CSPO training for your team, online or on-site.
- The Certified Scrum Product Owner certification through the Scrum Alliance, where I am a Certified Scrum Trainer.
- A pre-call with your leaders before the class, so the class lines up with what they need.
- Debriefs after each section, connecting the concepts to your team’s real work.
- A follow-up a week or two later, a few hours with the leaders and the cohort, to work through the real-world issues they have met and decide what next.
Current pricing is on my training page. I am not the cheapest option. If price is the only thing that matters, I will point you to good trainers who are cheaper.
What next?
Have a team and a real product or problem? Send me the team and the problem. A few sentences is enough, and I reply within one business day. If I’m not the right fit, I’ll say so.
- See how private classes work: private Scrum training
- Want help after the follow-up, with no commitment? My monthly advisory has three levels (Async, Lite and VIP), and you can start at the lightest.
- Your focus is the ScrumMaster role or team Scrum training: What a CSM class is like
- Leadership or the system is the problem: executive advisory
- It is about you as a leader: 1:1 mentoring
Learn more on my services page.
Who wrote this?
I’m Michael Vizdos. I started in software delivery at EDS in 1991, so I have 35+ years in this work. I have been a Certified Scrum Trainer® since 2006 and have trained 4,900+ Scrum Masters and Product Owners since 2006, from about 1,500 organizations. More about my background.
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