Certified Scrum Product Owner and the upstream processes
In July, I went to a Scrum Product Owner course by Roman Pichler in London and am now Certified Scrum Product Owner. Basically I have worked as a Scrum Product owner for several years with different products, but it was inspiring to hear Romans presentation on PO different techniques. Especially techniques related to the product vision, the Product Backlog and Release Management was interesting and highly valuable for my daily work. Roman also used some time on the basic Scrum framework and the different roles, but it was just the basic stuff.
One of the interesting discussions and a great "take away" was Romans insights on the upstream processes in an organization and the impact on a Scrum process. There is a long history for having big waterfall processes to manage Strategy-, Portfolio- and Product Management and when the waterfall reaches the Scrum process it is with a big PUSH. Scrum is based on Pull processes and in between the Product Owner might be caught in a hard situation. If the Product Owner cannot keep the waterfall back, there is a big risk that it will wash away Scrum and take away the empowerment of the Scrum team.
So you also need to change the upstream processes and here the Product Owner plays a central role to make that change happen in a sustainable way.