Which Class Should You Arrange Next?

This is written for managers and executives who hold a training budget and are considering Scrum or Kanban for their employees.

Technology leaders hire me to improve the way they manage software product operations. I have been practicing and teaching agile methods for twenty+ years. I frequently receive inquiries from executives and managers about my training courses and coaching services. I know the difficulty they face when choosing how best to invest their limited professional development budget.

Every opportunity to engage a trainer/coach is a valuable investment and potential inflection point. But with so many buzzwords, frameworks, and certifications, it can be difficult to know the next best step for your company.

My Advice Begins With…

Most importantly: first consider the job you need people to do, decide whether an industry-recognized credential matters, and determine whether you can put a real team in a room together or if the training must be held online.

Consider the Crucial Constraints

Knowing the constraints will help you avoid training paths that aren’t a good fit for your company’s needs and culture. For example:

• If the organization is unable or unwilling to compose cross-functional teams that can own product mandates from idea to marketplace without handing things over a wall, do not buy Scrum courses yet (PSM, PSPO, APS, PSK, PSU, SPS). Scrum requires that people are arranged into small, cross-functional team units. Buy leadership or flow courses instead.

• If a credential is important, I recommend sticking with Scrum.org and ProKanban.org. Scrum and Kanban are foundational — together they provide mental models to understand empiricism, teaming, iterative & incremental development, actionable metrics, and flow. Those concepts form the basis of all “Agile” frameworks.

• For coders, always consider my 1-on-1 TDD (Test-Driven Development) mentorship classes.

• If the organization is dabbling with AI for repetitive administrative/managerial tasks, consider the AI Essentials classes and TDD as an AI-guardrail workshop.

Consider the Skills You Want Enhanced

Facilitation & Coaching Skills

If you are hiring or growing Scrum Masters, start with Applying Professional Scrum (APS, 2 days, in-person, private groups) or Professional Scrum Master (PSM, 2 days, online as groups or individual seats in a public class). Learn to serve one team: the framework, the accountabilities, and how to stop being a project secretary.

Some clients choose PSPO-A next because the person can already run events and now needs to coach, mentor, manage stakeholders, and understand business metrics. Some choose Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSF, 1 day) when soft skills and meeting facilitation are weak.

Pitfall: if the company culture is incompatible or unwilling to configure cross-functional team units, then Scrum training is an interesting academic exercise but not as practial as Kanban (APK) or engineering courses (TDD, APS-SD).

When the same people must cover both Scrum Master and Product Owner work, and you can assemble a private group, Professional Scrum Master and Product Owner (PSMPO, 3 days, private only) avoids paying for two overlapping flagship classes.

Product Management

If you’re educating Product Owners, start with Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO, 2 days, credentialed). That teaches the Scrum framework, vision and value, and Product Backlog vertical slicing.

Clients who already have PSPO usually split three ways: they choose PSPO-A when the gap is vision, hypotheses, stakeholder management, and product leadership. They choose Professional Product Discovery and Validation (PPDV, 1 day) when ideas go too quickly to implementation. They choose Professional Scrum Product Backlog Management Skills (PSPBM, 1 day) when teams fail to slice work into granular increments for frequent delivery.

Professional Scrum with User Experience (PSU, 2 days) belongs after some Scrum is already in play, when discovery and delivery are split across a wall between UX’ers and coders/testers.

Custom product workshops (User Story Writing, Product Release Planning) are useful after the credential, or when you explicitly do not want one.

Flow Engineering

If the work is queues, service, interrupt-driven delivery, or “we do Scrum but everything spills into the next Sprint”, then start with Applying Professional Kanban (APK, 2 days, ProKanban.org credential). Learn to visualize work, limit WIP, measure flow, and set service-level expectations.

If the problem involves many streams, strategy versus active work, and forecasting across teams, refer to Applying Scaled Portfolio Kanban (ASPK, 2 days). It is not a team-board class, it’s about silo-spanning problem solving.

Kanban Service Flow (KSF, 1 day) is a workshop I offer to private groups who don’t want or cannot afford the ProKanban credentialed courses (APK, ASPK). It’s a condensed teaser and valuable, but I recommend APK whenever possible.

Leadership & Culture

For executives and managers who find value in understanding the ways of working at the team level, I always recommend they accompany their employees in APS, PSM, PSPO, APK, et cetera. But when that’s not practical (for scheduling or other reasons), the Professional Agile Leadership Essentials (PAL-E, 2 days, credentialed) helps those with influence/authority over the org design to understand the conditions necessary for Scrum and Flow.

And I highly recommend clients add Professional Agile Leadership — Evidence-Based Management (PAL-EBM, 1 day) to modernize goal-setting and metrics.

I also provide custom leadership workshops (Principles of Change Management, Wardley Maps Primer, Improvement Kata) by request when the job is change, strategy, and alignment.

Code

Test Driven Development is 1-on-1, two days, for developers who already write code and must elevate quality and design/architecture. As agentic AI revolutionizes the art of programming, the TDD mindset is proving to be crucial as a guardrail.

Applying Professional Scrum for Software Development (APS-SD, 2 days, credentialed) is the Scrum.org class for people who write software. It is a valuable overview of iterative & incremental development, useful for those new to DevOps and seeking an intro to TDD. Consider APS-SD when a credential is important, otherwise invest in my intensive 1-on-1 TDD mentorship.

And for non-coders: SRS (Small Reversible Steps) helps non-coders wrap their head around TDD, refactoring, and emergent architecture.

AI

If your Scrum Masters or Product Owners will use AI in their work, the credentialed one-day classes are PSM-AIEssentials and PSPO-AIEssentials (PSM-AIE and PSPO-AIE).

And for business administrators, back-office staff, or those at risk of getting left behind in this AI revolution, my AI-E (AI for Everyone) is a half-day or 1-day no-fear introduction.

The Best Training Experience I Always Recommend: If You Can Do It

Applying Professional Scrum (APS, 2 days, credentialed) is the most impactful introduction to Agile team work. I offer it only as a private in-person group. If you can get teams in a room, start there. If you cannot, buy PSM or PSPO for the accountabilities you actually need.