People laughed at the idea that you could sit in a room for a day and become certified as a ScrumMaster. I was among them. It is the main reason why I did not go for the certificate: it did not mean nearly as much as experience and practical knowledge. I really thought it was positively absurd and a blatant pilfering of innocent pockets.
But then they went and created the Certified Scrum Practitioner. They supposedly (and I believe they do) look at your work history and make you demonstrate that you know what you are doing and have done it before. That is a certificate I would go after.
To become a Certified Scrum Practitioner, you need to first be a Certified Scrum Master. The courses are well over a grand, with most in the Boston area being arounde $1200-$1400. Before there was the Practitioner certification, classes were cheaper. I have the experience required to be a certified Practitioner – several times over – but I need to get the initial stamp of approval (ScrumMaster) first. It is a bit aggravating. You should be able to just jump in where you fit. Seems like waste to me. Then again, like most things of value, there is a cost associated.
Now, HR departments will have an actual technical certification to describe the Agile team leaders and Project Managers who have become SDLC champions, Agile evangelists. PMI is trying to be Agile-aware, but ehh…. kinda a whole lot of mess there (muda, yeah?) for my purposes. Plus, I have spent way too many hours studying PMI for the sake of going after a PMP to want to get back into it. It just did not help me as a Manager. It was busywork, overhead, non-applicable academic theory, in many ways.
A few weeks (months?) ago I got in a little Twitter battle with @agileforall. I felt he was branding Agile philosophies and misleading people into thinking that he could teach them THE WAY. Add to that the lack of tone in a 140 character tweet, and feathers can get ruffled. I am also, I have to admit, the kind of guy who always tries to tackle the guy with the ball. It is probably a character weakness, but I like to challenge. I stay completely professional, of course, but I am sure I am a giant PITA.
Bob came to Boston. I had my views and prejudiced towards him and his class. Long story short, the blame falls on my pernicious challenges and poor communication (a sin).
I sat through 2 days of Agile for Teams with Agile Bob at www.agileforall.com and he was great. I didn’t learn very much, but that was not the point. In Agile development, there are so many ways to spin things that I really wanted to see how Bob presented it. He was kind enough to invite me to audit one of his classes and it was pretty cool to see some of the visuals, hands-on exercises, and practical offerings in his coach toolbox. It was a great time, Bob is agreat guy, and I look forward to seeing how he responds to some of my comments.
Let me say, I am available for this type of class as well. Bob can feel free to throw me some Clients.
Anyhow, that led me to discover that the Agile world was moving on and had heard the proclamations that being a certified ScrumMaster was like sending a check to some address in California to become a minister of the Church of Something Very Odd But Somehow Legit.
But yes, they have done it; they have made Agile certification meaningful.
Damn. Now I have to spend money. I hope the Scrum Alliance does not turn into a corporation like PMI. Let’s set the bar a lot higher and put the measure of quality on the ability to perform a task and add value, not the ability to memorize a billion factoids.
Please.
Best,
Josh