InfoQ

News

Agile Certification Debate Heats Up

Posted by Kurt Christensen on Feb 15, 2007

Community
Agile
Topics
Training / Certification
Tags
Scrum ,
Certification
The debate over agile certification rages on, with a recent entry in the Agile Chronicles taking aim specifically at Scrum certification:
As it stands today, the [Certified Scrum Master (CSM)] program is a fairly hollow certification. Pay the tuition, sit through a couple days of class, and you're in. And while I realize there's quite the CSM training industry taking advantage of the current program... I would encourage those that continue to milk it to take a step back and consider whether they're doing more harm than good.
Arguments for and against certification have been lobbed back and forth within the agile community for years. But assuming certification is even a worthwhile goal, what can be done to make the certifications meaningful? The Agile Chronicles article offers many of the same suggestions voiced by Martin Fowler and others: 
Make it a certification with some real substance:
  • Have some real pre-reqs: relevant experience and an assessed level of knowledge about scrum & agile methods
  • Incorporate a practicum of sorts
  • Actually evaluate knowledge & practical experience, preferably via interview vs. written

Other professions have certification processes that demand all this and more. In a recent InfoQ interview, Kent Beck drew comparisons and contrasts between the agile community and the medical community:

I think it makes sense for practitioners to be accountable for their own skills and results. I don't think traditional certification processes - take a test, get a piece of paper - do this. On the other hand, other professions have meaningful certifications. If you are a board certified physician, it means something. The process is very different from the certifications in computing, though. It takes a long time, it's expensive, the examiners are experts, it requires a significant amount of study and a demonstration of the precise use of your knowledge in real situations.
There are two problems with trying to implement such a rigorous certification process within the agile community. In medicine, the stakes are life and death, and so society demands a minimum level of competency before allowing anyone to practice medicine at all. Therefore, potential doctors have an incentive that simply doesn't exist in the software community, and isn't likely to ever exist. In addition, board certification for medical doctors is overseen by a non-profit organization which essentially acts as a regulatory agency. In the software community, the few certification bodies which do exist do so for profit, and thus have at least a partial interest in seeing more people become certified.
  • This article is part of a featured topic series on Scrum
Scrum Certification is valuable... by Mike Funk Posted Feb 16, 2007 6:28 PM
Re: Scrum Certification is valuable... by Marco Abis Posted Feb 20, 2007 8:39 AM
There is mastery of the basics and then there is mastery of your profession by Mike Dwyer Posted Feb 20, 2007 9:00 AM
Re: There is mastery of the basics and then there is mastery of your profes by Deborah Hartmann Posted Feb 21, 2007 12:45 PM
  1. Back to top

    Scrum Certification is valuable...

    Feb 16, 2007 6:28 PM by Mike Funk

    The classes offered by the Scrum gurus are valuable. The certifications they award are also valuable.

    That said, the essence of Scrum can be described to anyone in the span of 5 - 10 minutes - as it should be.

    Anyone who as participated on a Scrum team, can most certainly participate and/or lead another Scrum team. That's the beauty of Scrum - it's simple, straight forward and effective. Toss in a few XP practices, and you've got a winning development process - IMHO.

  2. Back to top

    Re: Scrum Certification is valuable...

    Feb 20, 2007 8:39 AM by Marco Abis

    While I agree that the CSM thing is getting out of control (and I expressed my dubts about the use of the word "certification" in 2003 on the Scrumdev list) I invite people to actually read the descriptions of the certification levels: www.scrumalliance.org/view/certification

    It's very clear from that page that a CSM has just attended a basic course, nothing more. Only a CSP (Practitioner) has certified, demonstrated competence. As far as the ScrumAlliance is concerned of course...

  3. Scrum and PMP certifications are designed to provide a baseline skill level for customers of our profession to use in determine a person's minimum competency. Neither organization warranties the quality of the individual's work, just that the person has done what is needed to meet the certification criteria.

    If these two approaches were dance steps, SCRUM would be the waltz and PMP would be the Minuet (aka Menuet).

    Scrum and the waltz are made up of a small number of very easily learned steps and a couple of variations. Easy to master, the waltz is effectively emp;loyed for teaching 9 year olds the basics of 1,2,3 1,2,3 1,2,3 and world champion dancers, skaters, and rollerbladers the components to attaining gold medals, money and closets full of outrageous clothes.
    PMP and the Minuet are composed of dozens and dozens of structured, detailed steps that are chosen carefully and learned over time to produce movie backdrops for times long past.

    So what do you want to do?

  4. > PMP [is]... composed of dozens and dozens of structured, detailed steps that are chosen carefully and learned over time to produce movie backdrops for times long past.

    Well Mike, that explains a LOT! ;->

Educational Content

Brian Marick on 4 Challenges and 5 Guiding Values of Agile Software Development

Brian Marick takes us through a quick tour of the most important values and challenges to adopting Agile successfully (they aren't the typical challenges and values we hear in the community).

Are You a Software Architect?

The line between development and architecture is tricky. Does it exist at all? Is an ivory tower actually needed? There's a balance in the middle, but how do you move from developer to architect?

Agile – A Way of Life and Pragmatic Use of Authority

The word 'authority' sometimes produces an allergic response in hard-line agilists. Freedom and authority – both are bad if misused and both are good if used in right spirit for a noble cause.

Getting Started with Grails, Second Edition

"Getting Started with Grails" brings you up to speed on this modern web framework. Companies as varied as LinkedIn, Wired, and Taco Bell are all using Grails. Are you ready to get started as well?

Using ITIL V3 as a Foundation for SOA Governance

Those familiar with only ITIL V2 often scoff at the thought that ITIL could serve as a governance framework for SOA. With ITIL V3, the focus of the framework shifted towards service-orientation.

Adrian Colyer on AspectJ, tc Server and dm Server

SpringSource CTO Adrian Colyer discusses AspectJ, SpringSource's dm Server and tc Server products, OSGi and Scrum.

Adam Wiggins on Heroku

Heroku's Adam Wiggins talks about Rails, Background Jobs, Add-Ons, Ruby, and how Heroku manages to work around Ruby's inefficiencies using Erlang and other languages.

SOA as an Architectural Pattern: Best Practices in Software Architecture

For Grady Booch the foundation of a good architecture is patterns, SOA being just one of many patterns. In this Second Life presentation, Booch attempts to bring more clarity on what architecture is.