Continuing my ”Scrum Quest” this week, I just spent two days in Certified Scrum Master (CSM) training delivered by an excellent Scrum Trainer and Coach, Joe Little. I’m enjoying the Agile kool-aid and believe in both its manifesto and principles. But I worry that the title “Certified Scrum Master” overpromises and may diminish the real value of the starter course, or as Joe put it “feel the music” exercise. You’re a certified Scrum Master when you participate in class and check the attendance sheet twice over two days.
Both Joe and his prepared materials (a deck mostly developed by Jeff Sutherland) were honest to position CSM training as a beginning step. However, this doesn’t help the hiring public. No one should believe that a two day course can teach enough skills or validate ability to lead the Scrum process on high performance development teams. I believe the CSM title misleads. After the two day course, many people in my section were going out to decorate their business cards with the new title. The keepers of the Scrum Alliance should fix this potential misperception.
There’s a simple solution, rename the course to say what it really produces: Certified Scrum Acolytes. Unfortunately, I think the Scrum Alliance may be taking another direction, and adding more hoops to the Scrum Master Certification with a formal certification exam to test applicants’ direct knowledge of Scrum techniques. One can imagine eventual stupidity like, “How often does the daily Scrum meeting occur?” A test is just another barrier to getting started. It’s a queue for everyone to pass through and seems like waste, which is ironic, because Agile is the implementation of Lean Process: the ruthless elimination of waste from all processes.
I don’t think the course needs to be changed, just the title. In fact, I think the course is just right for certifying the interested and enthusiastic learner. Two days of hands on exercise, working with a coach and learning with other likeminded people is a valuable use of time and worth marking. As a hiring manager, I rank it above certifications that come from cramming a study guide and answering a bunch of arcane out-of-context questions that anyone can look up in five minutes.
The Scrum Alliance does have more credible certifications that require documented experience with Scrum, which are the Scrum Practitioner, Scrum Trainer, and Scrum Coach. All measure actual documented practice. The people within the Scrum Alliance are doing great work by improving the way software is engineered through practical and positive technique. But, they need to change the name of the CSM course and certification.
-k2
I agree with Kevin’s assessment. It seems as if Scrum Master and Scrum Practioner should be reversed. I practiced Scrum, then took the training course, now I intend to practice better Scrum. I should only be a Master of Scrum after I have run projects using the methodology. What do you think about “Certified Scrum Apprentice”?
Hi,
First, Kevin, thank you for your kind remarks.
Second, yes, ScrumMaster is in part a misnomer. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” In other words, let’s not get too hung up on names.
An SM is an SM to the Team. There is no perfect SM. And I think any SM, even a very experienced one, can be “stumped” by the wrong Team. ie, could be seen as unsuccessful. It is a very hard job. Lots of experience generally does help.
Having gotten a BA from Yale and an MBA from NYU, I grow less and less impressed with certifications per se. Those “certifications”, which are quite meaningful in a way, still, in the real battle of life, they prove very little. What we really want to know is “Can you [X] do this [Y]?” A certification just might be a necessary condition for the questioner, but never (in my experience) a sufficient condition.
Do I think the CSM class is useful? Well, you might say I am biased, but I think I honestly and accurately can say “Yes”. Is the certification meaningful? Well, I think as a necessary condition of some work (eg, starting out as an SM for a Team) it is fine, but it certainly does not by itself prove “George will be a pretty good SM for that Team”.
Should the Scrum Alliance certifications be better? Well, other things equal, I guess we may say “of course, yes”. And they are working on that. But I think it is more important that people get more success out of Scrum than that we improve the certifications per se.
Hope these comments help a few readers.
Regards, Joe