Why the Scrum Master Certification Exam is a Positive Step Towards Credibility of the Scrum Master

Industries have models. For the most part those models are good. They become a brand in and of themselves. Sure there is always the opportunity to break a model in an industry and forge a new model (aka be a disruption and gain considerable market share), but that happens very rarely. The normal product development process is to gain an understanding of the industry, follow the industry model, and make your new product fit the model. You differentiate your product by providing something that is needed and not currently available, or by providing something already in existence but offering it better and cheaper.

In the business-to-business for profit training industry, certifications are still very much the rage. They provide employers with a tool to help in recruiting efforts and to help in retention efforts. Employees love them because they help classify their skill set, making it easier to get an interview, and command a higher salary. The certification portion of the business-to-business training industry has been around for over 15 years. It started on the product training side with Novell; Microsoft learned it for Novell, and Cisco took it from Microsoft. These three product vendors learned quickly that training and certification sold product.

Why? Employees feel a bond to the vendor that gave them a “leg up” and help them become a “stickier” user of the technology. Employers see the certification market and give the product higher credibility because of the size and structure of the certification food chain.

The Scrum Alliance has done for Scrum what Red Hat did for Linux. It productized an “open” solution. It gave something that could be difficult to understand and grasp, meaning and understanding. The Scrum Alliance took Scrum, and for that matter Agile, and put them into an understandable “box.” A potential user of Agile can now find “certified” people to employ, they can find expert consultants to hire, and they can find “tons” of information on the process quickly and easily.

This was a powerful first step for the growth of Agile, both in users and legitimacy. The Linux market had a similar incubation phase to what Agile is having now. Linux was a hot concept, was powerful, but also a bit of an enigma. A lot of fear and uncertainly surrounded it. Linux was like black magic to some people in IT. Agile is the same way, there is a TON of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) surrounding it right now, and a large majority of the SDLC community still sees it as heresy or black magic. This makes Agile cool for the people in the cult, but for the mainstream it makes Agile look risky and illegitimate.

Moving the Scrum Master certification from a class participation certification to both class participation and examination is a strong next step in legitimacy. In the business-to-business training industry, exam-based certifications are the standard. Certificates without at least an exam associated with them are seen as lower quality and much less legitimate. The Scrum Alliance wants to focus on the class participation portion because it ties back to one of the basic premise of Scrum, people and interactions over processes and tools. That is very understandable to the “cult,” but not to the greater market of certification buyers and takers.

A much healthier way for the Scrum Alliance to get the people/interactions portion into the certification would be to make part of the certification a practicum and part of it an exam. Do it on the back end instead of the front end, but that is a topic for another discussion.

Just like in Agile, you need to take small and steady steps towards a goal. It is very good for the legitimacy of the Scrum certification that the exam is coming. It fits the industry model and reduces the skepticism that the certification is only in place to drive training revenue. I amvery hopeful that just like in an Agile project, more iterations are on the way. I would love to see the burn down chart for the Scrum Master Certification.