CSM or CSD – What is better for beginner to scrum and why

CSM (Certified Scrum Master) is a very good introductory course on Scrum and good for anyone who wants to know about Scrum processes and how it is different than waterfall approach. Although program name is little confusing where people coming from traditional project approach think that master means something like management program. Attending CSM training program doesn’t mean participants are ready to play the role of scrum master and also scrum master is not equal to traditional project manager.

I think organization should look CSP credential holder for scrum master position rather than CSM because CSP means that person has spent 3 years in scrum environment and has done extra learning to get CSP.

CSD (Certified Scrum Developer) is another certification program that’s not only teach Scrum basic (CSM course content) but also includes 4 days agile engineering practices. Program name is also confusing like CSM because many thinks CSD is for developer and nobody wants to play a role of developer. Although CSD is for whole scrum team that includes cross-functional development team, scrum master and product owner. It is simply because CSD not only cover technical stuff but also cover how to achieve continuous delivery and collaboration and these can’t be achieve by individual unless whole team come together.

I am not going to talk about scrum master should have technical background or not but I recently saw a big discussion on this subject on LinkedIn. I have other objective and wanted to describe same. Scrum process adoption could be tuff looking at organization culture where scrumbut comes is picture but agile engineering can be adopted while following any project execution methodology.