Is CSM (certified Scrum Master) certificate still valuable?

I often get below questions regarding Certified Scrum Master (CSM) Training and especially from mid-level managers like traditional project manager, release manager, development manager and test manager etc.

1. Which agile certificate is good for me? I wrote a blog for that. You may like to read here

2. Will CSM help in getting job?

3. Will CSM help me learning about Agile?

4. Is CSM mandatory for Scrum Master role?

5. Will CSM help me to switch from Developer to Scrum Master?

6. Is CSM useful for QA Engineers?

Here is my answer starting from what is CSM, why CSM, why not CSM and what are the alternatives of CSM.

What is CSM (Certified Scrum Master)? A training and certification program launched by Scrum Alliance in 2001. This was the 1st certification training launched by Scrum Alliance and this is oldest so very popular is few countries. Initially there was no exam but got introduced later on due to many complains as per my knowledge. CSM has a very basic criteria for participant like must attend 2 days workshop by Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and write a very basic exam to pass and gain certificate. Personally, I have not seen anyone failing in exam and most of the time people write exam in group to pass together (I was told by many but I can't prove it). 

Why CSM (Certified Scrum Master)? Somehow it was communicated from beginning that CSM is a foundation workshop for Agile and Scrum. So anybody wanted to understand agile and Scrum, they just join CSM workshop. But this workshop was for Scrum Master as name suggest. For other roles there are other workshop like CSD for development team and CSPO for Business Analyst and Product Owner. Since CSM is labelled as foundation training so even CST teaches very basic stuff and avoid going deeper into Scrum Master role. Again this based on my knowledge after helping many people to gain CSP (Certified Scrum Professional).

Will CSM helps in getting job? No but at least it can help in getting your resume filtered during screening process. Most of the company filter resume based on certification so CSM credential help in Scrum Master role. Many organizations has started ignoring CSM now due to poor process of certification and started demanding PSM credential. PSM is known for quality exam and total cost of ownership is much lesser because PSM doesn't require renewal every 2 years like CSM. 

Will CSM helps in learning Agile? Yes it does. Because it covers basic scrum framework (most popular agile methods). Alternately, you can look for Professional Scrum Foundation (PSF) or Professional Scrum Master (PSM) from scrum.org

I am leaving here with rest of questions and would prefer to hear from you about your understanding :)

Thanks for reading! Do let me know if there is any questions related to agile and scrum certifications.

How to earn 70 SEUs for FREE to become CSP (Certified Scrum Professional) in shortest possible time

Here is details about free SEUs for CSP (Certified Scrum Professional)

Category ‘A’ – Category A has a maximum limit of 45 SEUs, you can earn these by attending Scrum Alliance events. These events can be Scrum Global Gathering, Regional Gathering, Scrum Alliance Sponsored event and User Group event.

Scrum Bangalore organize full day event in Bangalore every quarter and now have started in Gurgaon, Discuss Agile regularly organize meetup in all cities, PlayScrum also organize meetup in Pune, Chennai, Delhi and Bangalore.

Basically, if you plan well then you can earn 20-30 SEUs in 3 months easily. I believe that’s good enough for this category.

Category ‘B’ – You can earn unlimited SEUs in this Category. But those will be paid. In any case, you need at least on Certification from this category to apply for CSP. Certified Scrum Master (CSM) gives you 16 SEUs, Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) gives you 16 as well and Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) gives you 40. Ideally if you complete all these 3 roles based certifications then you get 56 from this category itself and don’t need anything else. I strongly suggest everyone to attend all 3 workshops before becoming CSP. Because you are planning for next level so it does matter that you know every roles and respective responsibilities in details.

But I said free SEUs for CSP so assuming you will only have 16 SEUs from this category either for CSM/CSPO or CSD.   

Category ‘C’ – You can claim 15 SEUs under Category C by attending any agile/scrum program such as PMI-ACP, Kanban, SAFe Agilist, Advance Scrum Master, SAFe Scrum Master, DevOps, Test Driven Development, Behavior Driven Development, and Specification by Examples. Again these will not come for free. So look for either DevOps meetup in your city or meetup on product management or lean management. You should be able to earn 15 in 3 months easily. If need help then write to me.

Category ‘D’ – Through voluntary work you can earn 15 category ‘D’ SEUs. Help ME in organizing next meetup in your company and you can claim 15 for same. If that’s not possible then check with local user group community in your city and extend your help in spreading agile/scrum knowledge by working with community leader and you can claim 15 in next 3 months.

Category ‘E’ – Read 3 books (my favorites) 1^st – 5 dysfunctions of team, 2^nd – The Phoenix Project and 3^rd Scrum – A Pocket Guide and claim 15 SEUs for free in this category.

Category ‘F’ – Up to 15 SEUs may be earned through a variety of other collaborative learning activities engaged in with other Scrum practitioners. Best example attending webinar organized by us. Now every month we are facilitating 3 hours live online session on advance topic for free. Join our sessions for free to learn and earn SEUs.  

So here you are in 2 months:-

Category “A” – 14 (1 full day, 2 meetup)

Category “B” – 32/40 (Either CSM+CSPO or CSM+CSD)

Category “C”– 06 (2 meetup on DevOps/Docker/Lean)

Category “E” – 15 (Reading my 3 favorite books) 

Category “F” – 15 (Attend either Atlasssian hangout or join our online live session)

Total SEUs is 82-90 in next 2-3 months :)

Write to me on naveenhome@gmail.com in case you have any query.

Impediments that get exposed when start practicing Scrum

Development Team often encounter with an impediments by shortening sprint length is lack of good technical practices. Organizations usually focus more on facilitate Scrum Master or Product Owner workshop as soon as they plan to adopt Scrum but very few organizations facilitate workshops for Development Team. Although it has increased a lot in last 2 years but still not anywhere near to Scrum Master or Product Owner workshop.

We just wonder why? There are more people working to develop software compare to Facilitators or Product Owner then why you are ignoring it? Ignorance can cause technical debts. When there is less time and team lack good technical practices then team may start cutting corner to deliver what they have committed. This leads to technical debts and it may slow you down in long run. You may feel Scrum is not helping you in building quality product and team motivation may go down.

   

We feel there could be 2 reasons. 1^st – Organization just facilitating Scrum Master (or similar) Workshop for development team and 2^nd - not aware about workshop available for Development Team. There is another one – Some technical workshop is happening in bit and pieces like junit, nunit, Jenkins or selenium etc. but mainly tools training but not practice workshop.

Same applied for new hire/ campus hire. People go through a series of training when they join but not very focused in the area of Test First, TDD, ATDD, BDD, CI, Pair Programming, Mob Programming, Continuous Integration or Collaboration practices. We believe that in order to be successful, members of Scrum Development Teams must have these skills and organization must focus on investing a lot on it.

Let us know if you need more information about development team workshops, which is more suitable for your team or your team is also struggling with similar impediment.

Leanpitch develop products and provides services for both product discovery and product delivery cycles of Software Product Development. We help organization in maximizing the work of the Development Team.

Reach out us in case looking for in-house workshops on Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) or Certified Scrum Developer(CSD). Our facilitators are known for quality and commitment.

Are you investing enough to build cross-functional development team?

I do see people come to attend CSM (Certified Scrum Master) or CSPO (Certified Scrum Product Owner) training or many organizations ask us to facilitate in-house CSM and CSPO workshops. These 2 workshops are for Scrum Master and Product Owner and really needed in order to start practicing Scrum within organization. But what kind of workshop you are organizing for development team or what workshop you development team members are attending to gain knowledge related to development team's practices?

How you are helping to build a better cross-functional and self-organizing team? Hope you are not ignoring but are you having right workshops for them? What do you do for people working on Salesforce, Oracle ERP, Java Development, UX design, Database, .Net Development, Open Source Platform, Mainframe or Embedded Technologies either as Developer, Testers or Business Analyst?

I am raising this questions based on my interaction with development team while facilitating CSD ( Certified Scrum Developer) workshop for developers, testers and business analyst. What I usually hear that organization facilitates only Scrum Framework workshop and nothing specific to development team role. Some organizations also organize workshops on TDD, CI etc. but mainly tools training and not much focus on practices.

Since Scrum become a widely used framework for software development and majority of organizations already practicing Scrum or Scrum + Something so it has become vital to have your development team members go through role specific workshop to learn practices that can help them to be more efficient and effective.

Workshops should focus more on practices and importance of these practices rather than just tools. If they just go for junit, dbunit, jenkins or cucumber training then most likely teams will misuse these tools. Being a developer I understand one things that until I am not sure how these practices and tools useful for me, I will not use it. Maybe this is one the biggest reason that team ignore engineering practices and technical debts keeps increasing sprint by sprint.

Yes, empirical process control helps but what is empirical process control?

I was talking to my friend last night about a meetup that she hosted yesterday. I asked what was expected outcome from there? Her reply was not clear to me so I was worried and tried to dig it deeper and found meaning of DONE is not clearly defined. Meaning process as well outcome is not transparent enough to see through what's going on. Is it OK to say that setting expectation from each and everything what we do is not good? I believe NO because if we don't set expectation and measure result then may not be motivated to do it again or improve it further.

Transparency is key for empirical process control and defining DONE helps in making outcome transparent. Since DONE is not defined so it will also become difficult to inspect outcome. If we cannot inspect then will not change plan and adapt it. 

If we are doing something then we should know why we are doing? What is expected outcome? Can I measure outcome? If not then is it worth doing? What is opportunity cost? Good to struggle with these questions rather than just executing something that can't be measured.

Last year we sponsored an event and we were expecting to have 300 people attending but there was only 50 people so we decided to stop sponsoring such events in future and figure out other way of promoting it. Spent same amount this year to host an event rather than sponsoring. Result is better than last year but still have to review as team to identify improvement areas or may be totally new things.

Yes it is very much important to set DONE criteria for what we do in order to improve ourselves. Things will not improve until we review and retrospect. Hoping it will improve automatically over the period sound very adventurous but talk to people those are on adventurous journey, they review outcome much frequent than others. 

What is Timeboxing and why Timeboxing?

What is Timeboxing?

It’s a fixed span of time and is called as SPRINT in Scrum. A typical duration of Sprint is 1-4 weeks and below is some the characteristics of Sprint.

Fixed Length – Duration can’t change once agreed even if all works those were forecasted not complete within fixed length. Sprint will expire on set end date and time.

Fixed Team – Team members who start sprint remain united till end of the sprint. There should not be any change in team composition within sprint.

Fixed Goal – Team set goal at the beginning of the sprint and remain unchanged till sprint expire. If goal become meaningless then better to terminate sprint and start new with new goal rather than changing goal in between sprint.

A product increment at the end of Sprint – Team produces a shippable feature or functionality at the end of sprint and new feature/functionality is an increment on top of the existing product.

Why Timeboxing?

Help the team to stay focused on the goal

By Eliminating Procrastination – People usually prefer to do more pleasurable work at beginning than less pleasurable even if more pleasurable work is not urgent. Timeboxing helps team to stay focus and complete all the work in given timeframe even if it is not very pleasurable in rodder to meet Definition of Done (DoD).

A very useful quote about Procrastination - “I am very busy doing things that I don’t need to do in order to avoid doing anything I am actually supposed to be doing.”

By Providing Frequent Opportunity to get Customer Feedback – Since team produces shippable product at the end of every sprint so it’s become very handy to get feedback at the end of sprint from customer. Feedback helps team in further planning.

Leanpitch provides the best scrum and agile training. We are leading provider of Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Certified Scrum Developer (CSD), Kanban, Test Driven Development (TDD), Behavior Driven Development (BDD) in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and Hyderabad. Visit our website to know more about Leanpitch Offering.

Why and how to become Certified Scrum Professional (CSP)

Almost 200 professional become either Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) or Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) through Leanpitch every month. We strongly advise every participant to focus on continuous learning and share your learning with others as often as possible. If you are learning and have required experience then also become certified scrum professional (CSP). Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) is not only a certificate but a milestone that demonstrate your skills and experience. If you are planning to become coach or already working as coach and wanted to earn Certified Scrum Coach (CSC) certification then CSP is 1st step towards it. Same apply for Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) as well. CSP doesn't required any training like CSM, CSPO or CSD but needed 70 SEUs (Scrum Education Units) that shows how much you are investing on continuous learning. These SEUs can be earn through various way and same mentioned below:-

Category "A" - Unlimited SEUs through Scrum Gathering and User group meetup. You can join Playscrum user group and attend monthly meetup in your cities. Playscrum user group available in 5 cities. -Playscrum-Pune, Playscrum-Bangalore, Playscrum-Chennai,Playscrum-Delhi and Playscrum-Hyderabad. Playscum also facilitated one day playscrum meet in Chennai and planning to keep facilitating same in other cities as well.

Category "B" - Unlimited SEUs through Scrum alliance training program like CSM, CSPO and CSD. You can also earn these Scrum Education Units (SEUs) through other courses like Test Driven Development (TDD), Behavior Driven Development (BDD), User story and agile estimation etc. Leanpitch deliver corporate training on TDD, BDD and User story development in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Category "C" - 15 SEUs under this category and same can be earn through attending any agile workshop like Kanban, LeSS practitioner, DevOps and PMI-ACP workshop. Leanpitch regularly conduct Kanban training in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad.

Category "D" - 15 SEUs under this category through volunteer service for Scrum Gathering or User group meetup. You can reach out to playscrum  community.

Category "E" - 15 SEUs through self learning like reading few books. I would recommend reading below books. One hour of reading is equal to one SEU.

1. Agile Estimating and Planning: Mike Cohn

2. Professional Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products: Jim Highsmith 

3. Professional Agile Retrospectives: Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, Ken Schwaber 

4. Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game Author: Alistair Cockburn

5. Coaching Agile Teams: Lyssa Adkins 

6. Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile Extreme: Robert K. Wysocki

7. Exploring Scrum: The Fundamentals: Dan Rawsthorne with Doug Shimp 

8. Kanban In Action: Marcus Hammarberg, Joakim Sunden

9. Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for your Technology Business: David J. Anderson 

10. Lean-Agile Software Development: Alan Shalloway, Guy Beaver, James R. Trott  

11. The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility: Michele Sliger, Stacia Broderick

12. User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development: Mike Cohn 

13. Agile Product Management with Scrum: Roman Pichler

Category "F" - 15 SEUs through co-training or live webinar 

Leanpitch has brought below program for you to learn and earn SEUs in your city.

Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) - 16 SEUs under Category "B" - For product owner, product manager, project manager, business analyst and leaders to maximize product business value. Leanpitch conduct Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) training in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi and Hyderabad.

Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) - 24 SEUs under category "B" - This will give you opportunity to learn agile engineering practices and most suitable for scrum master, developers, testers, agile coaches and as well as for managers to build value and focus on outcome. Leanpitch conduct Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) training in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi and Hyderabad.

Certified Kanban Management Professional - 15 SEUs under Category "C" - For practicing scrum professional including scrum master, agile coaches and senior management to maximize value. Leanpitch conduct Certified Kanban Management Professional training in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi and Hyderabad.

Agile engineering is not just important but essential for higher ROI

Agile has become popular within software industries not only in product development organizations but also within software service organizations. There are many factors that driving this change including time to market, continuous change in requirement, increase productivity and better accountability etc. 

Agile get defined by Agile Manifesto and Agile Manifesto consists four values and twelve principles. It is easy to remember four values but not always easy to implement all principles because it's required engineering practices in place to implement. This is one the reason for higher demand for agile engineering coaches to provide supports to adopt these technical practices like TDD, BDD, ATDD, CI/CD, DevOps and Agile Architecture & Design etc. Nowadays all leading scrum certification authorities is promoting these practices through their certifications program like CSD (certified Scrum Developer) and PSD (Professional Scrum Developer).

Below is mapping of engineering practices against some of the agile principles to visualize how these become important.

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. Delivering product frequently with new features looks easy during initial stage and also when team is small but issues start appearing after few deliveries or when new team get added to work on same product. These issues are mainly related to integration of code and ensuring newly added code has no impact on already released features. Opting for continuous integration practice and using tools like Jenkins, CruiseControl, Hudson, TFS etc can resolve these issues.

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project. Working together mean whole team available to each other and help each other whenever needed. But it would be good if business people write acceptance test cases in way that enable developers to write code. Automating acceptance criteria using any BDD/ATDD tools like cucumber, SpecFlow, Nbehave, Behat or Fitnesse will give confidence to business people because implementation of new stories can be verified immediately. 

Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility. Agile architecture and design is a need of hour. Having big design up front (DBUF) is not good practice and team moving towards emergent design. Ideally the team that code the system also design the system and focus should be on build a design that can possibly work. If development team is also designing the software then team focus is not only meeting the requirement but also on how to enhance design. Following SOLID design principles and coding through TDD will help in technical excellence.

Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential. Agile architecture and design also talks about YAGNI (You aren’t gonna need it) and KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) principles but having BDUF is violation of these principles. Purpose is simple, Code as much as needed to meet the requirement and nothing more. Test First approach helps in writing less code and only that much needed to pass test.

The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. The teams that code the system also design the system because team is empowered to define, develop and deliver software. Build the simplest architecture that can possibly work. If non-functional requirement and prototype of system is not sufficient to take design decision then better to code to understand potential impact of the design. TDD and Refactoring helps is producing better design because design get tested during coding.

Reach to me on naveenhome@gmail.com or +91 9810547500 for corporate training.

We deliver training on Test Driven Development (#TDD), Behavior Driven Development (#BDD), Cucumber, #Selenium, #JiraAgile, S#crum, #Jenkins, #ScrumMaster, #ScrumDeveloper, #ProductOwner, agile estimation and planning, writing user stories etc.