Why just Scrum is not enough for successful delivery?

Why organization is not able to gain much from Scrum? Is Scrum not very useful? 

Below is my understanding based on interaction with more than 100 people those have attended my workshop either CSD, PSD or PSM.

Organization doesn’t understand Scrum Framework in depth. They don't have skills to explore and adopt Scrum internally. Either they got few people certified (Certified Scrum Master) or sometime not even that. Scrum will struggle without right people so they are struggling. I am not against CSM or Scrum Alliance but I am not happy with quality of CSM training. CSM may be good at foundation level something similar to Professional Scrum Foundation (PSF) but definitely not good enough to become Scrum Master or Scrum Coach. Better to hire experienced people even without any certificate or at least Professional Scrum Master (PSM) for the role of Scrum Master.

Not getting development team trained. Only Scrum will not work so you need to train your development team on modern development practices and at least teach them Test Driven Development (TDD), Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD), Continuous Integration (CI), Pair Programming, Peer Code review, Emergent Design and Collective Code ownership. Without modern engineering practices, developing a high performing team is myth. All these practices are part of Professional Scrum Developer (PSD) and Certified Scrum Developer (CSD).

Not having Scrum Coach to help during initial stage. You need a good Scrum Coach for 3-6 months to help your team to learn Scrum faster and to support your adoption. Not having Scrum Coach may leads to situation of ScrumBut but having Coach can take you to ScrumPlus. Better to hire a Scrum Coach either full time or a consultant to help.

Above is entirely my personal view and you may not agree to it but still write your comments. You feedback will help me to improve my knowledge on this topic.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if I can help you.

I have been teaching Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) course in India and other part of Asia for last 3-4 years and teaching Scrum Developer course is really really tough. You need to be very good in technical practices and should be able to teach all these hands-on on various languages including C++, Java, .Net, Ruby, Python and JavaScript etc. Keeping pace with technologies demands more time for self improvement and continuous learning. I also teach DevOps practices and Agile Testing (trust me these are very similar to CSD/PSD but just different name) as more and more people started asking about DevOps and Agile Testing. I am a certified ICAgile trainer for DevOps and Agile Testing courses so reach out to me if you need any help.

I am also a Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) to teach Scrum.Org courses. I teach Professional Scrum Master (PSM) and Professional Scrum Developer (PSD). I regularly conduct training on PSM, PSD, and CSD in Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, Manila, Hong Kong and Singapore.

I see one thing common everywhere that awareness and adoption of Scrum is very high although they struggle a lot due to above reasons. Keep Scrumming!!

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.

Professional Scrum Master Training in Chennai

Professional Scrum Master™ (PSM) training is a 2-day workshop that gives you a clear understanding of Scrum rules and principles through the empirical foundation of Scrum. You will understand how to play the Scrum Master’s role to perfection, and can better understand what to do when returning to the workplace and facing complex decisions. PSM is becoming most preferred certifications for Scrum Master/Agile Coach roles because of credible examination, well managed course content and experienced trainers.

Course Duration: 2 Days

Course Fees:

Standard Price: INR 25999.00 + S.T.
Early Bird Price: INR 23998.00 + S.T. 

Here’s why you can’t afford to overlook our PSM course!

• Enhance your job prospects: The PSM credential demonstrates to employers and peers your capabilities, and gives you an edge over others in the job market.
• No renewal: Yes, you don’t need to renew your certificate every year
• Experienced Trainers: Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) bring current software development practices and real-world Scrum experience to the classroom. That helps participant to apply Scrum on their project.

Why to attend Professional Scrum Master Workshop?

• Training covers $150 examination cost for PSM - I
• Students get 40% discount on PSM - II ($100)
• 50% discount on 2nd attempt 
• Official course content

Do you need more reason to join or hire Professional Scrum Trainer (PST)? Contact me.

How to start TDD (Test Driven Development)?

This is a most common question I here in my training as soon as I say TDD is based on test first approach and we should write test before writing code. If you are already writing unit test for your code after writing code then moving on TDD is easy for you but many developers don’t even write unit test. If they write then they write functional test instead of unit test.

How to differentiate between unit test and functional test?

Developers often write functional test as unit test and ask how is different between tests written by testers. Answer is testers write more negative test cases compare to developers as part of functional test. Basically developers write test NOT to check a unit of code but to check a slice of functionality. This is not unit test. Unit test is for one unit of code like one method, one code block, interface, class or function and functional test is for a piece of functionality after integrating all related code. 

How to switch from functional test to unit test?

Until developer understand what unit test is and how to write an independent unit test to check piece of code, moving to TDD will not be easy. Usually developer start coding either from UI then middle tier OR database then middle tier so if you ask them to write business layer or controller directly without UI or DB, they struggle. I do see few developers have started writing unit test using unit testing framework but for different purpose. Purpose is to meet some agreed condition related to code coverage but if you go and look at it closely then again those tests are not unit test but functional test. Developers need to explore or get trained on writing unit test and practice it under guidance of coach for some time to make it habit. This will only happen when you understand importance of unit test and can think what exactly your code is supposed to do. Nowadays developers has good unit testing framework like junit, testing, nunit and ftest as well as need for unit test. So only missing thing is how to write good unit test.

Shift from code first to test first

This is another big area where many developer say how someone can write/think or execute test until code is not there. Since we all know our expectation from our code, so it is only about writing those expectations and nothing more. Believe in this idea that if I don't know how to test piece of code I am writing then most likely those code is not needed. TDD is not a testing practice but a development practice. It helps you to design code piece by piece to meet end goal. 

How to start writing TDD?

Take any existing application and try adding new code in system but think about how you will test your code? Whatever you can think, add those as unit test one by one and then write minimum code that can satisfy your each test. I have seen many team members going through this route and adopting TDD and I am sure you can also do that.