The CSM Integrity Deficit

Scott Duncan 16 minutes later:

• • I agree on all accounts.

  • I do think a claim of “certification” should meet certain criteria for it to have some value so as not to cheapen the idea of what a certification in other fields requires.

  • However, there is no question that Scrum has become the most prominent view of an agile approach, whether people even use that method name, usually combined with XP technical practices.

  • There has been concern expressed over people losing their ability to practice in an agile coaching/training fashion if they must become certified in some way. However, that will be because the industry wants to use such certification(s) as a way to simplify their seartch for employees/consultants.

  • To me, it is not much different from a company insisting on a college degree to do work where years of experience has probably prepared a person better for such work. (I am still asked to supply a college transcript to even do adjunct, part-time teaching at local colleges in areas where I have years of experience and references. It’s from 1969 for gosh sakes!)

KevDog 34 minutes later:

• • Dear Uncle Bob,

  • It’s clear that among many HR departments,especially those in the corporate IT world, certifications have become a proxy for experience. They are used as a quick and dirty way to pare down the resume mountain. Can’t really blame them for that.

  • Personally, I choose to see them as a proxy for individual motivation. At some point the person either took the time to either bug their boss about it and get the training or shelled out the ducats to pay for it themselves. In any case, the interview process can reveal their actual motivation for attending as well as the depth of their knowledge.

  • There is a difference between certification and training, however. What you offer is training and you make no claims on the level of expertise the attendees leave with. As I am currently pestering my boss to put ObjectMentor on the training list, I have a fairly good idea what I would get out of it but I wouldn’t think that I could make a claim other than that I had attended the training.

  • But what the CSM and PMP people are doing is stating that the certifications give the holders a level of job fitness. Having a PMP cert myself, I can unequivocally state it was the biggest waste of time and money since I bought a Yugo in college. It made me no better suited for any particular work. Being able to pass a three-hour multiple choice test isn’t something I think I’m going to need to do again soon. The only thing holding a PMP did was get me past the resume screen. Ironic, since I was leaving PM work to return to programming.

  • Maybe I’m bitter about the PMP thing, but to me the main beneficiaries of the certs are the organizations that profit from people getting their piece of paper.

  • You are right, there isn’t an integrity deficit, merely a misguided way of allowing people to demonstrate job fitness. But it’s better than nothing.

Sebastian Kübeck ht about 2 hours later:

• • Bob, thank you for pointing this out! Nothing further to add.

Marcel Popescu about 2 hours later:

• • When it comes to certifications of any kind, I cannot help but agree with Heinlein’s proposal to grant every Californian a college diploma – as he said, it doesn’t cost anything and doesn’t hurt anybody. It’s not like the “real” diplomas mean anything.

Scott Duncan about 2 hours later:

• • Just had an experience bearing on the meaningfulness of certifications and people’s understanding of them relative to simply matching them to job specs.

  • A headhunter called me saying he had a client looking for someone who was a Certified Scrum Coach, Certified Scrum Trtainer, [or?] Certified ScrumMaster. He had no clue what these were about, of course. Worst part was he seemed not to know what his supposed client thought they wanted out of people with such qualifications.

  • I will say, overall, that, in the software, many certifications seem to carry little value because of the way one earns them. I believe some require years of experience, but few organizations even verify that. I have been told that PMI randomly audits some % of their applicants to verify pre-test qualifications like education and experience. But I’m not aware of any software-specific ones that do this. At least this seems true at the “entry” level which is what most are, i.e., they are the one and only level of certification offered in that domain by the specific body granting the certification.

Philip Schwarz about 4 hours later:

• • Also from Uncle Bob: Dirty Rotten ScrumDrels

David@Scrumology about 5 hours later:

• • I think I approached this backwards, being that I’ve been involved in Agile since late 2002, but only recently got CSM. I kept in touch with others from CSM class who had no prior experience, they ran out and tried it, and got fired.

  • I used CSM to supplement and redirect bad habits I had learned from Trial by Fire Agile™. You know, those tech startup jobs where it’s a multi-million dollar project, you are using Agile, and the fate of the company depends on it? Yeah those introduce bad habits under pressure.

  • However, you cannot deny the data behind the use of Agile & Scrum in job postings: http://www.scrumology.net/2009/06/18/agile-and-scrum-trend-analysis/

  • As long as you can parse through the HR-speak, it isn’t hard to find the real Agile job opportunities, and CSM on your resume doesn’t hurt!

  • Btw I also disagree with Mr Ambler about 99% of the time.

  • -David

William Pietri about 5 hours later:

• • Hi, Bob. Here’s my reasoning on why this is bad.

  • As somebody who has spent quite a while encouraging people to adopt Agile methods, in the minds of other people, I am inevitably associated with both successes and failures they see under that label. Further, to the extent I want to use that label in the future, I have an incentive to make sure that not too much idiocy happens under the Agile banner.

  • But I have met a number of people who believe that a Certified Scrum Master means that the holder is a certified master of Scrum. You and I don’t think a two-day course qualifies you to be much of anything, sure. But the whole point of a certification is to abstract away the details, so you don’t have to be an insider to evaluate the certificate-holder.

  • To the extent a hiring manager could reasonably perceive the CSM as the Agile community saying that the holder is qualified for something, I think we are at fault. And regardless, we will end up paying some of the price for their mistakes, so fault or no, I think it’s in our interest to improve the situation.

Tim VanFosson about 6 hours later:

• • I would agree. Most, if not all, of the certifications in the IT industry are merely paper signifying attendance at a course. This is, or should be, well known in hiring circles and among practitioners. The quality of courses vary and some certifications may have more or less merit than others, but they shouldn’t be mistaken for actual capabilities or expertise. People doing the hiring should know enough to say “I see you’ve taken the course, now what did you learn and how have you applied it?”

Philip Schwarz 1 day later:

• • I just came across the following, which claims to be ‘the web’s most popular scrum video!’:

  • SCRUM in Under 10 Minutes (also available in High Definition!).

  • Does it cover all one needs to know to get certified?

Ken Schwaber 3 days later:

• • Well said … Thanks, Bob. Ken

Michael Maham 4 days later:

• • Bob-

  • Great post! I was writing up some similar thoughts (http://lessmayhemmoresoftware.blogspot.com/2009/09/more-agile-certification-talk.html) when I read your post.

  • I heard some chatter wagering that IBM will soon unveil their own Agile certification. It will be interesting to see if that comes about.

  • michael

Rodrigo Yoshima 5 days later:

• • It’s not that simple. Object Mentor doesn’t claim to be the “official” Test-Driven Development course. If the “Test-Driven Alliance” creates something like “TDCP”, and the “official” course and the “official” certification/certificate you will change your opinion.

  • The problem with ScrumAlliance is that they claim to be the “official” training, making all other courses looking like poor quality or something like that.

  • I teach about Agile and Scrum here in Brazil and I don’t have any plans to be CST because I don’t agree with ScrumAlliance’s vision about Agile training. Just that.

Marcelo L 8 days later:

• • Do I think myself some mystic because I DO have my CSM, and don’t regret it ? No. Do I think myself perhaps more prepared for certain challenges than the average bear who thinks himself an agile practitioner ? Yes.

  • @Rodrigo: What exactly of the Scrum Alliance’s “Vision” is it you don’t agree with. I love it when folks make blanket statements, but just happen…to leave out specifics.

  • As for whether Object Mentor could claim to be “official” Test-Driven Development certifiers….well then maybe they’d have to open themselves up to more community governance about what constitutes pragmatic best practices to employ in TDD. If you’ve been around this place long enough, and read some of the comments of TDD practitioners you’d know that not all “are of one mind” either.

  • If the Scrum Alliance is so “off” by certifing “official” trainers. What’s to stop others from granting official CISCO, or Microsoft of Sun certifications ? Governance. The Scrum Alliance applies governance over the process of qualifying those who are both up to date with the goals and direction of Scrum, who’ve built up a body of traceable experience in coaching and training, and continue to do so.

  • Geeze, the way you put it, anyone who’s been programming Windows for over 20 years like I have could call myself a Microsoft Certified Trainer. Yeah, let me try to pull that one off, and see how far I’d get before I got phone calls from Redmond. C’mon, talk some sense.

  • The difference is governance. If you don’t agree with what the Scrum Alliance is working towards, fine. You’re more than welcome to NOT become certified to any capacity you don’t wish to be. Then again, I’d have to wonder what students would be learning from someone who isn’t certified by somebody else in practices they’re purporting to bestow upon others.

Jon Kern 20 days later:

• • The world will sort this out… Welcome to free enterprise. If HR folks decide to use a piece of paper as a measure of something important to them, and it doesn’t yield the desired results, they will adapt.

  • If folks hire people based solely on a piece of paper, they’ll get inconsistent results, and be free to change their ways. Or not.

  • A 2-day course to get a certificate or four years at a college to get a certificate… neither truly represent the ability of an individual to perform in a certain capacity at a certain organization on a specific project.

  • IMHO, there isn’t much to get in a huff about… move along.

  • BTW: I am UML Certified and I didn’t take any course (just helped James Odell beta test the exam)! The certification does not test if you can model, but only that you know the syntax of the modeling elements. BFD.

Daniel Sobral 27 days later:

• • @Marcelo L:

  • To get certified with ITIL or PMI you have to pass written tests. To get a CISCO certification you have to pass written tests and, for the more advanced stuff, actual lab tests.

  • To get certified with Scrum, you just have to pay.

  • That’s the crux of the matter.

  • Of course, most certifications are barely useful. They can be used to discard the completely incompetent, but can still be had by a wide array of inadequate people. And, of course, they never stand for excellence.

  • I open an exception here for the Cisco certifications with lab work.