Reason for Certification – Additional Value for the Client instead of Self-satisfaction for the Provider

The value of certification only becomes evident in the test of practice. In the ideal situation certfication should be granted as a result of an endless loop of feedback between theory and practice. The curriculum should repeatedly be aimed at both.

And what is often gladly forgotten: in the environment of an organization certification should not just have value for the individual, but also must help the organization as a whole. I don’t see this being achieved with the present form of certification because the individuals as well as the organization are left to fend for themselves halfway to their goal and they mainly follow the interests of the certifying umbrella organization. Therefore I have decided to follow a new path with bor!sgloger.

What was it that I once wanted to achieve with the Scrum Alliance? I became the first Certified ScrumTrainer, because I wanted to improve the world a little with Scrum. I wanted to show people that there are many better ways of working, and that there are projects that can be fun. I tried to show Ken Schwaber in 2004 that I could help him to achieve his goal by professionalizing software development. He created with certification the necessary framework and market, that made it possible, to attract many people. For years I explained to everyone, that certification is a necessary evil to create a market. But the goal was never to certify people in Scrum, but to show them how super ingenious Scrum is.

I defined my job as: spread Scrum and show organizations, how to do Scrum.

Therefore I have been traveling around for years. After 2004 I brought Scrum to Germany, then to Scandinavia, Austria, Brazil and South Africa. My goal has always been to motivate people to use Scrum and to perfect it. I always knew, that I alone could not excite enough people. That is why I liked Ken’s idea: there need to be a lot of trainers and I trained one trainer after the other using this role model. I wrote a book with the goal of showing people why Scrum has to work and at the same time founded a consulting organization.

The practice determines what is needed. That all led to me not only having a responsibility to my employees but above all to my clients. I must maintain a standard of quality, that I established with others: extremely good workshops and Scrum implementations, that do what we promise. The demands on those of us who are Scrum consultants and trainers have changed. The simple basic training that the Scrum Alliance now sells as CSM is no longer adequate. For us consulting today means advising companies to change their organizational structure.

My theories:

We need programs that help people do their job correctly, that help them to further develop their abilities and that make their careers successful.

We need systems that help organizations to give their employees more room to create, so that these organizations can compete globally.

What does the Scrum Alliance offer us?

The representatives (CSTs) offer exactly two (2) trainining workshops: the Certified ScrumMaster und the Certified Product Owner Training. With the result that the participants experience first hand a little about Scrum.
The Scrum Alliance grants two more levels of certification: the Certified Scrum Professional, the Certified Scrum Coach and parallel to that the Certified Scrum Trainer.

These certifications do not help our clients. They are only for the individual consultant, the individual free lancer. This makes sense for those trying to compete with their competitors in the consulting market.

Unfortunately a company that wants to work with one of these consultants or free lancers is never entirely sure if the bearer of this seal can actually perform well. Neither the status of CSC nor CST are achieved by completing standardized training programs, but are bestowed without a fair testing procedure.

The newest certification is that of Certified Scrum Developer. Only training companies can apply for this, when they send in their curriculum. This procedure also does not meet sufficient qualification criteria for verification in my opinion.

What does Scrum.org offer?

In principle exactly the same as the Scrum Alliance. They just simply call the CSM the Professional ScrumMaster and the CSD the Professional Scrum Developer, because the Scrum Alliance owns the rights to both C designations. They allow everyone through an online procedure to become Professional ScrumMaster.

bor!sgloger wants change. And it begins in 2011.

None of these programs fulfill my stated demands: to offer help and support, so that an individual can do his job correctly and in doing so improve his own career in an ever changing world of industry and successfully develop his abilities. These programs are not intended to help organizations persist in global competition.

Both of my demands can in my opinion not be fulfilled by a trainer interest association. I also don’t know how they would want to manage this. Because the goal of such an association must be to preserve the status quo. The change can only be afforded by companies, who accept this challenge and can go new ways.

We the bor!sgloger team with three central competencies: Training, Consulting and Scrum Talent Search want to become such a company. Like a few years ago we again want to be among the first who dare to take this step – to give up something in order to achieve the freedom to serve our clients with good, high-quality products.

Consulting products (bor!sgloger consulting, Baden Baden)

Our Consulting Organization offers our clients today the additional value of turning their teams in a few weeks into highly productive entities. 2011 we will commit to an even stronger development of the entire Scrum organization and add to it an aspect of measurement. We want as the first Scrum Consulting Company to acquit ourselves of something we all want: measurable success.

Training products (bor!sgloger trainings, Vienna)

From ScrumMaster to Scrum ChangeManager: Starting in 2011 I, Boris Gloger, will offer training sessions very similar to ScrumMaster Training. This training will explain Scrum for ScrumMasters like before. But in addition it will lead to a qualification as Scrum ChangeManager.

We were the first to develop this series of training sessions, that convey the skills that ScrumMasters need in order to successfully do their job as ScrumMaster: Team Development with Scrum, Change Management with Scrum and Meeting Facilitation with Scrum.

We also will redefine the Scrum Product Owner in 2011: Boris Gloger will show the workshop participants how to actually and verifiably develop products successfully. This workshop will be a unique, worldwide offer.

With this unparalleled Training Portfolio in the German speaking world, we offer you as an individual, as well as the organization the chance to be even more successful with Scrum.

How will bor!sgloger certification look starting in 2011?

The basic question about the Certification of the Scrum Alliance is: What is the value of certification for an organization that rejects the founder of the organization because he wants to follow new ideas that should improve Scrum?

If you still want to obtain Scrum Alliance Certification

My (BG) Training sessions still comply with the guidelines of the Scrum Alliance, that like in the past are the prerequisites for taking the online test for certification.
This approval was always bound above all to my status (the brand license).
Correspondingly I recommend: If certification by the Scrum Alliance is a concern of yours, apply for approval for certification with my certificate of participation. My training sessions will prepare you (as in the past) with the appropriate content, learning goals and qualifications to qualify you for this certificate.
Will you receive this approval? I think the chances are not good.

Certification of Scrum.org

Or you join the alternative with Ken Schwaber and us. We will refund the testing fees at Scrum.org, if you have completed our ScrumMaster Training. In this way you will become a Professional ScrumMaster. This designation has also already been recognized by many companies.

Certification from bor!sgloger

If you do not want to show that you have acquired a piece of paper, we offer you an honorable alternative: You will receive a certificate of participation from us. A participation certificate that shows that you are a ScrumMaster certified by bor!sgloger, as long as there is no independent entity to bestow European certification on ScrumMasters. We guarantee that we will accompany you along your career path, if you want. We will help you to fulfill your career dreams. This European certification will be modeled according to industrial norms in the next 12 to 18 months and will lead to certification as Scrum ChangeManager certified by bor!sgloger.

What is a Scrum ChangeManager?

Why isn’t ScrumMaster Certification enough, we have explained above – but which Scrum title then is worthy of striving for and why? We believe that proof of theoretical knowledge alone is not enough to prove that someone is a good ScrumMaster, Product Owner or Scrum trained developer. The basic training is followed by in depth courses and proof of practical, successful implementation. Afterwards you have someone who with a clear conscience and true self confidence can represent and implement Scrum for himself and for an organization. This person is a Scrum ChangeManager.

This is just a start- We will be there for our clients and be the place to go for Scrum in Europe. New products will come and we along with other Scrum enthusiasts will make Scrum into a new way of working in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Keep following our progress and become a part of it! For example, post your opinion of our ideas.

Andrea Tomasini

Dear Boris,
In your previous post (http://borisgloger.com/2010/11/29/scrum-alliance-und-scrum-org-konzepte-von-gestern-losen-keine-probleme-von-heute/), you highlighted the incapability of international organizations to grant any type of value through the certification programs they offer. As alternative you propose… your own certification model? So what would be the difference? Why your would be better than others?

In one point you are right, if you really want to help people to do Scrum right, you need to have something more than a 2 days class, and that is consistent with the Scrum Alliance message:

“CSM and CSPO are entry level certification which warranty that the person attending got the knowledge needed to start performing as a ScrumMaster or as a Product Owner”.

What you are talking about is called coaching – I am sure you know the word, but you missed its usage in your post -, and the Scrum Alliance offers a very qualified role that is able to help people in the daily work, to reach their objective by adopting efficiently the Scrum Framework as well as a lot of others agile practices and tools, this role is the Certified Scrum Coach (CSC). There are about 30 coaches in the all world, and becoming a coach is everything but an easy task, it requires a lot of preparation and real world experience (at least 1500h of coaching), you can find out more here: http://www.scrumalliance.org/pages/certified_scrum_coach .

The mixture of training (knowledge transfer) and coaching (facilitate learning by doing, with the goal of increasing proficiency in the long terms) are since ever the right recipe to succeed in doing Scrum, being an empirical based framework.

On the value of the “certificate”, I think I agree with you in saying that the piece of paper doesn’t certify the person who got it any further than certifying that that person attended a training delivered by a qualified trainer (CST). The Scrum Alliance is aware of the fact that the certification should have a better defined bar, and is working in that direction. Becoming a CST is not easy, and in the history there have been moment when was harder and others when was easier, still the community contributed to improve that process and try to rise the bar, to make sure that the CST that represent the Scrum Alliance, are at a certain level of proficiency in teaching Scrum. I don not think it is fair to blame the “CST” as a brand after you have been one, and profitably used that title for years. It is also not fair to say that there is no warranty in having a training with a CST, as while might be true that the bar to become one might be rise – it always can be – it is still not at level zero.

So what people get out of the certification is not the “Paper” but the assurance that the trainer teaching them Scrum went through a path which should guarantee a certain experience and knowledge about the matter. Of course there are trainers and trainers, still having a CST – as you always said yourself to customers till now – is somehow a quality assurance.

One last point about your “Scrum ChangeManager”, before I can wish you all the best for your new endeavour. Every company needs to have change initiators (early adopters) that would convince others – not coerce – to “comply” to the values and principle of Scrum (this can be much more general though), than after some coaching, experience and time, they will start to “identify” with the value and the way of working that the specific framework encourages, finally the goal is to reach a status where everybody in the company “interiorize” these values and principles and make them their normal way of working. If a company fails in doing this, they will inevitably be affected by “Organizational Gravity” and fall back to some old practices, being unable to challenge the existing system, or failing to remove impediments. So beside the bad choice of name – I don’t think Manager is something that explains clearly what that person is supposed to do, if I understand your purpose – my experience showed that every organization which aims to have a healthy and well sustainable Scrum in place, needs to grow internal coaches. Becoming a coach is a long lasting process and not everybody who starts will reach the end of it. To drive the change there is the need to have a full team – normally known as Transition Team – which supported by a sponsor, and paying attention to the issue (impediment) popping up from the Scrum Teams, is empowered to adjust the structure and the organization to enable the Teams to be more effective.

The management will learn to give more weight to the aspects of “Leadership” vs. controlling, staffing and budgeting that are typical tenants of traditional managers, and this also takes time. So we need to transform people into agile servant leaders in order to succeed in a long lasting and sustainable change to becoming more agile, by adopting the Scrum framework as well as other agile practices. I really hope your solution will not end up being again a training-consulting combo, stealing the soul out of what makes agile and Scrum succeed, which are not the “operational” aspects of it, but the intrinsic knowledge, soft skills and values that through empathy and perseverance coaches are able to awake into people making them passionate and enthusiasts.

Now I wish you all the best luck in your new approach to change the world of work, you are – like everybody else – free to choose the way that best fits you, which shouldn’t start from blaming and criticizing organizations which despite the failure and the troubles successfully enroll valuable people that are out there every day, and are making the difference.

Good Luck & Ciao
ANdreaT
http://borisgloger.com/members/boris-gloger/ Boris Gloger

Hi Andrea,

thanks for your interesting statement.

You and I do have very different approaches to support companies.

I do not say that one is better than the other. It is different. And I would would not be honest if I pretend that I do not believe that ours is superior.

An organization will choose the typ of consulting, and that is what we offer in the first run, they need.

My complain is not that people who do CSC are not good in their profession. My complain is that in my eyes the SA is not the institute that should give out this certificate. And that a company can not be sure that they get a qualified person based on SA certificates. For several reasons.

Best Boris