Certified–Professional Scrum Master-I(PSM-I)

Before I joined UnitedHealth Group as a Consultant in Jul 2010, I didn’t even hear about of Agile or Scrum.I have been working in an Agile environment for last 3 years and it was really interesting experience to develop high value applications and products using Scrum. I worked on few projects during the tenure as a Agile Development Team member and acted as Scrum Master in building some high quality mobile applications. As a team we enjoyed working together in Agile Environment.  Now I am confident enough to say that I know bits and pieces of scrum. Frankly speaking I love to preach about Scrum. 

What is Scrum? :  for those who does not know about Scrum

Scrum is an iterative and incremental agile software development framework for managing software projects and product or application development. Its focus is on “a flexible, holistic product development strategy where a development team works as a unit to reach a common goal” as opposed to a “traditional, sequential approach”.

Scrum enables the creation of self-organizing teams by encouraging co-location of all team members, and verbal communication between all team members and disciplines in the project.

A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often called requirements churn), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner.

As such, Scrum adopts an empirical approach—accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team’s ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements.

Why is it called ‘Scrum’?

In rugby football, a scrum refers to the manner of restarting the game after a minor infraction. In the early 1990s, Ken Schwaber used what would become Scrum at his company, Advanced Development Methods, and Jeff Sutherland, with John Scumniotales and Jeff McKenna, developed a similar approach at Easel Corporation, and were the first to refer to it using the single word Scrum.

[Ref: Wikipedia]

If you are interested to know more about Scrum visit the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)

There is two professional certifying authorities for obtaining a Certification in Agile Scrum.

1. ScrumAlliance.org –> provides the Certified Scrum Master(CSM) certification.

• Any one who attend a training/course(Certified Scrum Master course) by a Certified  Scrum Trainer(CST), will be able to get this certification.
• Course Training Cost  is little costly comparing to PSM-1.
• Assessment is just for the sake, you will get Certificate even through you didn’t do well in the assessment.
• The certification has a validity of 2 years, and you will have to renew every 2 years($150).

2. Scrum.org –> by Scrum’s co-creators (Ken Schwaber & Jeff Sutherland)  – provides Professional Scrum Master(PSM) 1 and 2 certifications.

• This certification is based on real Assessment of your Scrum knowledge.
• You will have to score 85% out of 100 to get this certification.
• This certification will not expire.
• PSM-1 costs 100$

Both certifications has it’s own value in the market, since Scrum.org is relatively new comparing to ScrumAlliance, you will see more organization focusing towards CSM. But trend has changed and either CSM or PSM would be good enough to prove your proficiency in Scrum Development and to work in a Scrum Development Team.

Even though have completed the PSM training in Jan 2013, it took a while for me to write the exam, due to priority activities at the workplace.  But  I just cleared Scrum.org’s – Professional Scrum Master-1(PSM-1) certification.  Glad that I cleared it and now I am among those 11k – PSM-I certified developers.

[PSM -I – Badge]

To know more about Scrum and Certifications visit the following links:

CSM  –http://www.scrumalliance.org/certifications/practitioners/certified-scrummaster-(csm) 

PSM-I  – https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Professional-Scrum-Master-Assessments/PSM-I-Assessment

PSM-II  –  https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Professional-Scrum-Master-Assessments/PSM-II-Assessment

The Scrum Guide in one location: www.ScrumGuides.org