Certified Scrum Professional Pathway for ScrumMasters
In today’s challenging business environment it has become apparent that there is an increasing need for ScrumMasters who are capable of facilitating and coaching their teams and organisations to achieve greatness. Growing ScrumMasters has been a particular passion of our coaches and trainers at BeLiminal for many years, as they represent the people on the ground in organisations that will continue to guide businesses through agility as the world around them continues to change.
What we are increasingly noticing is that those organisations who have invested in the continual growth of their ScrumMasters as part of their ongoing Agile adoption, tend to have improved longer term success. Those organisations that only play lip service to the role tend to regress away from Agile working. The tendency is that once the Agile consultants leave there is nobody left to hold the organisation to account. Symptoms of this type of lip service may include:
• The ScrumMaster only being a part time role
• In-experienced ScrumMasters left with no support from the rest of the business
• The ScrumMaster perceived as a facilitator and admin, rather than a team coach and organisational change agent
In order to address this, the Scrum Alliance have recently launched a new role based programme for growth beyond the Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Product Owner certifications. It is ideal for ScrumMasters looking to develop and grow and gives two new learning opportunities:
• Certified Advanced ScrumMaster™ – this is suitable for ScrumMasters with at least a year’s experience.
• Certified Scrum Professional® (SM) – this is suitable for ScrumMasters with at least two years’ experience.
This programme is aimed at practicing ScrumMasters and gives them the chance to grow and develop skills such as facilitation and coaching. It also allows them to build their knowledge to better serve Development Teams, Product Owners and the wider organisation. Both advanced programmes above focus on growing ScrumMasters as both team coaches and change agents.
Here at BeLiminal we had a great time recently running our first public Advanced Certified ScrumMaster™ course in London. Our public version of the course is a two day workshop, followed by at least three online group-coaching sessions. We believe the coaching element is essential as real learning happens through application and reflection. The coaching sessions create that opportunity for ScrumMasters to reflect on the practical application of what they have learnt on the workshop. We had some great feedback on the recent workshop:
“An invaluable course for Scrum Masters to practice skills and develop reflective insights into the strengths and weaknesses of themselves and their organisation”
“Great, energetic course – can’t wait to put the teachings to use”
“An essential workshop for ScrumMasters looking to reach the next level”
We will be running a Certified Scrum Professional® for ScrumMasters course later in the year, along with more Advanced Certified ScrumMaster™ courses, see our course listings for the latest.
Please contact us directly if you are looking to create a development programme for ScrumMasters internally. We can build a bespoke coaching and training programme, which will allow your ScrumMasters to grow to the level of the Certified Scrum Professional.
Author: Mark Summers