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In the first message on this group, I am trying to put my raw
thoughts in what motivated me to start this group and open it for
discussion:

Need for Certification in Agile :

1. Motivate good Agile Practitioners around the world
2. Recognize good Agile Practitioners around the world
3. Enable industry identify good Agile Practitioners in the
market/industry.
4. Harvest the collective potential of good Agile Practitioners
5. Provide an opportunity for Agile Practitioners to collaborate,
share and learn at all levels
6. Nurture and Preserve the correct understanding of the true spirit
of Agile
7. Support good Agile Practitioners to Innovate and Grow.
8. Bring credibility and a high degree of assurance to the Agile Community
9. Accelerate the ability of the Agile Community to deliver Value to
the Industry and enable mutual growth and prosperity.

How to Certify ?

Agile is a set of values and principles. Agile is a mindset, a belief
pattern, a culture, a way of doing good business with customers, a way
of working with people in teams in the knowledge innovation industry.
A way of creating and delivering VALUE to all stakeholders, faster,
cheaper and better.
How do you certify such things. But we need it for reasons enumerated
above.

Who can Certify

Who better can certify a good Agile Practitioner than the Stakeholders
involved. But is it possible. Who will coordinate and who can do it.

Who better knows an Agile Practitioner other than the actual
stakeholders (manager,customer,team,peers,community) involved with
him. They are the best judge if the Agile Practitioner is good in
Agile. However, the community of agile enthusiasts close to him, will
also know him well. So I thought why not use this opportunity.

Let the local Agile Community Certify that the Agile Practitioner is
Good. And this decision can be moderated by the senior members of the
Agile Community.

This way the Local Agile Community can be held accountable for its
decisions on Certification and this can help them learn and moderate
their decisions in future evolutionarily. Ture Agile Style.

Current International Agile Community Organization

We have an Agile Alliance at the top. We have national level Agile
Community Organizations affiliated to Agile Alliance in many
countries. We also have Region wise local Chapters of Agile
Evangelists. We also have city-wise Agile User Groups. This is our
current Agile Community structure. We have informally organized
ourselves into this structure and grown to what we are today. This is
how open communities evolve.

Having said this, we can now ask the Community to Certify good Agile
Practitioners and keep updating their assessments over time.

We can have:

Community Certified Agile Practitioner (CCAP)
Community Certified Agile Leader (CCAL)
Community Certified Agile Trainer (CCPT)
Community Certified Agile Coach (CCPC)
Community Certified Agile Evangelist (CCAE)

How to Certify

All the above Certifications can have some QRs that the community can
jointly derive and define that would serve the very purpose for
certification.

Example:

CCAP : Min 1 yr experience on an Agile Team. (can be assessed based on
what contribution he made to his team, to his organization, to his
customers, to the Agile Community and to his own self development in
this two years)

CCAL : Min 1 yr experience as an Agile Leader

CCAT: Min 1 yr experience as an Agile Trainer (can be assessed based
on feedback received from CCAPs and CCALs)

CCAC: Min 1 yr experience as an Agile Coach (can be assessed based on
feedback received from stakeholders like the organization, the team,
the customers, the community etc)

CCAE: All existing and emerging thought leaders who are contributing
to the growth of the international Agile Community and Propagating its
Culture.

All certifications can be valid for a period of one year. (The first
year it can be called a Certificate on Probation). All certifications
by the community should be assessed, reevaluated and renewed for the
next year based on similar criteria.

Example: Renwal of the certification can be based on his contribution
in this year to the Agile Team, to the Organization he works for, to
the Customers he was responsible to deliver Value, to the Agile
Community and to how own Self development and Learning, which can be
validated based on formal testimonials from each such stakeholders and
a need to get a minimum satisfaction rating on each of them.

Advantages of Community Certified Agile Practitioner Scheme

1. National Level Agile Organization, Regional Agile Chapters and
Local Agile User Groups will be strengthened
2. This will motivate and result in imperative collaboration and
communication in the community at all levels
3. Industry will benefit (easy to identify the right Agile resources)
4. Industry will get an assurance and will be willing to sponsor
regional events and activities of the local Agile Associations,
Chapters and User groups
5. It will ensure that the true spirit of the original Agile Values
and Principles, will not get corrupted.
6. No financial implications...the communities can run only on
donations and sponsors as they are doing now.
7 Agile Community can take the accountability for maintaining the
integrity and validity of the certification and administer it (Self
Organizing Team)

How to formalize such Certification

1. Any person can apply for a CCAP, CCAL, CAPT or to a CCAC and
request for an evaluation and certification.

2. After submitting all the details meeting the QRs to any active
person in the Agile Community, his case can be put up to the local
user group / regional chapter.

3. Minimum 5 members of the Agile Community with an accredited and/or
certified status have to scrutinize and recommend the certification
to the next entity in the organization structure who can formalize it.

4. Agile Alliance at the top level can maintain a registry of such
Certified Agile Practitioners etc over the web with a unique
identification. Probably also allow stakeholders and community
members post feedback on them (the Community Certified Agile
Practioners and others ) on an ongoing basis as a measure of
maintaining the integrity and accountability of such certifications.

5. On any negative feedback on Community Certified Agile
Practitioners from the industry or the community, the local body can
investigate, suspend, cancel or revoke such certifications.


Why did this not work with the Certification Scheme offered on Scrum
by the Scrum Alliance ( CSMs, CSPs, CSTs)

1. It did not meet any of the "Need for Certification" criteria as
enumerated first thing on top of this message
2. There is no evaluation or QR for certifying Scrum Masters. The
only requirements is to pay USD 1200 and sit through a class for two days
3. The decision to certify or not to certify, if at all there is one,
is that of a single trainer who has taken money for the course from
the participant. (99.99% of people attending the course are certified)
4. There are over 15000 CSMs and the industry is wondering what to do
with them. How to get a good Agile Practitioner is still an
unresolved need of the industry
5. A CSM is never better than a non-CSM practicing Agile. In many
cases I have seen CSMs know nothing about Agile Values and Principles.
I have trained and coached over 2500 people on Agile in India and abroad.
6. The whole scheme is run by a few individuals as a commercial
business. Yes I agree people have minted money doing CSM courses.
7. No one takes accountability for the certification of CSMs or if
CSMs are not found satisfactorily executing an Agile role that they
are given in an Agile Project
8. It has created massive dissatisfaction and is discredited by the
industry including CSMs themselves


I have put my raw ideas here for further discussions. I welcome your
feedback and responses. I thank you for your patience. Please
contribute your feedback.

Even if nothing fianlly happens on this idea at a higher level, from
the Agile Alliance or the international Agile Community, I am going
to implement this scheme in India starting from Bangalore. This only
after I get all your feedback and responses on what you all think may
be the pros and cons of doing this this way.

Kripanidhi
www.binaryessentials.com
http://www.scrumtales.blogspot.com