Comments on: ScrumMaster and ZenMaster: The joke of certification

By: Scrum Product Owner — BedroomPublishing.com BedroomPublishing.com

Scrum Product Owner — BedroomPublishing.com BedroomPublishing.com — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 23:15:51 +0000

[...] ScrumMaster and ZenMaster: The joke of certification (codemonkeyism.com) [...]

By: Vitor BVS

Vitor BVS — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:13:21 +0000

I understand your point, but all about you said about certifications is valid not only for SMC. Many technologies have certifications and I’ve seen good professionals that don’t have one, and bad ones the have tons of shiny papers on their workstations.
In the end, your Zen approach would be nice if people started to destroy the certification paradigm too, and started to pay more attention to quality of the work being done.

By: stephan

stephan — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:44:10 +0000

“Well, as far as I experienced Scrum, the customer is an essential part of Scrum.
The customer himself has to understand the concepts behind Scrum and really believe and trust in those concepts.”

Yes, the customer/product owner needs to believe in Scrum and trust the team. He needs to write the right stories with the right size and with top business value. He needs to channel and filter demands from outside the team.

Nowadays Scrum trainer make the point that a product owner might not be enough and a real user (XP!) should be part of the team. From my experience a good product owner should be a good substitute, although he’s tempted to implement his ideas instead of the customer needs.

By: Jonas

Jonas — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:29:37 +0000

Well, as far as I experienced Scrum, the customer is an essential part of Scrum.
The customer himself has to understand the concepts behind Scrum and really believe and trust in those concepts.

If not everybody involved in a Scrum project is committed to Scrum it is not Scrum …

In a product-development project, the role of the customer can be represented by a member of the internal team. But when we are talking about customized enterprise software, I believe that it is not really possible to do it without the real customer/end user.

I had such an experience:
http://blog.jonasbandi.net/2008/10/scrum-pigs-musing-about-commitment.html

By: stephan

stephan — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:13:28 +0000

@Jonas: I agree, they do not get Scrum.

This behavior is cargo-cult-Scrum.

From my experience Scrum is all-transforming, breaking up organizations, changing roles, flowing through everything in a company.

If it doesn’t, then the team will have perpetual impediments that are rooted in the current form of organization and which don’t go away. A permanent point of pain.

I guess in those cases Scrum fails sooner or later.

By: Jonas

Jonas — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 14:54:34 +0000

I scenario I often come across is development companies that say “we are doing Scrum internally, we are only displaying a waterfall facade for our customer” …

In my opinion this is not possible, I suspect, that those people did not get what Scrum is all about …

What do you think?

By: Raoul Duke

Raoul Duke — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:15:34 +0000

(i’m also a CSM, although i have long since lost the diploma :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma_transmission

By: smyd scrum,

smyd scrum, — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:14:11 +0000

I make money off of SCRUM because it is such bullshit. It is so hilarious. I read some books then I go to companies and fix their problem. Usually they problem is they aren’t actually following any process whatsoever. So I just give em more SCRUM. Sometimes it works.

You don’t need SCRUM, you need the ability to reflect and the an understanding of how to utilize process to improve your product.

By: stephan

stephan — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:46:50 +0000

I think Scrum is very much “in fashion”. It’s over the first hill of the Gartner cyle (Slope of Enlightment). Many companies adopt scrum with good results (From my knowledge fewer Scrum adoptions fail than some years ago).

Scrum is Kanban (pull instead of push) from my understanding. At least for the development part. Kanban-pull needs to spread though. Customers need to pull features. The Kanban “line” is too short in most Scrum implementations.

And Poppendieck hasn’t arrived here in Germany yet. But lean is on the horizon.

(The most interesting part of Scrum for me is pull and lean)

By: Jonas

Jonas — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:36:47 +0000

In my experience, most certifications have the issues you are describing.
Also technical certifications are mostly about branding and establishing corporate acceptance.
It is a lot like basic studies in university: You prove that you are able to trade your time and effort to achieve any objective. This makes you valuable in the corporate anthill…

This can be frustrating:
http://blog.jonasbandi.net/2008/09/certification-to-become-braindead.html

By the way isn’t Scrum out of fashion? The new kid on the block seems to be Kanban…