Demystifying Certifications

Today we are going to talk about certifications.

 

 After 15 years working in Scrum and Agile, coaching agile teams and facilitating cultural change, it was difficult for me to think that a certification could teach me something new. How much biased was my expectation!

Now again I was wrong... the scrum.org certifications were a complete process of Self-discovery... A huge learning and awakening flourish inside of me. I found out in the way, that I had many false assumptions, maybe created by bad experiences. After many months reading, studying and discussing topics, I found out a lot of gaps, and now I can say that my Mindset has a new displacement.

I had bad experiences with certifications, that were only attending a 3 day course, and then you get a certificate, without even making a test. This is really not recommendable. 

Also with another type of certification, I was required to pay 200 dollars to renew the certification. But the only one requirement was: to pay. No exam, no updates... nothing. So I was really disappointed with the certification world. 

 On the other hand, during the last year, I had a lot of great experiences with certifications. First of all with my ACC from ICF. Which I'm really proud of! 

 

 

Acredicted Certified Coach - International Coach Federation 

It was more than 3 years, practicing hard, and attending 3 trainings, to achieve this certification, and its the basic level in ICF. The process involved a deep mindset reframing, and profound self-discovery, and transformation process. 

To be an ICF coach, part of your new way of being, is to incarnate very high ethic standards.  

 

 

Professional Scrum Master 2 - Scrum.org 

Scrum.org works with three levels for certification: 

• fundamental - PSM I
• advanced - PSM II 
• distinguished - PSM III

The first level, you can achieve by well knowing the basic elements, and holding diverse field experience. The PSM II, is more harder. Is usual that people has to take the assessment many times to pass it. Scrum.org requires 85% of accuracy to approve, and the questions really put your mindset to the test, with hard real scenarios where you have to show how much are you aligned with the scrum values, the empiricism principles and agility. 

During the certification process, I validated many of my own assumptions, and fixed some of them that were wrong. So after certifying, I can say, I'm more sure about  what is real or false, in terms of scrum and agility. 

I also expanded much more my vision to the other roles, not only the scrum master one. 

I can say, If I were working with certified people, I would have much more less misunderstandings in the past. 

So I totally recommend to follow scrum.org certification processes, to ensure you have a minimul of awareness and mindset in your professional squad. 

Not only on knowledge, experience, but also in ethic standars and values (scrum, agile) 

I hope this article was informative for you, for any question feel free to write me. 

Happy certifying! 

Daniel