In short, in the IT sector, certifications are essential. Most companies like to have the most qualified and skilled professionals working for them. If you are on the job market and trying to get hired, the certifications you have will make all the difference. It may be that you have the same level of experience as someone else going for the same job, but if they have relevant IT certifications to their name, they are going to be considered the better candidate.
Even if you already work for a company and are interested in trying to get a promotion or want to switch to a different department, position, or company, the more certified you are, the better your chances will be.
However, there are a lot of different IT certifications out there. So, how do you know which are the best to go for? It depends on the area of IT you want to stick with. To give you an idea of all the courses available, you can check all training available at Scrum With Style, and if you happen to be in Australia or New Zealand, you can attend them in person. In short, below are highlights of the most popular Scrum courses.
Certified ScrumMaster
The Certified ScrumMaster certification is the basic entry-level option available through Scrum Alliance. It is beneficial for anyone either looking to take on the role of ScrumMaster or to become a more effective member of a Scrum team. To achieve this certification, you need to attend a 16-hour training course in-person to qualify for the test.
In the course, you learn all about the Scrum framework and things like artifacts, events, and team roles. Importantly, you will also learn the basics for guiding an agile team through projects successfully.
Certified Scrum Product Owner
The Certifed Scrum Product Owner or CSPO for short is designed to help Product Owners specifically by sharpening their understanding of everything Scrum and really focusing on the ins and outs of the role as Product Owner.
With regards to the product strategy, you are provided with the information you need to better understand things like Agile road mapping, segmentation, hypothesis testing, business impact mapping to shift things, so they are geared towards impacts and outcomes rather than outputs.
Agile Certified Professional – Project Management Institute
Offered by the Project Management Institute, PMI, that don’t offer Scrum-specific certifications, this course and certification are incredibly popular among employers looking to hire new candidates and ScrumMasters because it tackles many important Scrum and agile principles and practices.
This certification can be used as a barometer to offer insight into your knowledge of the principles of agile and skill at utilizing the various agile techniques that are used. More than just Scrum is covered, though, as alternative agile approaches like Kanban, Lean, and even Test-driven development and extreme programming are tackled.
To qualify for the certification, you need to have 2,000 hours worth of general experience working in teams. Although they are not exactly required, qualification for the certification course will be easier with a Program Management Professional PgMP certification or Project Management Professional certification.
As well as the above, you need to have at least 1,500 hours worth of working using agile methodologies or on agile project teams and have 21 contact hours of agile practices training.
Advanced Certified ScrumMaster
You may wonder what you can do to improve your scrum and agile knowledge even further if you already have a CSM and have worked in the role of ScrumMaster for at least one year. Well, there is the Advanced Certified ScrumMaster certification which aims to take things a step further.
This course revolves around learning more advanced skills and techniques.
You also learn more about team dynamics, coaching, facilitation, and interaction than you do in the introductory basic certification course.
Certified Scrum Professional ScrumMaster
After you have achieved your Advanced Certified ScrumMaster certification for further advancement in scrum and agile, you may want to then aim for the Certified Scrum Professional ScrumMaster certification. This is considered the pinnacle course and is for real experts who want to have complete mastery over the role of ScrumMaster and want to improve the application of agile and scrum principles within the organization you are working for.
You need to attend an educational offering tailored for the certified CSP-SM certification so that you get an advanced understanding of coaching skills, agile facilitation and develop effective and progressive skills and techniques that will help you in serving both the development team and the product owner on a project.
As you can see, depending on what you want to achieve from certification and the direction you want to take your career in, there are a wide variety of IT certifications you should consider, particularly from a Scrum and Agile point of view. It is true that the more certified, the better candidate you will come across to potential and current employers, but having a clear direction in mind is also a good idea.
