ScrumMaster Certification

I recently attended a Certified ScrumMaster course in Zurich given by Jeff Sutherland.

While Jeff’s anecdote that he invented Scrum when flying missions as a top gun fighter pilot for the US during the Vietnam war might not be literally true, it might be. Because he did invent Scrum. Well, co-invent it anyway.

As it turned out, the course was a far more valuable experience than I could have imagined it would be. I think in my case that I was able to gain so much from it through being able to relate the work that I’ve been doing in Agile environments over the past five years where I have spent the majority of my time as a Scrum team member in teams that have seen varying degrees of success.

I did not take the course because I want to be a ScrumMaster. I took the course because I wanted to know why when we were practising Scrum projects were liable to fail, team morale was low, there was a disjoint between what we committed to and what we delivered, etc.

And these questions got answered. In fact, all my questions got answered. I understand why these things happened. Now I have some tips on how to go forward. My understanding of Scrum now has a grounding and I can help others to reach that understanding too. But mostly, I learnt that I have much more to learn. But that’s not a bad thing, and in some terms its apt especially as Jeff thinks of Scrum as a martial art.

I suppose the point of this post is that if you’re going to learn about Scrum it would be my recommendation to learn from Jeff. Lets just say “he knows what he’s talking about”.