How do I become agile certified?

The first thing we need to clear up is what we mean by ‘agile’ because asking “how do I become certified in Agile” is like asking “how do I become certified in Sport”. Agile is a generic term – just as there are many different forms of sport, there are many different forms of agile.  Agile is really a philosophy that guides a way of thinking and behaving. 

The term Agile originated in the world of software development in the winter of 2001 when a group of 16 thought leaders gathered at a ski resort in Utah, USA to define it. They did so in the context of the ways of working that they each found extremely effective and, so it emerged, shared a similar philosophical foundation. One that valued:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation and
Responding to change over following a plan.

At the time of publication, their Manifesto for Agile Software Development represented a radical change to established custom and practice that placed heavier emphasis on the items to the right of the statements above than it did on those to the left.

For many, Scrum is seen as the same thing as Agile but, in reality, it is only one of many agile methods and frameworks that sit under the Agile umbrella. Others include XP (eXtreme Programming) – an excellent approach to agile software engineering, AgilePM – the first and best approach to agile project management, SAFe – the most widely used framework for scaling IT to enterprise level and many more that were created by the original thought leaders and have evolved since.

To navigate the value of agility to you as an individual and to guide you towards appropriate certification depends very much on what you intend to do with it and the role you will be playing in its use or adoption.

For most, a great place to start is with Scrum, but even with that, there may be a need to choose your course and certification carefully.  First of all, why is Scrum a good place to start? Primarily it is because it is the lightest and arguably the purest framework in terms of agility. In the definitive Scrum Guide 2020 (authored by the Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland – the co-creators of Scrum) it describes itself as “a lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organizations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems”.

Those in the Scrum Team responsible for developing the ‘adaptive solution’ – referred to thereafter in the Scrum Guide as the ‘Product’ – are simply called Developers, the two other roles are the Product Owner and the Scrum Master. The former is accountable for “maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team”. The latter is accountable for “establishing Scrum [as the agile way of working] as defined in the Scrum Guide”. As well as describing the characteristics and competencies required of the Scrum Team, the Scrum Guide also describes five events, the process element of Scrum, and three artefacts that focus and guide the evolution of the product. The events and artefacts are designed to support the concept of empiricism, based on transparency, inspection and adaptation – a concept that underpins the philosophy of all agile delivery approaches.

If you are going to be a participant in a Scrum Team you will need a good understanding of the theory and practice of Scrum. As a Developer, or as a stakeholder external to the Scrum Team, this is probably all you will need. As a Scrum Master or a Product Owner, specialist training will help you build your competence to fulfil such a role. In all cases, certification will demonstrate that you have the knowledge needed to fulfil that role. But…

For Scrum, choose your course and associated certification carefully. 

Some offerings remain heavily grounded in IT – often using IT-centric examples throughout the training – and in some cases, require knowledge of software development to pass the associated exam.

Others, such as those Scrum courses offered by APMG, are deliberately more balanced in their applicability to software development and to more business-centric purposes. Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org remain the biggest players in Scrum certification, though, and offer training and certification from a basic foundation, for beginners, all the way up to organisation-wide leadership and coaching designed for those who have been practicing Scrum for many years.  

Another reason for suggesting Scrum as a starting point on your Agile learning journey is because it often frames the teamworking approach of other agile frameworks.  For example, Extreme Programming is not often applied as a discrete method; it is more common for the software engineering practices that make it up to be used in the context of the Scrum framework. For another example, SAFe – the Scaled Agile Framework – has its own variant of Scrum as the basis of the way of working for the development teams that contribute to product development on a much larger scale than Scrum alone can sustain.

Turning attention to the concept of agile projects, there are a number of flavours of agile project management available – all with their own certifications. Prince2 Agile from Axelos and the latest PMBoK from PMI (the Project Management Institute) represent hybrid approaches to project management – essentially blending elements of traditional project management with elements of agility. Both appear to have drawn a degree of inspiration from DSDM – represented by Arie van Bennekum as the only project-centred approach that helped shape the Agile Manifesto in 2001.

AgilePM® is the other big contender for agile project managers and was evolved directly from DSDM by the Agile Business Consortium (formerly the DSDM Consortium) in 2010. Even ignoring the fact that DSDM originated at the same time as Scrum – in the mid-1990s – AgilePM remains the longest-established and most widely adopted fully agile approach to project management. The original 2010 edition simply added ‘hints and tips’ for project managers on the use of DSDM and the current 2014 version added more in-depth project management guidance. The only certification in AgilePM, that the Agile Business Consortium recognises, is provided by APMG.

To complete the story on Agile Project Management and to close the loop back to Scrum, in 2022 the Agile Business Consortium created a new variant of AgilePM designed to work with Scrum. This was driven by a recognition that agility at the development team level is globally dominated by Scrum combined with an understanding of the challenges and confusion that can often come from hybridising methods and frameworks. AgilePM for Scrum adapts AgilePM to provide a fully robust project management wrapper for Scrum.

AgilePM provides a fully agile project management approach in terms of leadership, scaling, governance and value realisation while leaving Scrum 100% compliant with the Scrum Guide. Foundation-level certification is available through APMG with Practitioner level certification due for launch in Sprint 2024.

As an alternative to SAFe (with training and certification offered by Scaled Agile Inc) – for organisations that prefer to organise their business change activities as Programmes there is only one contender for Agile Programme Management.  AgilePgM is another product from the Agile Business Consortium portfolio for which certification is provided by APMG. Some will argue that by modern standards of agility, it feels a bit old or traditional, but it still wins out over veterans such as MSP (from Axelos) or PgMP (from PMI), as it was designed from the bottom-up with agility in mind.

Finally, we will close the loop back to software and consider DevOps – an extremely popular and effective approach which eliminates the always tricky and often slow and bureaucratic hand-off between teams responsible for developing software (Dev) and teams supporting it in live operation (Ops). Given that there is often a tight coupling between the approach and the tooling used to support it, there are multiple bespoke certifications from the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, Kubernetes, Docker and Puppet. One tool-independent approach to consider is AgileDS, which is based on the UK Government Digital Services framework evolved by agile experts for UK government and published to global acclaim in a form that is free to view, use and build upon with appropriate attribution. AgileDS is based on the GDS standard of 2018 and is due for an update, but it remains an excellent choice if digital services are your game. Certification in AgileDS is available through APMG.

So that covers some of the most popular agile frameworks and certifications – now we need to consider the issue of the value that YOU need from certification and to what level. 

As a new-comer to agility, firstly consider your role – either current or target – and start with the closest fit to that role. If you work in an organisation that has already selected one or more Agile approaches, look for training and certification in those approaches. 

In the software space – still the biggest sector for agility – probably consider Scrum, XP or DevOps as a start-point. Scrum Master and Product Owner courses from the likes of Scrum Alliance, Scrum.org and APMG tend to cover the basics of Scrum as well as specialisms suited to those roles. Many training organisations will run agile courses geared towards Agile software development.

In the non-software ‘team agile’ space, the APMG offering may suit you better. By default, it is not IT-centric and does not assume or require any IT knowledge beyond that of a user of common platforms such as Amazon for shopping or music/video streaming.

As a project manager look towards AgilePM unless your organisation already has a commitment to PRINCE2 – in which case PRINCE2 Agile might be better. PMI’s latest PMBoK v7 which is better suited to embracing agility than v6 was, might be suited to an organisation already committed to PMI but v7 is so different to v6 that AgilePM might still be a better bet where there is no pre-existing PMI commitment. If your projects involve Scrum Teams, then AgilePM for Scrum is the very best choice.  

When considering ‘scaling’ first think how far you need to scale and how.  AgilePM, and especially AgilePM for Scrum scale comfortably to projects involving 50-100 people split across multiple teams. Scaling beyond that will require either Agile Programme Management in conjunction with Agile Project Management or product scaling with approaches such as LeSS (Large Scale Scrum).  For massive projects in IT (those involving hundreds of developers) or for IT enterprise-wide scaling, SAFe is a safe place to go, with multi-tiered training and certification.

As a Scrum Master or an Agile Coach go for the lot! There is a great deal in common amongst agile approaches but, all offer elements of originality to inspire unique needs, so prioritise to your audience’s needs and expand from there. Look for some of the more advanced Agile leadership offerings to push deep into the ‘being agile’ space – which is where the gold is found. Just ‘doing agile’ at the team level is valuable but limited.