Agile Certifications
I’ve lost count of the number of people who have asked for my advice or recommendation about getting certified. They’re often looking to understand what options are available. And while I have zero affiliation with any of these groups, I figured it might be worth outlining some of the options for someone newer on their journey. To be clear, none of these will make you an agile expert. I think they all have something to offer, depending on what you’re looking for.
I’m going to answer this in four parts:
Scrum
Kanban
Agile
Scaling
Part 1 – Scrum:
There are two Scrum organizations – Scrum was created by two people (Jeff Sutherland & Ken Schwaber), and they have very different philosophies regarding training & certifications:
Jeff created the Scrum Alliance:
They offer certifications where you have to take a course and then write a test to get the certification.
Then, every year or two, you have to pay to renew that certification & prove that you’ve done some learning (PDUs) in that time.
https://www.scrumalliance.org/get-certified
Ken created Scrum.org:
They also offer certifications, but you don’t have to take a course to get the certs from them. You just need to pass a test.
The tests are online, and cost $150-$250 per certification. But they can be difficult. You really need to know your stuff to pass them, so many people do take a course to help them prepare for the online test. There are online practice tests you can take (as many times as you want) to help you prepare, but in my experience, the real test is more difficult than the practice tests.
You then have that certification for life. Nothing more to pay, ever.
https://www.scrum.org/professional-scrum-certifications
Both Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org offer courses & certifications for Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Developers, Leaders… And both are considered equal from most folks in the agile community, and by HR recruiters. I have certifications from both.
Part 2 – Kanban:
While Scrum is, by far, the most widely known framework (they’ve done a great job of marketing it), another popular approach to working in an Agile way is with the Kanban Method. There are two flavours of this, too:
Lean Kanban University (LKU)
Likely the better-known option in the Kanban space.
They offer a few certifications. With LKU, you need to attend a class, or multiple classes, in order to get the certifications they offer.
https://kanban.university/kanban-development-path/
ProKanban
For a number of reasons, a large number of folks in the Agile community wanted an alternative to LKU. Two years ago (might have been three), ProKanban was formed with a focus on providing an inclusive and harassment free environment. As well, they took a less structured approach to Kanban, many would advocate is closer to the origins of Kanban.
For these certifications, there is a class followed by a test.
https://prokanban.org/certifications-overview/
My personal bias is to support ProKanban for a couple of reasons. But there’s good material from both, and I’m connected with trainers of both LKU and ProKanban material. For a couple of reasons, I only have certifications from ProKanban.
Scrum.org also offers a hybrid course called “Scrum with Kanban”.
Part 3 – Agile:
Depending on what you’re looking for, there’s another certification body, the International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile). And, there’s the Project Management Institute, too. Let me talk about ICAgile first…
ICAgile’s material is all framework/methodology agnostic. They don’t care if you choose to bring the Agile Values & Principles to life using Scrum, Kanban, or any other approach.
They offer several “tracks”, with several courses in each track, depending on where you want to focus, and how deep you want to go in a certain track. Each course offers its own certification. Some examples:
Agility in Leadership Track
Courses/Certifications under “Agility in Leadership”:
Business Agility Foundations
Leading with Agility
People Development
Delivery Management Track
Courses/Certifications under “Delivery Management Track”:
Agile Fundamentals
Agile Project & Delivery Management
Delivery at Scale
Enterprise Coaching Track
Agile Team Coaching Track
DevOps Track
…
ICAgile creates Learning Objectives, which private instructors use to build their own course material. ICAgile then certifies the course material meets the LOs. And then, ICAgile separately certifies the instructor/teacher, making sure they are qualified/capable to deliver the material in that specific course.
In case it’s not obvious, I’m a big fan of ICAgile. I’ve received tremendous value when I’ve taken a course that’s connected to ICAgile. The quality of instructor has significantly contributed to that, I believe – I try to take these courses with folks I know have the experience and expertise in the material they’re delivering.
These are a couple foundational certification courses you may want to start with, depending on your own comfort level:
https://www.icagile.com/certification/agile-fundamentals
https://www.icagile.com/certification/agile-project-and-delivery-management
https://www.icagile.com/certification/business-agility-foundations
The full list of certifications available can be found here: https://www.icagile.com/agile-certification
I have a couple of certifications through ICAgile.
I think it’s also worth knowing about the Project Management Institute (PMI) Agile Certified Professional (PMI-ACP) certification. It requires knowledge from a vareity of common frameworks & methods (like Scrum, Kanban, XP, Lean, and others). There are a few prerequisites required to get this certification, and while you can just pay to write the exam (in person or online), there are prep courses to help you get ready for the exam, and to hopefully set you up for success. Oh, there’s also a requirement to earn a bunch of Professional Development Units (PDUs) related to agile things every three years. The full details can be found here: https://www.pmi.org/certifications/agile-acp
Part 4 – Scaling Options:
There are so many in this space, I’m not going to try and describe them all. Most of these offerings focus on how teams can work when multiple teams need to work together. Many of the certifications in this space love to take your money, but very rarely do they really make an impact. Enterprises love most of these options because they allow us to use new words to describe how we currently work, and get to claim “we’re agile”, without actually making any meaningful changes. That’s not to say there isn’t great information contained in the material they have to offer. It’s just very few of them really focus on improving the way work gets done, and really bringing the value that working in an agile way has to offer to life. At least, that’s been my experience. If you’re interested, here are some of them:
SAFe: https://www.scaledagileframework.com/
Nexus: https://www.scrum.org/resources/scaling-scrum
Disciplined Agile (or DA - formerly DAD, and now owned by the PMI): https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile
Scrum@Scale: https://www.scrumatscale.com/
LeSS: https://less.works/
Enterprise Kanban: https://kanbanize.com/blog/enterprise-kanban/ (this one is worth reading, IMHO, but not a certification)
While I do have one of these certifications, it was possibly the worst course I’ve ever taken, taught by people who had no experience, teaching material they didn’t really understand. The course I took required annual recertification (in the form of paying more money), which I never did.
Part 5 – One Final Thought:
As I was typing this up, I noticed two things missing as they don’t really fit into any of the above headings (although the leanchange.org course does offer IC-Agile certifications). These, I think, tend to be a little less expensive than many of the others, and were (at least for me), money really, really well spent. These are a couple of options that offer some great material. I’ve taken courses from both, and do highly recommend them for the content (and less so from an ‘adding to your resume to get past the HR Recruiter’ perspective):
https://leanchange.org/courses
https://management30.com/certifications/
Final Thought
As with anything, your mileage may vary. This is just my opinion based on my own experiences and my own relationships with the trainers and certification bodies overall. You may have a very different experience or opinion. There’s lots more I could write - hopefully my experiences will help you with your own, if you’re looking for a course like the ones I’ve listed here.