Certified ScrumMaster Is a Two-Day Noun
CSM is a course with a badge. PSM is an exam with a Guide. Delivery is still the increment.
[ essay ]
Certified ScrumMaster is a two-day noun. Scrum Alliance sells a course, a test at the end, and a string you can put after your name.1 The sitting is short on purpose. You leave speaking the Guide’s objects: sprint, increment, Scrum Master as a role rather than a reporting line with a new label.
I do not hold CSM. I do not hold PSM. I have sat in standups and retros that used those words honestly, and in ones that used them as furniture. Dark Heart Labs ships files, not sprint reviews. This note is about the badge, not a cartoon of sticky notes.
Professional Scrum Master from Scrum.org is the other noun. Scrum.org sells an exam against the Scrum Guide. No mandatory class. PSM I is a sitting. CSM is a classroom with a certificate attached. Both can teach the same Guide. Both can be a LinkedIn line that outruns the last increment.
The failure is ceremony as proof of delivery. A daily Scrum that names blockers is useful. A two-day badge that names you Master is a noun. Agile, in the small-a sense of inspecting and adapting toward a working increment, does not require either logo. Use CSM when the org already standardized on Scrum Alliance and you need the dialect. Do not treat the weekend as evidence the team shipped.
— JV · Dark Heart Labs.
References
-
Scrum Alliance, Certified ScrumMaster, https://www.scrumalliance.org/get-certified/scrum-master-track/certified-scrummaster; Scrum.org, Professional Scrum Master I; Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, The Scrum Guide. Course-badge versus exam-against-the-Guide, not a class outline. ↩