Scrum Certification Test

The Scrum Alliance has recently announced a Scrum Certification test.

Two cheers. This is a minor, good thing.

And it gives us an opportunity to say what makes someone good at Scrum.

Hint: High scores on the Scrum Test probably have very little to do with it.

First, Scrum is a team sport, so how good one person is is almost irrelevant.

Second, explicit knowledge, while somewhat useful, is not the main deal. The juice is in the tacit knowledge.

Third, building unused inventories of explicit knowledge is probably NOT going to help.

Fourth: Courage.

It takes courage to come in each day and face one's own imperfections, and force oneself to get better. Similarly, it takes courage from the team to come in each morning, tell the truth, and face their own imperfections. Every day. (It's fun too, but I think courage is the key.)

And it takes courage to tell the managers of the organization you are in that things need fixing around here.

So...

More book learning about Scrum. Yes, good. Hey, and let's add a minor test just to encourage that.

More courage. Much more useful.