8.3: Introducing Agility into Your Work - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems

<v ->So now that you have selected the role</v> you are interested in, let's talk about how to introduce Agile into your work. The best way to grow in an Agile role is to practice, learn, and share with other professionals. The Agile community is very welcoming and knowledge sharing is encouraged. Meetup.com is a great source of free meetups and other gatherings of Agile professionals in each geography. And now this is even possible remote around the globe. It provides a great way of building your Agile network, creating this guiding coalition that we spoke about in the John Carter's model earlier in this lesson. As of now, there are more than a hundred Agile meetups in the United States. The topics range from Scrum master interview prep, to what you always wanted to know about enterprise agility, to how to change your resisting organization into becoming Agile. There, there are usually 10 to 20 and sometimes even more people in each meetup, but I would say 15 to 20 on average. So there is always an opportunity to ask questions, meet other practitioners, and also share your own experience. Besides meetups, there are LinkedIn forums and other communities of practice. And then finally, there are professional associations. We mentioned Agile Alliance, Scrum Alliance, there are Agile groups within the Project Management Institute, PMI, and numerous Agile and product management conferences. Agile Alliance holds an annual Agile conference. Agile Alliance's annual conference is dedicated to exploring, innovating and advancing Agile values and principles. It's a great space for people and ideas to flourish. It has held annually in different countries and different places within the United States. It's a great opportunity to learn Agile practices and to build your network. It brings Agile communities together year after year and it makes new connections. I personally go there every year to join passionate Agileists from around the world to learn about the latest practices. Besides large conferences, there are many of regional and topic-specific Agile conferences. My personal preference is Agile DevOps. There are two of them, Agile DevOps East and Agile DevOps West. Super important and helpful to engineering Agileists. There is Lean Agile US, Agile Open. There is Scrum days, worldwide Scrum gatherings. There is faster Agility conference, very helpful to Agile coaches or advanced Agileists who scale agility at company level. Conference called Agile Coach Camp. It's very informal, what we call on-conference where there is no agenda. Agile coaches, select topics, do the discussions and share their experience. There is Agile play for those who like to gamify and make their Agile experiences fun within their companies. There XP conference for XP practices, Agile testing days, regional Agile conference, and so forth and so on. A lot of great opportunities to build your network and to learn new skills. Now let's talk about Agile certifications. I get a lot of questions which Agile certification is the best. I would say it is a little bit controversial topic Agile is a framework. It is team and people-oriented. So certifications do not tell whether someone is a great Agileist or a great Scrumist or a product owner or not. What certifications do they primarily attest to a person's theoretical knowledge, but do not really guarantee that a certified person is a mature professional. However many companies are considering Agile certification and must when they hire Agile professionals. So let's cover this topic. I will probably confess here that I'm a certification junkie and I hold most of the Agile certifications. I found it very beneficial to study for them, to learn new practices, and also when I take an exam, that is certain certification that my knowledge is at the right level. So I personally do encourage any certification because it grows your knowledge. So while selecting certification if you're up to it, focus on the one that is the right for you. Prior to choosing the course, answer the following questions. One, am I interested in what, which is the product track, or how, which is the ScrumMaster track. Second, am I interested in Scrum, which is time box iterations and like everything else related to this framework, or am I interested in continuous delivery? If Scrum, then Scrum certification, if continuous delivery, then Kanban. Third, am I interested in working at the team level or the organization level? Should I start with individual, team level, ScrumMaster? Or should I go to the organizational level and start with the scaled Agile certification? For example, SAFe practitioner or SAFe consultant. Fourth, am I coming from a traditional project management background or environment, or am I new to project management overall? If you're coming from a traditional environment, start with PMI certifications because they creates a bridge between traditional project management, Waterfall, and Agility. For example, PMI ACP, which is the Agile Certified Professional. Then depending on your answer, select the certification that is right for you. From the first point of view product track versus ScrumMaster track, there are two most established certifications. One is provided by Scrum Alliance and the other one by Scrum.org professional nonprofit organization. The details are provided in this slide here. ScrumMaster certification overall is the most requested Agile certification in the world and CSM by Scrum Alliance is considered the most widely adopted Agile certification. CSM course covers the framework, principles, and values, everything that makes Scrum work. In addition as a Scrum Alliance CSM, you can tap into the community framework. And this extends far beyond the classroom through events, resources, education, and coaching, all the networking activities that you may need. CSM certification has no prerequisites. The only one is attending a two-way training and then passing a basic, very straightforward multiple choice test. For those who would like to go deeper and diversify their Agile skills, then there are more advanced certifications. Let's talk about Kanban. For those interested in Kanban, there is a set of certifications offered by Kanban University. There are four levels there. One is foundational, Team Kanban practitioner, or TKP certification, Kanban system design, KSD, and Kanban system improvement for Kanban management professionals. Those are KMP1 and KMP2. The second level is trainer. This is for those interested in becoming an accredited Kanban trainer and teaching others. That's the one that I hold. I found the training and certification very informative and helpful. The third one is advanced one for coaching leadership, different maturity models at the organizational level. And the ultimate one is the strategic one, enterprise level planning to fit for the purpose for Kanban consultants. Then for those interested in scaled Agile, classes differ. That depends on scaled framework. The most popular framework as I mentioned is the scaled Agile framework or SAFe. Related certifications are provided by the Scaled Agile Academy. And the most basic is the certified SAFe Agileists. There are multiple SAFe certifications and levels of SAFe certifications. That includes Agile DevOps. I hold this one. Very helpful to technical professionals. There is also Lean portfolio management and many others. Other skill the Agile certifications includes Scrum scale certification provided by Scrum Inc, certified LeSS practitioner, and others. Now if you are transitioning from the traditional project management to Agile environment. No matter what your role is on the team, they recommended certification that I personally prefer is PMI ACP from the Project Management Institute, PMI. PMI ACP, Agile Certified Professional Certification, provides assurance that the certification holder is really advanced in terms of real world experience managing Agile projects and traditional projects. It has a number of prerequisites, but it shows that the person is familiar with many subsets of Agile methodology, including Scrum, Kanban, Lean, but also can bridge it back to project management, personnel management, budget management, and multiple other concepts coming from the traditional project management. No matter what certification you choose for yourself there are several things to keep in mind. Number one, Agile certifications are costly. Usually the cost for basic certification ranges from 500 to $1,200. So it is important to do careful research before investing in each of them. Online certifications are usually cheaper and there is a large number of high quality Agile certifications. Research who your instructor is because there are amazing instructors so make sure that their style, reputation, and the reviews that you read resonates with you. Second, Agile certifications differ in terms of complexity and levels of assessment. Most of them have a prerequisite training course by a certified provider and many advanced certifications require prerequisites in terms of your experience. Assessment tests also differ. For example, the CSM, the most basic ScrumMaster test contains 50 multiple choice questions. Candidates have one hour to complete it. It requires two CSM training course before the test can be taken. The passing score there is 74%. This is a fairly easy one and very basic. The PMI ACP certification exam is similar to a college level exam, and it's done in a testing facility or remotely, but similarly to college prep exams. So think SAT or ACT. It has 120 multiple choice questions. You have three hours to complete it. It does not require to attend a specific class, but it has a number of prerequisites. You have to have a secondary degree. You have to have 21 contact hours of training in Agile practices. It requires 12 months at least of general project experience within the last five years. Traditional PMI or PGMP certifications for traditional project managers usually satisfied this requirement, but it is not required to apply for PMI ACP. It also requires eight months of Agile project experience within the last three years. I personally hold PMI ACP certification and I found this exam challenging and very, very interesting. Really helpful. So do your research using each of the registered provider sites. Not the private sites advertising specific certifications, make sure you look at the original providers for each certification and then you can make your choice based on the provider, content, certification type, and what personally you are looking for. Another important consideration is that there are usually fees and prerequisites not just to take and achieve, but also to maintain each of these certifications. Scrum Alliance, PMI, and most other organizations require you to collect professional development units. Those are called sometimes PDUs or Scrum Development Unit, or Software Development Units, they're called differently. But the idea is that you collect those points to show that you continue learning and practicing in the field. For example, by reading a book, you can apply for a specific number of units. By participating in a conference, by presenting in a conference, you get a higher number of units by completing a large project. You have to apply for those and then the decision is made whether to give those to you and then specific number of those is required to renew your certification. In addition to PDUs or SDUs, usually there is a fee every one to three years to maintain your certification. Usually the fees are around 100 to 200, but for the more advanced professional certifications, this can go up to thousands of dollars annually. So make sure to check that provider is specifying what are the renewal criteria and what is the renewal fee before you apply for a specific certification, otherwise you'll get a certification and then lose it within a year or two. Then I want to talk about membership in professional associations. Membership in professional associations usually gives you access to their resources. It could be communities of practice, books, recordings, relevant discounts on professional publications, conferences, all of it is a big part of professional certifications. For example, CSM certification includes a membership fee for Scrum Alliance. You just become a member. All certificate holders are listed on the Scrum Alliance website which is great for potential employers. They participate in communities of practice that are available to members only. They get discounts on Scrum gatherings and they take advantage of multiple other perks provided by the organization. Similarly, other certifications provide an opportunity to take advantage of their resources as well. So let's summarize. Agile certifications are highly valuable to anyone in an Agile environment, at least from my perspective. Anyone from a developer to a ScrumMaster and even CEO of the organization will learn a lot by pursuing and achieving any of these certifications. So do your research, choose the right certification for you during this specific period of your career. Prepare diligently. Some certifications allow you to take it twice or retake even three times, but of course, all of us aim to pass it from the first time we take it. And then once you achieve certification, take advantage of all the great opportunities that it provides to you.