This post is in response to this:

Kripanidhi said the following on 10/25/10 9:34 AM:

Scott,

It may have been a very interesting and useful idea to have included one more question in your survey:

“How many Certified Scrum …..Masters, Teachers, etc know how to code or have ever written a piece of software that was paid for ? ”

I could easily speculate that figure at less than 50%. Can guys who have never hacked in their lifetime, call themselves Agile ? and worse still teach others how to hack and Scrum ?

Food for Thought

I view Scrum more like a form of Project Management. Nothing more. Nothing less. But I might be mistaken. I am not certified. At least not in that way.

Anyway, given that as my starting point… I am not sure if teaching how to do a particular style of Project Management (e.g., CSM) requires knowing how to do the work that will result in the end goal. AFAIK, Scrum can be applied to many things beyond software. Even for software, does a good PM have to know how to do great graphic design, or be a brilliant UX person, or be the most awesome coder/hacker? Maybe folks drawn to CSM actually realize they can do more for the project than simply do mediocre coding.

Now, would knowledge of the “how” help a manager be a better manager? Probably. But isn’t a truly good Project Manager (Scrum or otherwise) cognizant of the need to trust (but verify) their folks to do the right things? Sure, sometimes it is helpful to question an estimate, or critique a design approach, or help shape the product roadmap, or ask probing questions… But does that require intimate knowledge solely on the part of the CSM? Or does it require a good team effort? To turn the argument on its head: is taking the best coder out of the loop to be the CSM a good idea?

Despite my personal preference for (and being) generalizing specialists, I do not think it is a fair pass/fail “litmus” test to say a CSM has to be a hacker/coder/doer of everything.

Personally, I don’t think we have to challenge the CSM individual’s hacking skills. After all, do hackers inherently make better managers? Rather, we should challenge the terminology that bestows the ludicrous moniker of “Master” after a few days of classroom training. Of course, as a counterpoint, the concepts behind Scrum are simple enough to be mastered in a couple of days — that’s the beauty of a simple technique. But the skill of being a Project Manager can take a lifetime to master, Scrum or otherwise, IMHO.

I think what is worse is the blind-faith that someone who has been certified as a CSM is qualified to run an agile project. Or the illusion that everything else we do can suck, but as long as we have Scrum, we’ll succeed.

The beauty of a free market: this CSM brouhaha will sort itself out. Companies will learn one way or the other that there is no magic bullet to hiring (despite the world’s stupidest job postings for CSM folks), nor is there a silver bullet to getting projects completed successfully.