There was recently an article at CIO which asked a tough question – a question that can make us nervous as providers of scrum master and scrum product owner certification, general Agile training, and other forms of information technology training and certification. The article raised the question of whether certifications in such areas as Agile training are “meaningless credentials that provide no value.”
We were pleased and relieved to see that CIO came down on our side of the topic, concluding in no uncertain terms that Agile training and certification has definite value both for job seekers and for the information technology industry as a whole. More than that, the author is in agreement with us about the limits of that value, in the sense that not all Agile training or IT certifications are made equal.
The risk is always there that some IT professionals and business authors will come to the conclusion that certain certifications (or certifications in general) are indeed useless. And that leads to the danger of their spreading that misinformation to the public, and leaving them at a potential disadvantage in their further career development. When this happens, it’s probably because the people involved have had experience with the wrong providers of Agile training or the wrong certification programs.
Fortunately, this isn’t the case with CIO. Or more precisely, it isn’t the case that CIO has had the sort of experience that is only negative. The article in question makes it clear that the author is drawing on a broad range of experience and third-party expertise, and that leads to the conclusion that Agile training and certification, along with other types of classroom or online IT training, are complicated things and must be both pursued and utilized wisely in order to be thoroughly beneficial.
CIO correctly notes that certifications have often tended to get a “bad rap,” whether they pertain to Agile training, Java, Oracle, etc. because people take a short-sighted view of the sorts of benefits that those certifications are supposed to confer.
Certainly, if the certification is well-earned from a qualified provider of classroom or online information technology training, then the potential is there for related skills to be integrated into one’s new IT position. But it is also true that such a position must exist in an environment where the results of Agile training can be nurtured, utilized, and enhanced.
When you pursue a methodology-based certification of the sort that you’ll acquire through our online Agile training programs, you’re not only learning a new personal skill set; you’re learning something about the collaborative structure of the companies that are most likely to provide a home for your emerging career.
In other words, if your prospective employer recognizes the value of your credentials, it will also understand those credentials well enough to be able to vet their quality and provide you with the social and physical resources you need in order to utilize them.