Comments on: One More Arrow in Our Quiver

By: Alan Shalloway

Alan Shalloway — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:52:32 +0000

Had meant to post this note to help the wallys of the world as well.
I have always felt that underneath a certification program should be the competencies that are being certified. In the case of Scrum this would be what we call “team agility” or those steps related to team process. Because I have never seen this identified, we wrote a book called “The Lean-Agile Pocket Guide for Scrum Teams”. We’ve put this online at http://www.netobjectives.com/lapgfst as a community service. We’ve also created the Scrum clinic to address issues teams have faced with Scrum (http://www.netobjectives.com/resources/scrum-clinic ) also free.

But building software, as your blog addresses, must also include technical skills (we refer to this as (technical agility). We’ve done some work here as well – creating a Road-map to Lean-Agile Programming Competencies (http://www.netobjectives.com/competencies/lean-agile-programming ). This not only lays out what you should know but provides webinars, articles and more to get you there.

Note, for some of this information you’ll need to register at our site, but most of it is labeled as guest access.

http://www.netobjectives.com/competencies/lean-agile-programming

By: Alan Shalloway

Alan Shalloway — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 05:28:26 +0000

One thing I am sure of Ron, is that an agile course with technical practices taught by you and/or Chet will be of great value. What makes it good is the quality of the instructors. I wasn’t trying to imply your course was new – but I bet it’ll be new (and with varying quality) to a lot of others who teach it.

By: Ron Jeffries

Ron Jeffries — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 11:33:20 +0000

Yes, this certification means very little.
Yes, it measurably and unquestionably puts butts in seats.
Unknown, but plausible, as people usually attend only a small number of courses per unit time.
Chet's and my CSD course is neither new nor unproven. We have offered it for years. And yes, I do expect that it will be better attended.
Not all means are justified by just any ends. In this case, since the harm appears to be small and there is real value in what we teach, I'm living with the ambiguity.

What you got wrong, if anything ... well, I'll leave that up to our readers.

By: Alan Shalloway

Alan Shalloway — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 07:06:53 +0000

Let me make sure I understand your salient points here:
1) Certification doesn’t really mean anything
2) It puts butts in seats
3) Great courses available for years haven’t been well attended because people attended CSM courses instead
4) So we now have a new, unproven course, that you’ll be able to better market because it’ll have certification on it
5) The ends justifies the means.
Please let me know what I got wrong.

By: Paul Beckford

Paul Beckford — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 17:05:57 +0000

Just to be clear. I think what you guys are doing is positive.

All the best

Paul

By: Celso Martins

Celso Martins — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 15:09:52 +0000

I’m against certifications, but I think they can help people to be organized. Some kind of people need someone saying what they need to do now and simply cannot discover the next step. They can not to be self organized.
The other point, in my opinion, is the motivation. For some misterious reason, the certification goal, put them on chair (like you said), in front of a book. They want to put the paper on the wall.
Is really difficult to motivate people just get out from college, to continue their studies. I always say: The journey just begun. The college is just the first step, now you are by yourself, without a teacher or exams. Read books and articles to keep yourself on the right way. But few listen to me. When finish the ordinary study, they only want to rest, and answer me: “That’s time to enjoy the life. I deserve.” And I say: “Bullshit, now you need to study more than ever, because now the game begins.”
I have to deal with this kind of professional all day long.

Congratulations! Very good post and points.

By: Ron Jeffries

Ron Jeffries — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 11:05:33 +0000

A Guild or professional body might help — or might not. They don’t always help afaict, and have often served to limit information transfer and stifle progress. Why, I remember in the Middle Ages when …

Even so, it seems to me that the prospects for creating such a thing, getting it to be seen to be good, getting people into it and so on … are not so good.

By: Paul Beckford

Paul Beckford — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 06:11:10 +0000

Hi,

All good comments, and Chet is right, the Certification word does sell. I was a coach at a place where the Management saw getting all the developers a CSM as some sort of compensation for asking them to work all the hours God sends :) The funny thing is the developers were pretty interested in the certification idea too.

To Jon’s point, I just don’t think the market has worked for software. It would be nice if it did. The big problem is that the quality of our work isn’t visible to anyone. Well at least not to the people paying the bills.

I’ve given up on the idea of “improving the industry”. I’m much more modest. The point that what ever you do you’ll be preaching to the choir is a fair one.

No in the end I think that the Guild/Professional body route is the only way that standards across the board will ever improve, and the impetus for such change will have to come from developers themselves.

At our current rate of progress we should get there in… lets say 50 years?

Regards,

Paul.

By: Jon Kern

Jon Kern — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:42:29 +0000

We don’t need a union (that’s for woosies). We need to raise awareness and let the free market work. There are lousy *insert profession* everywhere — I would even assert unionization perpetuates this.

But with competition, lousy *insert profession* is usually exposed.

Agile is competition for most organizations — from within. As stated above, agile — I believe because it requires ore thoughtfulness — is hard and it exposes many weaknesses.

Go-getters will swarm to this candle. Ho-hummers will run the other way, seeking refuge behind the façade of a RealSoftwareDevlopmentProcess. Phooey on all that.

Change the world by teaching, one student at a time. Maybe a group of 12-15.

I’m in (and have been doing it in my own fashion since early 90s).

By: FutureTurnip

FutureTurnip — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 20:39:46 +0000

The certification course you’re going to offer is awesome. Unfortunately, I think it’s another extended instance of preaching to the choir. The only way to solve this problem (at least to some extent) is to put political and economic pressure on the corporations that buy or produce software. We need a Guild/Union.