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The Virtuous Consequences of Certification in Agile – A Bigger Pie

by Ryan Martens

For 2010, lets find ways to focus on teaching our craft and growing the world of skilled software development professionals instead of trying to figure out who is “right.”

I believe much of the “Escalation” that Jean is seeing was correctly titled by Regina Mullen as a battle to be “right.” (see and read Escalation is Killing Agile – Can We Please Stop It? and Escalation is Killing our Healthy Conflict in Agile). That behavior focuses on carving up the pie instead of growing the pie. There has been so much added to the field of software development methods, tools and techniques from the guiding ideas of Agile. Now is not the time to stop and eat.

For me, 2010 is about continuing to grow the Agile software development pie’s reach and innovations.

I believe one of the key fixes to the problem of escalation can be found through increased professionalism and certification in Agile. Continue to read more...

Tags: Agile, CSP, LeanSSC, certification

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Comment by Kelly Waters on January 5, 2010 at 5:56pm: Let's hope so Mike. It's notoriously difficult to get a community going, but Ning is good which should help, and my blog has quite a big following now which might help it to get traction. I'm very pleased with how many people have signed up and started contributing already. In my 3 years of blogging, I had only really managed to find mailing-list style forums - nothing that really felt like a true community. I'm hoping we can change that here!

Comment by Mike Alber on January 5, 2010 at 5:47pm: Thanks for the response Kelly! I like how you phrased this and agree with your sentiment:

"that is the real skill of a development manager or project manager - knowing lots of techniques from lots of methods and knowing when and how to apply them."

Happy to be the first to add a blog post. Really like the community you've put together here. Ning seems like a pretty awesome and flexible platform to set up a community like this. I think this should take off quite nicely.

-Mike Alber

Comment by Kelly Waters on January 5, 2010 at 5:38pm: Hi Mike & Ryan. Thanks for being the first to make a blog post here. This escalation debate is very interesting but I think it can only harm the software development industry. The way I see it, there is not really any right or wrong. There are just preferences, and some things that work better in certain circumstances than others. Of course the art is knowing which methods, or bits of methods, to apply and when. For me, that is the real skill of a development manager or project manager - knowing lots of techniques from lots of methods and knowing when and how to apply them. This requires a lot of skill, experience and judgement. Nevertheless, I personally have had great success from agile methods, particularly in the sphere of web development, and I have found that Scrum blended with some engineering practices from XP works really well. If others prefer waterfall, or DSDM, or Lean, or any other method, that's fine with me. Let's share what's worked for us, and what hasn't, and hope people can learn from that and apply the approach that's most suitable for them, in their own unique circumstances. From my perspective, 'agile' is just a broad set of principles and concepts and thankfully lots of good practices - albeit in various different flavours - have emerged as a result. I think that's a good thing and long may it continue!

Kelly.