A redditor asked the following question:

Question#

What is the best way to become a CSM? What training/ certs will get me in the door? I’ve been working as a Sys Admin for 15 years and I’m ready for something new. Please help☘️

My answer#

You don’t need a certificate. All these certification programmes are scams. They cost a lot of money, but anyone can pass them.

If you want to become a Scrum Master, you need three things: a certain character, experience in the area in which you want to become a Scrum Master, and knowledge.

I will go into these a little bit more.

In terms of character, you need to be the type of person who challenges the current way of working, a natural change agent who looks at the whole product development holistically. You also need to be able to talk to people, convince them, teach them, but at the same time leave the problem solving to them.

In terms of experience, you need to know what agile product development is. If you want to be an SM in software development, you need to know what programming and testing are, how to do it properly, how to break tasks down and prioritise them, but also technical stuff (from extreme programming) like TDD, pair programming, continuous integration, because you’re going to be teaching it to people, so you need to understand it well enough to identify the team’s skill gaps. You will also be helping the Product Owner, so you need to know the tools and best practices of their work. You’ll also be talking to management, convincing them to think differently, helping them to change the structure of the organisation, and even if you don’t have this knowledge at the beginning, you’ll need it more and more as time goes on.

And finally, knowledge. Scrum is not everything. You need to know much more, including Lean, Kanban, XP, Continuous Delivery, Team Topologies, Management 3.0, ToC and many tools such as User Story Mapping, facilitation formats (ex. liberating structures), etc.

What I mean is that the Scrum Master is a senior role. It’s a coach, a sansei, an expert, a leader. You can take courses to learn more about agile, pay for exams, go to converences, etc. but you still need a lot of experience.

Regarding certificates, there are two learning centres - scrum alliance and scrum org. Choose one that is more popular in your country. You can also learn SAFe if you like misery.