Curious about what promotion opportunities advanced training will offer you? John McFadyen explains in this short video.
It is very seldom that a company will award a promotion exclusively because of a certification achieved. Instead, promotion is awarded on the basis of being great at your job and demonstrating competence and growth within the role.
In my opinion, you should approach something like the Advanced Certified Scrum Master course with the objective of growing your current skillset and learning new tools, techniques, and knowledge that will help you get better at your current job.
The A-CSM course is perfect for that. Many of the delegates who attend the Advanced Certified Scrum Master course have a significant amount of experience in the field and the challenges they bring to the table empower you to learn from other people’s experiences.
In the ACSM course, we aren’t simply looking to teach you new skills. We are also looking to validate your current capabilities as a Scrum Master and make a decision as to whether you have progressed enough in your career to be certified as an Advanced Certified Scrum Master.
In some ways this does help you within your current job because the course and certification validate that you have progressed from Scrum Master to an Advanced and Certified Scrum Master.
The validation proves that you have mastered the foundation skillset of being a Scrum Master and now are capable of mentoring and coaching new Scrum Masters as well as straddle the role of Scrum Master and Agile coach within your organisation.
We sometimes find that people look at the Scrum Alliance certification pathways with the objective of obtaining as many certifications as they can in the shortest amount of time.
We would actively discourage you from taking this approach.
The Scrum Alliance advise that you have at least one years’ experience as a Certified Scrum Master before attending the Advanced Certified Scrum Master course and a further one years’ experience as an Advanced Scrum Master before attending the Certified Scrum Professional Scrum Master course.
The thinking behind this is that it takes almost a year for you to fully integrate everything you have learned in the course and offers you 12 months opportunity to practice new tools, techniques and skillsets that you acquire in the course.
The ACSM course features a lot of conversation around challenges that Scrum Masters face and you will be better equipped to contribute to those conversations as well as play a role in facilitating the simulations if you have deep experience as a Scrum Master within a working environment.
So, in my opinion, becoming great at your job earmarks you for promotion rather than a 2-day certification program. What you learn in the ACSM course will almost certainly help you become great at your job and excel within your working environment but it’s the work you put in during and after the course that makes all the difference.
Agile Centre provide you with a recommended reading list after the course and it’s also important that you move through that curriculum to better integrate new skills, insights, and tools into your working environment.
Investing in your education and following a certification journey over the 3 year period, from start to Professional Scrum Master will almost certainly open doors for you both within and outside of your organisation.
The certifications are also great for validating your capabilities and demonstrating competence within your role as a professional Scrum Master so make the investment in your education and skills development with the primary objective of becoming great at your job.
That will always lead to pay increases, promotions and opportunities.
If you would like to advance your career as a Scrum Master, visit our Advanced Certified Scrum Master course page as well as our Certified Scrum Professional Scrum Master course pages.
If you like the idea of a mentored and coach-driven approach to your skills development, visit our Agile Coach Academy.
If you want to start integrating coaching into your daily practice as a Scrum Master, visit our on-demand Introduction to Coaching course page.
