Necessary but not sufficient–that’s been our description of agile domain expertise throughout the book. We’ve explored all the components of agile consulting that augment our basic agile skills and enable us to bring more consulting value to our clients. Still, although not sufficient, agile domain expertise is necessary, and like the marketplace and the technology we’ve been describing, agile theory and practice is turbulent and constantly evolving. There was no Scaled Agile Framework for years after the Manifesto was written, no Spotify teaming model, no Project Management Institute certification for agile. Agility evolves continuously, and, as agile advisors, we must evolve with it or risk obsolescence. As many consultants have found in the last decades, through the migrations from mainframes to minicomputers, minis to client-server, then to networks, to Internet, and to cloud, staying the same means falling behind. How many highly paid COBOL programmers failed to move to structured languages like Pascal, to function and object-based languages, then on to Ruby, Python, and containers? Many of us chose this field specifically because there’s always more to learn, and room to grow. With agile, we’ve picked a rapidly evolving field with lots of opportunity to expand our knowledge and take on new ideas, techniques, and strategies.
For the coach or consultant who wants to develop his agile domain competency, the options are many. From local agile communities to myriad certifications, and from droves of agile blogs to mountains of agile books, we can enhance our understanding of lean, agile, and enterprise theories and strategies every day. We’ll take a look at some of the global and local communities, the books I’ve found to be foundational reading and the ones that supplemented and expanded my knowledge, and the certifications that enhance our credibility and demonstrate our passion, and our depth of agile knowledge. We’ll talk about a development path for agile consultants and examine the levels of competence that mark the growth of our agile experience.
The Foundation
I learned most of what I know about agility from two sources: reading and experience . As I noted in the Introduction to this volume, a chance encounter as a journalist with Jim Highsmith, one of the signatories of the Agile Manifesto, started me on my passage from gung-ho traditional waterfall project manager to agile advocate. I started my journey by picking up Highsmith’s book Agile Project Management, and then, as is my habit when an idea piques my interest, steamrolled though every agile book I could get my hands on.
At the beginning, since I was no longer a software developer, lots of the works out there that focused on agile as a development methodology didn’t move me and ended up in my discard pile. Slowly, I developed a foundational library that I considered my basis for agile theory and practice. All of the agile books I reference in this volume are cited in the bibliography that follows, but there are a handful that stand out as the cornerstones of my understanding, and that I recommend to both new agilists needing guidance and experienced agilists who want to fill gaps in their fundamental knowledge.
Here are some of my top recommendations.
Agile Project Management, by Jim Highsmith
Highsmith's book lays out the agile case clearly, and helps us understand agile as a mind-set and a set of values, not just a set of practices and techniques. I'm thankful that I started here: I began my agile journey under the tutelage of the key original thinker in the agile world, and began from the correct place of mind-set and values.
Agile Estimating and Planning, by Mike Cohn
Where Highsmith taught me agile values, Cohn’s book tutored me on agile reality. What do teams, coaches, and managers need to do every day to begin the agile transformation? How do traditional project managers and developers let go of the familiar practices of waterfall projects, functional silos, and magical belief in predictive estimation? If we acknowledge that we can’t know the route, how will we reach the destination? Cohn’s books guided me to the balance between a theoretical approach and a pragmatic, in-the-trenches understanding of how agile is really done.
Coaching Agile Teams, by Lyssa Adkins
Adkins has clearly lived the agile transition, and she talks about it with passion and clarity. She displays her hard-won migration, from a traditional project manager, thinking she owned every detail of the project, to an agile “adept,” so infused with the agile mind-set that rather than merely becoming a scrummaster, Adkins became a Zen master of agility, helping coaches understand the personal voyage they must make before they can coach others.
Agile Project Management With Scrum , by Ken Schwaber
Schwaber, along with Jeff Sutherland, developed the scrum process, but this is not merely a methodology guide. Schwaber, like Highsmith, walks readers through the evolution of ideas and challenges that development teams faced, when the traditional methods kept failing and development teams were mistrusted and miserable, unable to deliver valuable products. While scrum-focused, this fundamental book helps scrum teams understand not just the methods but the evolution that brought us to agile.
Succeeding With Agile, by Mike Cohn
Cohn has two books on the list, because it’s hard to become an effective agile leader or scrummaster without absorbing his step-by-step instructions for building, coaching, and mentoring teams, and sharpening their skills in an agile environment. Cohn has obviously encountered many permutations and combinations of challenges, issues, and resistors, and grants you the benefit of his experience in making the right choices on your agile path.
Other Books
There are tons, literally, of other agile books in which I've found great value, from Michelle Sliger’s The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility 1 to Dean Leffingwell’s Scaling Software Agility, 2 and specialized works focused on agile retrospectives, metrics, or testing, but these five are my touchstones as I go about the challenge of guiding enterprises as they evolve toward agility. As noted, check the bibliography for the entire contents of my agile library.
Experience
I mentioned both books and experience as my teachers. Books are easy to get your hands on; experience, not so much. Especially in the early days, after the Manifesto and Principles were released, agile shops were few, far between, and brimming with controversy. Getting the opportunity to introduce or experience agile in the business world often required stealth efforts, in which the word agile was never used, and we talked instead about “light” or “low-overhead” project techniques . Once I absorbed the idea that reams of paper trails and stage gates did not protect us from failures and overruns, I became increasingly obsessed with simplifying the project process for the consultants on my team. I stripped every project technique to its bare essentials and then stripped it again. I wouldn’t call the project methods my teams employed at Entex3 or Intel agile, but they were certainly leaner and more efficient than the 17-binder methodologies I learned during my Big 5 residency.
I was lucky; my early columns on agility for TechRepublic4 got some attention and burnished my credentials as an agile consultant. I began to be approached by clients large and small to help them understand and implement these new ideas, and I got the chance to see many different cultures, business models, and personalities, and to learn the value of adaptiveness and empathy . I recognized the revolutionary nature of this change, and realized it was about much more than methodology. From small local information technology (IT ) consulting shops to multinational companies, I was exposed to the myths, misconceptions, and concerns associated with migration to agility, and incrementally developed strategies to counteract resistance and fear (strategies I hope I have communicated in this volume). Because I started early in the migration cycle, I watched agility go from revolution and controversy to standard practice and learned hard lessons about cultural inertia and the momentum of new ideas.
Lucky for me, but what about the practitioner today? How does an aspiring scrummaster, agile coach, or consultant go about getting the exposure required to become a proficient agile practitioner or advisor? I’m not talking about certifications here; we all know that many are certified but few are chosen. While the path through certifications is not to be disregarded, all the certs in the world do not make an adept, and, as we learned in successive generations of certifications , from PMP to MCSE, and from CCNE to CISSP,5 many folks are great at taking tests yet lack the judgment and maturity to perform the work. The real test of capability is in the doing, and the real training ground is in the real world, not a training course. So how do aspirants get that chance?
Many agile aspirants start by simply introducing some of the core agile ideas into their team, whatever their role. Project managers begin letting go of big, upfront plans and start inching toward a more just-in-time approach. Developers start working on what’s ready versus waiting for the complete, blessed specification. Teams start meeting daily to ensure that they’re on beam and uncovering issues as they arise. Unlike many agile purists, I’m not of the opinion that an official agile pilot needs to be proclaimed and the scrum guide must be followed dogmatically to start down the agile path. Agile practices are proliferating because they make sense, and because they work. Don’t wait for an Emancipation Proclamation from old methods; whether you call it agile or not, start to introduce the practices that make sense in your environment and reap the benefits of the latest thinking in product development. Even if your enterprise is resistant to an official agile migration, it’s hard to argue against a daily touch-base or an all-hands planning session.
The next logical step, of course, is to make it official. If you’ve successfully adopted some of the practices and seen benefits, start to make those benefits visible and attribute them to your team’s new approach. Lobby for a pilot, or a proclamation, or whatever fits in your enterprise. Get the certifications, if they make sense for your career development (although I’ve known many great coaches and consultants without any letters after their names, and many weak ones with certs galore). More important, begin to work the practices, not as a bunch of isolated process improvements but as a unified framework, like scrum or kanban, and start to socialize the language, the concepts, and the mind-set. You will find, if you’re successful at the team level, that agility will spread across the enterprise and give you many opportunities to expand your experience and learn the pragmatic lessons of agile evolution.
If you’re a believer in the agile mind-set, and your current employer is so set against it that you can’t even get a minimal pilot set up, move. There’s a whole universe of agile-enlightened organizations out there that will be glad to have your enthusiasm for agile methods, and give you the opportunity to learn at the feet of coaches, consultants, scrummasters, and the agile teams whose working lives have been improved by these techniques.
You’re Certifiable!
As with any new technology, especially in the IT field, there are plenty of organizations out there willing to grant you a certification in exchange for money. Most will also give you some meaningful insights and a chance to practice your craft. Some will be valued by employers as a token of your knowledge and dedication , and some will merely look nice on your wall. As technologies peak in the hype cycle, the for-profit certifiers start to come out of the woodwork.
As you can tell, I’m a skeptic, but only to a degree. There are certifications that I’ve seen many employers value highly, such as the Project Management Institute’s Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP ) and the Certified ScrumMaster (CSM ) certifications. For those interested in Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe 4.0), the SAFe certification commands respect. There are a few private certification companies, like ICAgile, that have robust curricula and strong courseware (disclosure: I teach ICAgile courses through ASPE, the US-based training firm). There are also, unfortunately, lots of home-brew agile courses and trainers floating around, with courseware that may or may not be true to lean and agile principles. Some of these are lecture-based courses that fill you with slide-ware and then grant you a cert, with no chance to practice or experience the concepts.
My advice is simple; stick to the known entities. Between the agile books available, the acknowledged certifying bodies like PMI, SAFe, and Scrum Alliance, and private trainers like ICAgile, there are enough courses and certifications to fit any agile ambition .
Let’s quickly differentiate some of these certifications. PMI-ACP is the Project Management Institute’s exam, and that’s both good and bad. Many agilists have grown up with the idea of PMI as the opposite of agility, with its rigorous, phase-gated approach , and so they are reluctant to honor any certification that comes from that source. On the other hand, there has been for years a PMI-based community of interest focused on agility. The test was developed by well-respected agilists like Mike Cottmyer and Mike Griffiths, who have built an agile body of knowledge that suits PMI yet is true to agile concepts.
I myself am a certified PMI-ACP, although I resisted the traditional PMP certification for my entire career. After studying and taking the exam myself, and witnessing its wide acceptance in the business community, I count the PMI-ACP as one of the most reputable agile certifications. Unlike the CSM, it’s not scrum-focused, and it tests a wide range of agile skills, from domain knowledge to change management and consultative skills. It’s not attached to a specific course like the CSM, but it’s a wide-ranging test based on acknowledged classics of agile theory, and, being from PMI, gets attention from agilists and traditional Project Management Office (PMO) managers alike. I also love the fact that PMI, after years of denying agile or crying “we’re agile too—we have rolling wave planning!”—has accepted the reality of agile and ratified it with this certification.
When I took the Certified Scrum Master class , there was no test associated with it at all—take the class, get the cert. Accordingly, the value received depended on the trainer, as many trainers had different material, different approaches, and, frankly, different skills and knowledge. The Scrum Alliance has since tightened up its act considerably, with a clear path through a series of standardized courseware, each culminating in an exam and leading to a logical next certification for the ambitious. We now have certified scrummasters, scrum trainers, product owners, coaches, and even agile leaders, each with a distinct curriculum. For those who aspire to get a hands-on introduction to scrum, a CSM certification is the most accessible, foundational certification. The progressive curricula that lead to Certified Scrum Developer, Certified Enterprise Coach, Certified Scrum Product Owner, or Certified Scrum Professional certifications are well-designed, pertinent, and respected in the profession and the client base.
Among the “official” scrum certifications, the Professional Scrum series is the real competitor to the Scrum Alliance’s CSM . Offered by scrum.org, the organization established by Ken Schwaber, one of the originators of scrum, it also has a defined path for scrummaster, product owners, and developers, as well as a scaling course for enterprise-level professionals. This designation is not as well recognized as a CSM, with a fraction of the number of certified professionals, but it is quite rigorous and is preferred by many due to its association with Schwaber. It also has the advantage of requiring no renewals; certification is for a lifetime. Firms like Microsoft and Avenade (Accenture’s digital consulting firm) prefer this cert, and have invested heavily in certifying their teams.
I’m a big fan of the progressive agile certification paths that organizations like the Scrum Alliance and ICAgile offer. From scrummaster at the team level to trainers, product owners and executives, these roadmaps can guide ambitious agilists through an entire career, as their skill and experience multiplies. While I’m not an advocate of certs for certs’ sake, for those who aspire to evolve throughout their careers to higher levels of competency and agile mind-set, these escalating pathways offer lifetime learning and an opportunity to stay engaged with the development of agile theory and practice.
I started by noting that I’m a bit of a skeptic, but these certifications are certainly worthwhile and I have no reservations recommending them. My many years as an IT professional have caused me to be a bit cynical about certifications in our field, as I’ve seen too many come and go with the fashion, and too many unqualified job-seekers clutching at straws in an industry for which they are poorly suited. For those of you with the temperament, skill, ambition, and desire to become a professional agile practitioner, however, these certifications and their associated training and study are a great way to enhance your understanding, practice your skills, begin to build a network of like-minded agilists, and illustrate to the world that you’ve done your homework.
Finally, of course, the consulting skills we reviewed in the previous chapter offer an entirely different set of challenges. Those who augment their agile certifications with study in facilitation, negotiation, persuasion, active listening, and other advisory skills clearly have an advantage in their ability to add value. Some agile coaches go on to study and gain certifications in coaching as a discipline. Others migrate into organizational development or strategic planning . As agility transcends software development and migrates across the entire enterprise, these advanced advisory skills become essential.
The Agile Community
The Scrum Alliance,6 in addition to offering certifications, is also a global community of agile practitioners who gather frequently to evolve the practices together, and share knowledge about the development and real-world results of scrum. Their Global Scrum Gatherings are considered some of the best networking and learning events in the agile world, and the relationships a scrum professional can build are invaluable. The user group and AgileCareers sections of the community web site are important resources. Whether you’re a regular attendee of the conferences or an online participant in the webinars, the Scrum Alliance is a must-have membership for professionals in the scrum and agile world.
Less scrum-focused and more aligned with general agile principles, the Agile Alliance is also a global community that grants access to outstanding training materials, webinars, and global conclaves with top speakers and networking events. With active members like Steve Denning7 and Ron Jefferies,8 and a robust international group of user communities, distributed both geographically and by interest, membership in the Agile Alliance is another sign of commitment, participation, and passion. You’ll find communities as diverse as the XP Forum of Johannesburg and the Agilni Srbija of Serbia, as well as communities across the United States.
PMI has its own agile community, which spawned the PMI-ACP exam and certification, as do the vendors of agile tools such as Rally, CollabNet, and Version One. A quick web search will uncover hundreds of local agile groups. There’s even an agile Internet radio station, Agile.FM,9 for the insomniac agilists who can’t get enough.
Of course, agile communities of practice don’t have to be external entities. Every enterprise large enough to have multiple cross-functional teams should also cultivate internal communities of practice, focused on both agile and on the domain knowledge of members. So, for example, MultiCorp might have an agile, scrum or XP community and might also cultivate communities of developers, testers, or architects. Agile communities in the enterprise often use activities such as reading clubs, article exchanges, and community blogs to spread and share the knowledge. As we noted in our overview of the Spotify model , it’s important to keep teams connected to their domain disciplines as well as their cross-functional teammates, to keep knowledge current and communal. The Spotify model codifies this practice in chapters and guilds, but every enterprise can help communities form by offering technical assistance and meeting spaces, and by granting some time for participation. After all, the company benefits as much as the members do, and keeping both domain and agile knowledge fresh is an important goal and a great retention strategy.
Summary
The IT and business landscape is littered with the bones of developers, consultants, and leaders who were unable to stay current in their disciplines and management theories. Especially for the consultant, up-to-the-minute understanding of evolving trends and ideas in the agile discipline are essential. From the scores of books that make up the agile library to the study required to gain and retain certifications, the aspiring agilist and the agile professional have plenty of opportunities to expand and test their knowledge of this domain. Agilists can gain experience by bringing lean practices into their enterprise by stealth, by starting with a few ceremonies in a team or two, or by persuading the entire organization to embark on a declared agile voyage. If none of these work, the demand for agile professionals is now universal, and experience can be gained in many different settings. The agile community is robust, global, and welcoming, and agilists can join with like-minded practitioners around the world to keep growing their knowledge and network. By adding agile domain knowledge to subject matter expertise and consulting skills, we can multiply our effectiveness and our value to client enterprises.
Footnotes
1 Michele Sliger and Stacia Broderick, The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility Boston: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2008).
2 Dean Leffingwell, Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises (Boston: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2007).
5 PMP: Project Management Professional, MCSE: Microsoft Certified System Engineer, CCNE: Cisco Certified Network Engineer, CISSP: Certified Information Systems Security Professional.