A guide to Scrum Master Certifications: Which one should you choose?

i) Certified Scrum Master(CSM)

The first and the famous certification is from Scrum Alliance. It was founded in 2001 by the co-creator of scrum Ken Schwaber. Scrum Alliance is the largest professional organization in the agile community. They offer the certified scrum master which is a CSM designation, so you all must have a Reddit in the job profiles.

We chose the CSM offered by Scrum Alliance as the best overall scrum certification because it is a widely recognized certification program for scrum masters. Scrum Alliance focuses its certification training on interaction with certified trainers and coaches followed by a structured exam.

Every CSM graduate of the Scrum Alliance must complete the CSM training program in order to take the certification exam. Now Scrum Alliance offers both in-person and live online training around the world. So online courses span two days last anywhere from seven to eight and a half hours and cost around $495 per person. There's an option to take the class over three days at four and a half hours a day, in-person training programs at two eight hours a day and typically starts at $1199 dollars with a ten per cent discount for groups of three or more.

All course fees include the cost of the exam which can be taken at the end of each course. So Scrum Alliance requires individuals to renew their CSM certification every two years. The fee for a renewal is $100 dollars only and scrum requires 20 scrum education units.

ii) PSM Certification

In 2019 Scrum co-founder Ken Schwaber left Scrum Alliance and founded scrum.org to provide training that he thought was more consistent with scrum fundamentals. In the process, he created an alternative to the certified scrum master called the Professional Scrum Master which is PSM. Now we chose it as a runner-up since it offers scrum certification recognized second only to Scrum Alliance. So the main difference between Scrum Alliance and scrum.org is in how each approaches certification.

While Scrum Alliance require individual to complete scrum training before taking the certification exam, scrum.org focuses on the exam itself, so the organization is less interested in the type of class or training scrum masters receive rather than the knowledge they develop and scrum.org offers three-level of PSM certification, which are PSM I, PSM II, and PSM III.

So according to the course description, the PSM I certification focuses on having a high level of scrum knowledge and understanding of the scrum guide and how to apply scrum within scrum teams.

The PSM II certification focuses on having advanced scrum knowledge, in-depth scrum experience or having already taken a professional scrum master course.

While the PSM III certification focuses on a deep understanding of the application of scrum, scrum practices, the scrum value and the ability to apply scrum in a variety of complex team and organizational situations. So scrum.org doesn't require individuals to have any training to take the PSM exam. Nevertheless, it does offer a scrum training course as well, you do not have to go for any training before taking the exam if you're doing it from scrum.org.

Pricing for the PSM assessment is, for example, if you want to give PSM I, it is $150 per person and it's gonna be a 60-minute lengthy exam.

While PSM II, and it's $250 dollar per person and it's a 90-minute lengthy exam.

While PSM III is $500 per person and is a 150-minute lengthy exam.

iii) Licensed Scrum Master Training

The third exam body which we consider is Scrum. inc, which is Scrum Incorporation. So in 2006 Scrum co-founder Jeff Sutherland started scrum incorporation to get back to teaching CSM courses. So scrum. inc also offers leadership workshops and other enterprise coaching and consulting services. We chose it as the best interactive class since it focuses on training certification with dynamic and interactive hands-on experience.

So scrum. inc license scrum master training combines lectures with various games and exercises to give attendees the experience of the scrum master role first-hand. So class participants organize into scrum teams and learn how to create and prioritize the product backlog, manage to burn down charts and review real-world case studies across a variety of industries.

So if you need the in-hand experience of what exactly a scrum master role does, you should opt for scrum. inc as a body for certification. There are no prerequisites for licensed scrum master training and all levels of scrum experience are welcome.

Courses start at $2000 including the exam fees and take place online over two or three days.

Students who successfully complete the course and pass the exam will earn their registered scrum master credential signed by Jeff Sutherland.

iv) PMI ACP Certification

This certification is one of the most recognized certifications from one of the most recognized institutes, Project Management Institute and they have an agile certified practitioner which is ACP. So PMI offers an agile certified practitioner certification in addition to providing scrum master certification. It also includes kanban extreme programming lean and test-driven development and agile certifications.

So PMI ACP certification is popular among scrum masters and employers since it covers several agile and scrum practices and principles rather than a simple set of training.

PMI ACP certification has prerequisites like you must have a high school diploma or bachelor's degree and 21 contact hours of training in agile practices, 12 months of general project experience within the last five years, a current Project Management Professional which is PMP or Program Management Professional which is PGMP certification. You should also have eight months of agile project experience within the last three years.

So the PMI ACP certification exam has around 120 multiple-choice questions and offers three hours to complete the exam. It can be done online as most of the PMI exams happen.

The cost of PMI ACP certification is $435 for PMI members and $495 for non-members. PMI membership is $92.27 per year plus a one-time $9.32 application fee. Additionally, PMI ACP certification holders must earn four professional development units we call it PDUs.

Involving agile topics every year to renew the certification and the renewal cost is $20 for PMI members and $50 for non-members.

v) SAFe Certification

This certification was created to provide a Scaled Agile Framework which is also known as SAFe certification. If you are going through any of the job interviews, there is written that if a person is SAFe certified then the person is going to have an upper hand, so they say that SAFe is preferred. So it's a framework intended to scale Agile, Lean and DevOps practices for enterprises. SAFe scrum master certification can enhance a scrum master's qualification when looking for placement in an enterprise-level organization.

We chose scale agile as best for SAFe scrum master certification because it is the gold standard for SAFe training and even developed the framework. So Scaled Agile SAFe scrum master certification focuses on the fundamental of team-level scrum and how to build a high-performing agile teams to deliver the maximum business value at scale.

Scale courses are available on time and it's on-site or online. Pricing varies by the instructors and typically starts around $600 dollars to $700 dollars, which includes the cost of the exam as well. Exams can be retaken if necessary with each attempt, the cost is additional $50 dollars, so with every attempt you make it's going to be $50 additional dollars to that.

While there are no prerequisites for the certification, scaled agile recommends attendees have familiarity with agile concepts and principles, an awareness of scrum can improve an extreme programming and working knowledge of software and hardware development processes. So no prerequisites for the certification but it's good if you are familiar with the agile concepts and the principles around it.

vi) Disciplined Agile Scrum Master (DASM) Certification

This certification is through PMI and it’s not a framework but rather a tool kit that focuses on the decision you need to consider. The options are available to you and the trade-offs are associated with these options. This particular certification shows you how to effectively combine strategies from a scrum, kanban, SAFe and many other approaches in a tailorable and scalable manner. Organizations that adopt discipline agile go to market soon. They deliver value faster and make their customer happy.