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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. By raising the bar through “difficult and skills-based certification,” as Brian Marick and the board at the Agile Alliance described, we can advance the Agile discourse through :
- a defined a bar that is deep in skill, knowledge and practice
- a significant enough bar to engage College and University study and examination
- research and curriculum that explore the tough questions in a scientific method
- development of more flexible or “T” shaped individuals that can see and work beyond silo roles.
With this back-drop, I am motivated by the notion of creating a A Community of Thinkers,:
I am a member of a community of thinkers and I believe that communities exist as homes for professionals to learn, teach, and reflect on their work.
A Community of Thinkers creates more leadership in our profession. I see the expanding certification efforts in 2010 as great steps in these directions:
- Lean Software and System Professional – new certification emerging
- Agile Developer Certification – that is also emerging
- Certified Scrum Practitioner – especially as it intertwines with the PMI’s Agile Community of Practice
I encourage everyone in our community to figure out how to put energy toward one or more of these efforts. The benefit of actively learning, teaching and reflecting on our work should lead us all to expanding civil dialogue that works to understand all points of view and keep expanding our thinking. Thus broader education and difficult certification helps create a “Community of Thinkers.” And, a Community of Thinkers will create a virtuous cycle of win/win and thus a larger pie for all.
That is my hope for 2010 in our profession.
About the Author: Ryan Martens is a happy father, founding board member of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, and Founder and CTO at Rally Software Development. Subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS.
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I continue to have real concerns about certification efforts in software. I agree that such efforts should be skills-demonstration-based rather than just knowledge-testing. This is how it is done in all meaningful professional certifications. The software industry has many certifications, none of which, that I am aware of, are close to this level of rigor and some which have conflict of interest issues.
However, pursuing such rigor has significant issues, and consequences, of its own such as:
1) How to bootstrap this effort, i.e., who will be the people, at the outset, who will judge the competence of others and who will decide who they are and why others will not be given this authority?
2) What body of knowledge will be defined as the basis of such certification and who will do so, maintaining it on an ongoing basis?
3) Most certification efforts are backed by some recognized professional societies that do much more than just certify people, e.g., interact with academia to influence educational programs, work with government on licensing, publish research in their fields.
4) What impact on fees/salaries can be expected, or desired, based on having people who can claim the certification as opposed to those who cannot?
5) Should all practitioners be expected to have such certification or will there be grades of certification from basic applied skill through supervisory/approval as in engineering?
6) Regardless of the intentions of those who try to set up such a certification effort, can (or should) the use of the results of such an effort be controlled to avoid unintended consequences?
And there are more such things.
I take the idea of substantial certification efforts seriously and believe issues such as those I mention above need to be considered. At the very least, any such effort should have a position on why they have chosen to address some issues and not others.
As a first step, we should seek to eliminate, or discredit, certifications that using testing and require that the training to qualify to take the testing must come from sources only approved by the certification body. This is a clear conflict of interest situation that more than one certification effort in software faces.
Thanks for this Ryan. I’m glad to hear someone voice this and really mean it. I hope you and Jean have a great year in 2010.
Scott,
Thank you for the the thoughtful reply with a great list of potential pitfalls.
When Jean gets back from Mexico and we shape our plans more completely for certification, we will post again. In that post, I will work to specifically answer these questions.
It seems we see a very similar structure as you do. I am very excited to share our efforts in more detail.
Happy New Year,
Ryan