The Scrum Yahoo! group is again undergoing some minor turbulence about proper use of the list. Someone from the Scrum Alliance laid out the law with a number of rules about what could and could not be posted to the list. Many people reacted poorly–supposedly this is the poster’s first post, and he’s not even a Certified Scrum Master (CSM). (gasp!)
Oddly, a year or so ago when there was similar agonizing over the use of the list, it appeared as if L. Ken Schwaber “owned” the Yahoo! group and thus controlled(an important word in the Scrum community) appropriate content. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. For those who like command & control, with the additional potential of being part of a good multi-level marketing machine, the Scrum system provides a wonderful starting point.
The nice thing is that you can still do Scrum and talk about Scrum without succumbing to the controlled community that is S©rum. As far as I know, there’s no licensing scheme required to be able to say, “I’m doing Scrum.” And that’s exactly what I’d recommend. No annual maintenance fee required! No required trainer tiering! Yes, you need a Scrum Master in order to successfully execute Scrum. But I don’t believe they must be “certified.” (I could be wrong–perhaps I need a lawyer here!)
Where might you find a good Scrum Master? Well, you should probably read L. Ken Schwaber’s book, Agile Project Management With Scrum (that link is my piece of the Scrum machine’s gravy train, by the way). You’ll quickly discover, through a number of case studies that L. relates, that Scrum and S©rum are mostly a matter of executing to common sense, best done by someone with good experience in people-oriented problem solving and leadership. Find someone who can do that well, and hire them. It really doesn’t matter if they’re a CSM.
