Cory Foy Nailed It

Cory Foy does a great job giving us some insight into the recent history of the Scrum Alliance, especially as it relates to current efforts around developer certification. He also does a great job getting to the nut of the issue we are talking about here, something I am clearly struggling with. Cory’s point? The Scrum community is fractured and trying to get some stuff figured out. Personally, I think that’s a fair assessment.

Cory also wants us to acknowledge that most Scrum practitioners are in the software development space. He wants us to stop trying to be all things to all people. He wants us to get down down to the business of building software… the best we know how. I support that direction 100%, and in that context, totally support defining a set of developer practices that are a good idea on most projects, most of the time. I might even support a certification.

So why does all this matter? Here I am going to quote Lee Henson quoting the most recent series of Spider Man movies… “with great power comes great responsibility.” Like it or not, most people equate Agile with Scrum. Many people, especially the new ones, don’t realize that Scrum certification is only a two-day course. Lot’s of people think that when you call yourself a master of something, you have some idea of what you are doing.

Scrum’s positon as the preeminent Agile methodology… or framework… or whatever you want to call it, puts it in the position to have precious little time to dork around. I think that if the Scrum community doesn’t get things figured out… and soon… we are going to see other groups rise and take Scrum’s preeminent role. How many of you guys stopped watching baseball after that strike a few years ago? I did.

We don’t have time for in-fighting… we have companies to run and software to build.