Certified Scrum Master (CSM) is one of the top-most certificates in the IT industry. It’s a certificate awarded to the team coaches based on their understanding of the Scrum framework.

Certified Scrum Master (CSM®) certification from Scrum Alliance is a widely recognized Scrum certificate in the world. Designed to help the team coaches learn how to maximize the potential of the product development teams.

Scrum Alliance is a non-profit organization based out of Colorado, the USA which provides education, educational resources and as well as support to Agile and Scrum Practitioners.

The workshop is designed to help participants get started as a Scrum Master. The topics are sequenced according to the sequence of events that would happen when the participants are hired as a Scrum Master.

Pre-workshop Preparation:

We want you to make most of the time you spend with our trainers and other participants. Learning maximizes with the perspective of others. So we expect you to go through online articles and videos to prepare for the workshop. The online material includes:

• Learn Agile Manifesto
• Learn basic Scrum Framework
• Go through Scrum Guide
• Learn about the CSM test process

The workshop designed to help you learn everything you need to do as a Scrum Master from day 1 of your job. You will be learning the role of Scrum Master through role plays and by doing. The whole course is split into 4 Sprints with each Sprint focusing on the following topics:

Sprint 1: Why do we need Scrum and ScrumMaster?

The goal of this Sprint is to understand why do Organizations need Scrum and why do they hire ScrumMaster.

Mental Model

• What is Mental Model?
• How are they formed?
• How do mental models change?
• Why is it important for ScrumMaster to understand Mental Models?

Incremental Delivery

• What is the Cost of Delay (CoD) and Cost of Production (CoP)?
• What are the factors that cause CoD and CoP?
• How do CoD and CoP impact ROI of Organization?
• How Scrum helps in improving ROI by reducing CoD and CoP?

Agile & Empirical Process

• What is Agile and Empirical Process?
• Why are the various ways to be Agile?
• How to decide what process is good for my product?

Sprint 2: How to introduce Scrum in an Organization?

The goal of this Sprint is to explore ScrumMaster’s role in helping the Organization adopt Scrum.

ScrumMaster as a Systems Thinker

• What is a System and why Organizations are a System?
• What is Systems Thinking?
• Why is it important for ScrumMaster?
• How to develop Systems Thinking?

ScrumMaster as a Change Agent

• How to create a shared need for change?
• Explore the underlying reasons behind Organizations adopting Scrum and how to measure progress?
• How to identify various stakeholders required to support adoption?
• How to identify what are the structural/policy/process changes required to adopt Scrum?
• What are the different techniques to facilitate change?

ScrumMaster as a Facilitator

• What is facilitation – Basic vs Developmental facilitation?
• Different facilitation techniques – Advocacy vs Inquiry
• What are the different focus areas of ScrumMaster
• How does ScrumMaster’s role change over a period of time?

Sprint 3: Coaching Product Owner to build Product in increments.

The goal of this Sprint is to explore ScrumMasters role in coaching Product Owner to deliver Product in increments.  In the process, participants will understand everything to be done to get started with the first Sprint.

Forming Scrum Team

• What are the responsibilities of Scrum roles?
• What are the skills required to play Scrum roles?
• How to transform your teams into Scrum teams?
• What are the practical difficulties in forming Scrum teams and how to overcome them – Distribution and Scaling?

Class Project

• Identify a product to work on
• Identify roles
• Understand Product vision.

Building Product Backlog

• What is vertical split vs horizontal split?
• What are the various techniques to Split Product Backlog Items(PBIs)?
• What is ScrumMaster’s role in teaching the PO about splitting techniques and building Product Backlog?
• Practice splitting techniques on a class project.

Identifying MVP

• Why is it not possible to fix things upfront for complex projects?
• What is Technical Debt and how fixing things upfront and focusing on estimation causes Technical Debt?
• How to overcome Technical Debt?
• Why is it good to focus on value delivery instead of fixing the estimation problem?
• What is MVP?
• How ScrumMaster can help the PO identify MVP?
• Apply Story Mapping on a class project to identify MVP.

Sprint 4: Coaching teams to become learning teams.

The goal of this Sprint is to explore ScrumMasters role in coaching Development Team to become learning teams. The participants run a couple of Sprints on the class project to understand Scrum end to end.

Sizing Product Backlog

• What is a Release?
• What is relative estimation and #NoEstimates?
• How do we forecast a release date?
• Why release plan is not cast in stone and release planning should be iterative?

Refining Product Backlog

• What is Backlog Refinement?
• What are the helpful practices for Backlog Refinement?
• Refine the Product Backlog of the Class Project.

Sprint Simulation

• Run couple of Sprints for the class project.
• Simulate and discuss issues that a team may face during Sprint and learn how ScrumMaster can help the team

• 2-Day Online training by best CST
• The most innovative education provider in the world
• A thriving community of 46k members to support continuous learning
• ScrumAlliance Certificate & 2 year membership

Post-workshop Mentoring

We would like you to get started as a Scrum Master as soon as possible. So post workshop we few mandatory and optional activities for you.

Scrum Master Case Studies

• Learn to solve specific cases you may face as Scrum Master by going through 15 case studies.

Career Counseling by a Coach

• Get mentored by a Coach at your workplace or over Skype to learn to introduce Scrum at your workplace (optional)

On the job mentoring

There are no specific pre-requisites but delegates meeting below criteria can go for the certification:

A Scrum Master is a team Coach. When we try to build complex products we need collective wisdom. Whenever any level of Cognitive thinking is involved, the command and control style of management stops working. To foster creative thinking and discover new resourcefulness, we need to enable team’s to self-organize and be self-aware. Self-organization is not natural and doesn’t happen overnight, and it takes years of persistence effort to build a system that supports self-organization. Empirical frameworks like Scrum are very useful in developing such teams. Scrum Master is a Systems Coach, who are experts in systems thinking, organizational change, and implementation. Their focus is the energy, wisdom of the individual of the team and their interrelatedness.

In order to play such a role with a huge responsibility for organizational design, one needs to be good at Systems Thinking, Facilitation, Process Design, and Coaching. So anybody who has these skills can work towards becoming a Scrum Master irrespective of your current role. Few examples of such enabler functions in other models are Six Sigma Black Belts, Executive Coaches, Team Coaches, Project Management Office, etc.