Starting from ground zero

Welcome, Ms. Phillips! Let's begin with some questions to keep in mind.  What do you know about Agile and Scrum?  Why do you want to be certified?  What do you wish to accomplish?

There are many different certifications and paths to each.  Anyone can take the online certification exam here for the Professional Scrum Certifications (PSD, PSM, PSPO).  The others are offered by their respective backers.

A certification alone may not offer you much as far as career options.  Each company has its own needs, desires, and requirements.  Being effective usually requires experience (which a certification does not provide) and having a mentor can be helpful.

There are a lot of misconceptions about what Agile and Scrum are.  Taking an online exam for a certification without truly understanding the intent, history, and value of the philosophy and framework can further those problems.

I hope that through considering the questions posed and doing some more research you can find what you desire.  Perhaps it will be a part of the community which wants to improve the quality and value of products delivered along with the careers of those providing them.

http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html

http://agilemanifesto.org/

Thank you for taking the time to respond to me. I know that agile is a project management methodology. Scrum is 1 of the 8 (please correct me if I'm wrong) methods used to implement agile. 

I want to be certified to at least start at the bottom of the totem pole for agile, specifically the scrum method because this is an area of high interest for me. After much research in the project management field,the traits scrum master are many traits I possess & have some experience with such as keeping a team on track with goals, daily documentation of where we are & where we want to be, and I'm good at building relationships & collaboration. However I am not naive in the truths that I have no software development or scrum experience & experience is king.

And an agile practitioner certification can give me basic groundwork of most of not all of methods used under the agile umbrella.

I have read the agile manifesto at the beginning of my journey months ago. 

Will getting a certification get me anywhere near the bottom floor to work my way up? 

T

I also started from zero and below are the paths I took:

1. paid for an online course (3hrs duration) in introduction to Scrum.  Also took couple of 1hr video courses from LinkedIn Learning about Scrum and transitioning from waterfall to agile.

2. got interested to obtain "first" certification and passed PSM I.  attempted PSPO I but failed (81.25%).

3. chanced upon PMI's new Agile Practice Guide (182 pages) and got interested in PMI-ACP certification.

4. paid for an online PMI-ACP exam prep course (13hrs, 21 PDUs) and applied to take the exam.

5. now reading the book Agile Product Management with Scrum by Roman Pichler (144 pages), and browsing the book Essential Scrum by Kenneth Rubin (501 pages).

6. also reading PMI-ACP Exam Study Guide by J Ashley Hunt (691 pages), not necessary since I already done a 13hrs course, but just getting the confidence while waiting to book exam date.

7. going for 2nd-attempt at PSPO I certification soon.

I'm already practicing elements of Agile in my work which is non-software development.

Hi Tracey - Congratulations on starting your Agile journey.  My advice would be to start reading the Scrum guide, take the open assessments, and read some of the suggested books to get a feel for Scrum.  And join a network of other Agile and Scrum practitioners in your to ask a lot of questions and understand more about the career.

Getting the certifications without any experience working as part of a Scrum team (or with any Agile framework) will be very difficult when trying to land a Scrum Master or Product Owner position.  If I recall PMI requires actual project experience before you can sit for that exam.

In most cases the certification alone will not get you hired, and most likely won't even get you an interview.  Many Scrum Masters have worked as traditional project managers, and came along for the ride when their companies transformed to Scrum.  Others were Development Team members who transitioned to Scrum Master or Product Owner.  I don't know of any Scrum Masters who were not first involved with software engineering in some way. 

Also, to clear up something you mentioned.  Agile is a mindset and a set of values and principles, not a project management methodology.  And Scrum is framework that falls under the Agile umbrella, not a methodology such as waterfall.  I have the battle scars from trying to make methodologies work, and don't want anyone to think of Scrum as a methodology.  : )

All the best,

Chris