Today, we launched our Professional Scrum Fundamentals self-paced course to support learners new to Professional Scrum and for those who want to strengthen their Scrum capabilities. This course is a good choice for those who are seeking a flexible learning option. The course, once completed, includes an attempt at the PSM I certification test. The course introduces Professional Scrum using a real-world scenario to help learners not only understand the concepts but also apply them in their environment.
Why produce another introduction to Professional Scrum course?
Before this course, Scrum.org offered three ways to learn the fundamentals: two instructor-led courses and a rich collection of content on the Scrum.org website. So, why add another way to learn about Professional Scrum?
One word sums up the motivation for this self-paced course: Feedback. The Scrum.org learner community has told us they wanted self-paced courses. Upon closer examination, two motivations are apparent:
- Over the past few years, we have observed a shift in the demographics of our learners as more individuals adopt Professional Scrum. This newer generation of Scrum practitioners, known as digital natives, wants the richness of a training class in a purely digital form.
- Life is busy, and professional development must fit into it. Perhaps this hasn’t changed, and life has always been busy, but digital technology provides us with the ability to pack our days, and professional development is no different. The flexibility that self-paced learning offers is unrivaled.
With the introduction of Professional Scrum Fundamentals, we now offer four ways to learn about the fundamentals of Professional Scrum, catering to the diverse needs of learners.
Scrum remains as relevant today as it was 30 years ago.
Yes, Scrum is almost 30 years old, and the world is vastly different now than it was 30 years ago; however, Scrum remains even more relevant today than it was 30 years ago. Scrum was born out of necessity; the need for software development teams to deliver products despite many unknowns to solve the mythical man-month problem cited by Fred Brooks. There is also the need to prevent organizations from blindly applying traditional project management to a domain space that is very different from traditional projects.
The world today is even more complex, unpredictable, and dynamic than it was 30 years ago, and this trend is expected to intensify further. Take, for example, AI. The technology might be as revolutionary as the printing press, but to gain benefit, you have to work incrementally with a clear idea of the outcome you are seeking. AI is unpredictable and requires continuous delivery and inspection. Those ideas are fundamental to Scrum. The technology has evolved over the past 30+ years, but the essential need to break down goals and make progress incrementally has remained unchanged. That is why the Professional Scrum Fundamentals self-paced course includes learning objectives focused on dispelling the myths of plan-based approaches, while providing a transparent and actionable approach to working in a team to deliver value incrementally and manage risk.
Flexibility and reach were always at the heart of Ken's mission.
When Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland first created Scrum, the only way to learn it was to be on one of their projects. Neither were in the training business, but both were focused on delivering new products with new technology. Ken quickly realized that these ideas need to scale, and he started training people. That training led to him traveling constantly as the ideas gained popularity, amplified by the release of the Agile Manifesto and the growing importance of software delivery. That forced Ken to get others involved, which ultimately led to the development of our Professional Scrum Trainer program, still the gold standard in agile training worldwide. It also led to the creation of a decoupled certification to support individuals working with Scrum on products and who had read and studied numerous materials about Scrum. The decoupled certification helped us scale adoption and also supported different learning modes, providing a valuable set of data about what people understood and didn’t understand about Scrum, which led to improvements in content and training. The COVID-9 pandemic forced us to change our training model to support remote learning, which in turn helped scale the use of Scrum by providing high-quality training in new virtual locations. That learning then fed into changes to content and training. With the release of Professional Scrum Fundamentals as a self-paced course, we have added another way for learners to learn Scrum that suits their needs.
I don't know what is next, agentic-based learning or something with VR, but I know that Ken Schwaber and Scrum.org will continue to explore ways to scale access to Professional Scrum, as our mission drives us.