The company I work for, 3months, recently sent a bunch of its staff through a Scrum Master certification course. We now have something like 10 CSMs (Certified Scrum Masters) on the team. This, despite the fact that the two people who lead and facilitate our major projects already have Scrum Master (me) and Scrum Practitioner (Mike Lowery) certifications.

Scrum Master certification is interesting in that it’s pitched at a level that gives someone a good entry point into using Scrum. This isn’t to say that every CSM out there is a newbie – many will be highly experienced Scrum, general agile or PM types. But the certification has come under flack from some quarters for giving the illusion that someone has more experience than it seems.

To be clear, our aim wasn’t to have a mix of developers, designers, marketing and management people start Scrum Mastering projects. We didn’t use the certification to give the illusion of 10 Scrum Masters. So why do it?

Scrum certification, and particularly Scrum Master certification, is targeted at “individuals who will work on a Scrum team … [with] a strong emphasis on the role of the ScrumMaster”. Here at 3months, we use Scrum almost exclusively to deliver products. Increasingly our team members are needing to know more about the process to help customers understand how and why we do what we do and to facilitate conversations around scope, quality and team responsibilities.

Our customers are getting more interested in Scrum too, and it’s not always enough to give them a Scrum Master, Product Owner or Project Manager’s point of view on how Scrum works. This is where knowledgeable team members can really add value – explaining how software development, design and marketing efforts are impacted by Scrum’s characteristically incremental and value-driven delivery style.

Critically, and potentially the biggest benefit, has been in having a company where we all speak the same language. We all know what a product backlog, sprint backlog, and burndown chart is *and* why it’s beneficial. We know why we do stand ups and why we do retrospectives. The team has an expectation of certain things that we do and are happy to pull us Scrum Masters up if we skip the critical steps.

This approach is working for us. It also shows where agile methods in general differ so much from project management approaches and certifications like the exam-based Prince2 and experience-based PMP certifications which elevate the PM skill set above those in the team. Scrum is a great leveler and Scrum certification for whole teams illustrates the point: everyone in a Scrum team is a leader in their own area and and a shares in the success of the project.

Shanan Holm is Projects Director and a Scrum Master at 3months.