W00t, as they say on the interwebs: I submitted my application for Certified Scrum Practitioner qualification a week or so back, and received news this week that I'd passed.

Whilst the only requirement for passing the first grade in Scrum certification ("Certified Scrum Master") is that you attend a 2-day training course, to get CSP you have to have been running Scrum projects for a year, and to submit a written application referencing a project you've been involved with, giving detail on all aspects of it: teamwork, success criteria, what you learned doing it, and so forth. My application was based around the development of Trutap 2.0 last year - 7-month project, the largest we've run from start to finish with Scrum, and one that pleased both us and our client.

My aim in doing the CSM training (which was majority-funded by TrainToGain - thoroughly recommended btw) was to immediately take CSP. I'm not a big fan of certification for these sorts of skills, but a test based on real-world project work would seem to indicate we have at least some familiarity with methods in both theory and practice. FP sits in an industry where most companies are emphatic about their "agility", often without being too clear on exactly what that means... so I was also keen to have some sort of independent evaluation of how we operate.

Not many people make the transition from CSM to CSP. There are roughly 30,000 CSM-qualified folks worldwide, but only around 500 CSPs; and of these only 30 resident in the UK. Hopefully this will help us stand out from the crowd a little, and reassure potential clients that we know our onions when it comes to this stuff.

Thanks to Ms Hunt for all her help and support along the journey - it's your turn now Joh! :)