(BCS) There is scope for BCS to produce this kind of certification. What we haven’t done in this book is say here’s a new agile framework, here’s another one and this one is better. This introduces you to a broad scope of agile approaches. People need to understand what tools, techniques, skills and experiences are available to them to help them do their job. And certification is a way of demonstrating that they’ve gone out and learnt about this material.
Certification is only part of what you need to do. We have an agile specialist group, made up of volunteer members and they have talks by speakers who bring in value and knowledge that members can learn from and improve their careers.
There is value in certification, but the value is in keeping people out of silos linked to frameworks.
(Radtac) The first 124 pages of the book are about generic agile. We haven’t tried to merge different frameworks. There are lots of contributions by great people with some superb ideas. So we have genericised everything that has been learnt over the last 20 or 30 years, of rad, Agile, evo, spiral - all of these things. They’re all genericised in the book, and then we talk about the frameworks.
It is a foundation book. Once people have read the book, we hope that people want to carry on their journey and learn even more about this stuff.
As the official textbook for the cert, is it enough to read the book to go for the exam?
(BCS) It is possible, although we do say that training is preferable to self-learning. You are likely to learn more and better from attending a training course.
Is it always important to have a certificate in something to prove your knowledge?
(Radtac) Referring to a quote in the book, think about this: “You can learn how to fly a plane by reading a book; but don’t expect anyone to sit next to you the first time you take off.”
If it’s important to you and important to you employer, or the culture or environment in which you’re working, then yes it’s important.
(BCS) Certification isn’t necessarily important, but it does show an aptitude and a willingness to learn. That, in terms of personal professional career development, is definitely a good thing to demonstrate; and is something BCS encourages.
(Peter Measey) As a CEO of an organisation who employs agile people, if we’re in a situation where we’re doing something with one of our clients, and we need to have some business analytical skill, if I’m talking to someone who is a business analyst and someone who is an agile business analyst, who has taken the time to go out and certify themselves as an agile BA, I would opt for the agile BA.
People who go out and take the exam must remember this is not the destination; it’s just part of your journey. People should not think that just because they’ve done the training course and exam, that they’re automatically agile.
