The split in the Scrum community with Ken Schwaber going independent of the Scrum Alliance sees Scrum.org announce the Professional Scrum Developer program.
An interesting development indeed. There’s also now a competing certification for the Professional Scrum Master instead of the Certified Scrum Master. I’m sure this is going to be confusing for everyone. (I wonder if that means Certified Scrum Masters are then implied as Unprofessional as a result?)
Too bad Ken’s certification is Microsoft and Java centric. The great thing about the SA certifications is that no matter what language you or your company uses you can learn the practice of Scrum. Either way I am sure people will get confused, except for the Microsoft developers who are marketed to, perhaps by Microsoft itself. We’ll see.
Certification programs are all about marketing, not about real knowledge/skills or professionalism. I wouldn’t over-react to the introduction of another certification program.
I don’t know about you, but I see the announcement prominently displayed on the Scrum.org site. And I do think this is a good thing overall for Scrum.