Yes, it is.

In many ways, a scrum master acts as an Agile coach for the scrum team, the product owners, and even people in the organisation who are not part of the scrum team.

Coaching and facilitation is a critical part of the scrum master’s job.

Some individuals choose to pursue a career as a scrum master and have no interest in becoming an Agile coach. That’s great. We need people who are in love with the role and perform it to the best of their ability.

The Certified Scrum Professional Scrum Master course will make you a better scrum master and allow you to level up in your career and achieve your career goals and objectives.

If you do wish to go the route of Agile coach, either within your organisation or as an independent Agile coach that serves customers, the Certified Scrum Professional Scrum Master course will definitely help you in that journey.

The CSP-SM course starts with a deep dive into LEAN theory.

So many great evolutions have been made in the world of manufacturing and software engineering because of the LEAN movement, and there is much to learn from their successes.

As you grow your knowledge of Agile and LEAN, you are automatically becoming a better Scrum Master and Agile Coach because of your deeper understanding of where Agile originated and why it proved to be such a successful methodology for building products and solving problems.

The course also dedicates an entire section to coaching and facilitation.

Whether you choose to become an Agile coach or not, you will definitely need to have a strong coaching and facilitation skillset to help your team achieve an environment where everybody can excel.

Facilitation of scrum events such as sprint planning, retrospectives and reviews is also critical.

As both a scrum master and an Agile coach, you will benefit from having advanced theoretical knowledge, tools and frameworks from which to build on your existing coaching and facilitation skills.

The CSP-SM then tackles service to the team.

Again, a skillset that is valuable to scrum masters as well as agile coaches.

Learning advanced techniques, tools, models, and frameworks to serve the scrum team is critical for scrum masters to help the scrum team create and build products that truly delight customers.

Group discussions that include insights into how people currently overcome challenges within their teams, as well as from the Certified Scrum Trainer, give you real-world actionable recommendations on how to progress within your own scrum team environment.

Many of the questions posed and the answers provided prove invaluable to our cohort as they work through the service to the team section.

Stealth Agile

The CSP-SM then progresses to providing service to the product owner.

The product owner is like the CEO of the product and serve product stakeholders within and outside of the organisation.

They have a difficult job and they could use all the help they can get from Scrum Masters.

In this section, you will explore advanced tools, techniques, models, and frameworks that will empower you to serve product owners and act as the glue that binds the scrum team together.

You will learn how servant leadership as a Scrum Master and Agile coach really serve product owners and help them to create products, services and features that delight stakeholders as well as customers.

In the final section of the CSP-SM course, we will explore ‘beyond the team’ which focuses primarily on organisational change and scaling scrum.

Scaling scrum is one of the biggest and most common challenges organisations face.

Ideally, you don’t want to scale scrum but you’re going to find that in your working environment the conversation is going to come up and you are going to need to provide expert advice and insights into how to scale scrum.

In this section, you will also learn from other course delegates as we discuss the challenges that have been faced by people on the course and how they have overcome those challenges. In many cases, people haven’t found a solution to their scaling challenges and your Certified Scrum Trainer will play an active role in helping you develop those solutions based on their experiences in the trenches.

How do I get leadership to buy into Agile?

Whether you are an Agile coach or a Scrum Master, you need to understand team dynamics and how to create high-performance, agile teams that are hyper productive, collaborative and creative.

The CSP-SM course explores teamwork, how teams are created, and how to build a powerful team from the ground up.

Again, whether you are a scrum master or an Agile coach, these are critical skills to learn and it’s important that you have a strong understanding of teams and teamwork.

So, in summary, the Certified Scrum Professional Scrum Master is a course designed at developing powerful scrum masters who act as both practitioners and agile coaches within their organisations.

Regardless of whether you choose to pursue a career as an agile coach or prefer to remain a power scrum master within your organisation, you will definitely benefit from the course content, group discussions and simulations.

If you would like to advance your career, visit our Certified Scrum Professional Scrum Master (CSP-SM) course page.

If you like the idea of a mentored and coach-driven approach to your skills development, visit our Agile Coaching Academy.

If you would like to explore the concept of coaching, visit our on-demand Introduction to Coaching course.