Scrum Master Certification

To my knowledge, I have never earned an official professional certificate, but that will change in a few days. Over the years I've attended a variety of conferences and training sessions, read a fair number of books, googled a variety of professional topics online and followed a few blogs. I suppose I feel like I've already got both the theory and the experience, so do I really need a certificate to prove my abilities? Besides, doesn't it just seem odd that anyone can attend a course, study and pass a test, and suddenly you are bona fide? Plus, for every solid PM with a PMP who I've ever met, there was another compensating for a lack of actual ability with a certification.

Basically, nearly anyone can pay money, study, maybe document some experience, then take and pass a standardized test. At the end of the day, however, there is no way for certifications to ensure competence. I am not belittling the difficulty of obtaining some of these certifications, just questioning correlation to professional ability.

So why did I break down and sign up for a scrum master certification course? The main one was to get away from the day-to-day grind for a few solid days (3 in this case) to hear what others are doing, to take a little inventory, and to hopefully glean some good ideas to add to the bag of tricks.

Additionally, I won't pretend the certification doesn't have anything to do with it. Even if it doesn't prove much of anything, there are prospective customers who get warm fuzzies when they see certifications on our resumes, so it can't hurt with sales and marketing :)

But will it be worth the $1400 tuition? Tomorrow I'll do a little write-up on the first day.