6 Prominent Agile Certifications for Your Career Development

Is Agile Certification Worth the Effort? Why organizations going Agile these days? What are the best Agile certification one can pursue for better career prospects?

Several businesses are still operating in a dull and inflexible-mannered environment or are stuck with traditional methods. Their vertical means of reporting, hierarchy and many other factors often leave the customers, shareholders, and what say more, the employees unhappy. This results in delayed project delivery, top project failure, non-coordination among team members, and too many contact points.

Companies started thinking differently in transforming the traditional procedures with wide adoption of a new-flanged methodology, 'Agile.' It prioritizes test-and-learn approaches over detailed planning. It has become the most implemented developmental tool in many industry verticals like education, banking, software industry, construction and many more.

Hence, organizations are looking for Agile certified professionals to meet their Agile-related company requirements. The practice is a significant choice to adopt in the changing market environment. These experts can respond to any transitions efficiently and swiftly so that their projects are widely accepted around the globe.

With Agile certification, you obtain the edge to bring shifts in your company by adopting Agile techniques, strategies and tools, followed by high perk salary and job security.

In this blog, we shall be brushing through the concept of Agile, its benefits, significance, challenges and many more.

What Exactly is Agile?

Agile principles are critical software market drivers that help learn, innovate, and adapt quickly. It is developed for quick and seamless company workflow. Agile is a tedious process to deliver software progressively from the initial phase of the project rather than providing the entire project at the end.

This term is mainly applied in project management, and if the project is classic, then the Agile practice is a great approach to follow.

The practise focuses on the product delivery to the end customers in smaller sprints than delivering at a time. This makes it easier for them to verify and validate the project module and its quality.

Agile assigns to the principles of lean development, which accentuate efficacy to optimize the delivery of value to customers. The pillars of Agile methods are provided in the Agile Manifesto as follows:

• Operating software over comprehensive documentation.
• Responding to the business transformation by following a plan.
• Interactions and individuals over tools and procedures.
• Customer alliance over contract negotiation.

Though the method is designed to simplify the procedures, adopting Agile in a company is a lot more complicated than it seems to be. It is a total rework of a business process, and it needs fundamental transformation to be made in every aspect of the venture.

Many companies recruit Agile trainers, send their workforces for methodology training or even recruit consultants to recreate their operational manuals. However, companies have too many questions and challenge to face when implementing Agile.

Understanding the implementation challenges and discussing different methods to resolve the problem beforehand could prove a critical decision whether Agile is a profit or loss.

Why Adopt Agile Methodology?

Being Agile needs a transition in the infrastructure and relation between management and the team by driving decision-making to the lowest point. The backward method makes the IT company more responsive and expertise. Teams depend on Agile practices and culture to develop into top-notch performing units that offer value throughout the firm.

When pursuing an Agile certification, you can benefit from organizational and personal levels. Let's look at how worthy the certificate is.

Organizational Benefits

Agile certification includes the complete knowledge of Agile practice to implement within the organization. The benefits of the certificate on an organizational level are:

1. Real Value to the Organization

The main aim is to offer exemplary service and products to the customer and satisfy them completely. Without an Agile professional, a company can't meet their targets as they ensure consistent value delivery throughout its project's lifecycle.

2. Time and Expense

Agile-certified individuals assign tasks to every workforce by considering their scope, thereby assisting them in gaining success in the projects. This, to an extent, helps them to offer value in the deadline. In general, these professionals know how to manage the expense, time, and team correctly.

3. Easy Adaptability

On recruiting an Agile expert, a company can respond swiftly and adapt seamlessly to the constantly transforming business environments. Whatever transitions occur in the future, an organization can take immediate actions if an Agile professional is involved.

4. Seamless Communication

Assertive communication is essential to avoid confusion among the team, making a project successful. Agile certified candidates communicate well with the teams to bring alliance while dealing with specific projects, helping them maintain proper track of the daily progress. They enhance their daily communication by conducting meetings on the task status.

5. Relationship Reinforcement

Agile projects often lead to robust relations between the team members. However, it is essential to create a good connection within the team of an organization for a successful project. Agile practitioners can bring the entire group together, communicate efficiently and reach a conclusion.

Personal Benefits

The certification can also have a personal benefit, as Agile-related organizations are drastically growing. Some of the personal benefits are:

1. Career Boost

Agile plays a significant role in software development and project management within the company. Since the accreditation is of top-notch value, companies constantly hire Agile certified professionals with a higher pay scale and opportunities to work abroad.

Moreover, you are open to several job positions in the Agile area. The companies are looking for those who can bring value to their business.

2. Leadership Skills

Agile certification benefits a lot to be an Agile leader, providing you with leadership skills for management and control of organizational teams. With the accreditation, you can set targets, guide the team, conduct meetings and have complete authority over the Agile team.

By bringing alliance and solving conflicts within the team, you can move towards the project's success and become an efficient company lead.

3. Gain Agile Methodology Insight

The certification offers the knowledge of Agile methodologies to the individuals. Moreover, it teaches how to adopt the techniques within a firm to achieve the business targets. A person with Agile, practical skill helps them work in a reputed firm with a decent pay scale.

What Are the Top Agile Certifications?

PMI-ACP Certification

PMI is an internationally recognized certification exam. The Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP) provided by PMI is PMI-ACP certification. The certification represents that you have deep insight into Agile principles and are skilled enough to execute Agile techniques efficiently. It covers primary Agile methods, Kanban, Test-driven Development (TDD), Lean, Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP).

Unlike other certifications, PMI-ACP has prerequisites, and they aren't negligible. Following are the eligibility criteria to know before attending the exam, they are:

     1. General Project Experience

• 2,000 hours of general project management experience in the last 5 years.
• Requirement satisfied by Active PMP or Program Management Professional (PgMP). 

     2.  Agile Project Experience

• Least experience of working 1,500 hours on Agile project teams during last 3 years.
• These are in addition to 2,000 hours of General Project Experience. 

     3. Training in Agile Practices

• 21 contact hours must be earned in Agile practices.

According to Glassdoor.com, project manager with PMI-ACP certification earns:

• India - INR 15lakhs
• US - $90,890
• UK - £50,943
• Canada – CA $82,968

AgilePM Certification

The APGM International Agile Project Management (AgilePM) certification validates a workforce's potential to understand and incorporate Agile methodologies in project management. This results in swift, successful project delivery, minimized expense, better communication and cohesion to principles in the working environment.

Sectors, where AgilePM accreditation is beneficial, are IT, business, project management, aerospace and cybersecurity. The certification is offered at 2 levels:

• Suitable for project management practitioners with limited Agile knowledge or Agile teams looking to become project managers.
• Considered as the next step for candidates who have achieved Foundation-level certificate.

According to Glassdoor.com, project manager with AgilePM certification earns:

• India - INR 6-19 Lakhs
• US - $ 77K-125K
• UK - £ 30K-65K
• Australia – AUD 100K-150K

CSPO Certification

The Product Owner (PO) is the creative shareholder on most Scrum teams. The role can vary from company to company, depending on the context. A Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) understands five basic levels of product ownership: understanding the role of PO, describing strategy and purpose, understanding customers and users, testing product assumptions, and working with the product backlog.

According to Glassdoor.com, CSPO certification earns:

• India - INR 13 Lakhs
• US - $ 1,03,321
• UK - £ 53,174
• Canada – CAD 86,937

CDA Certification

The Certified Disciplined Agilist (CDA) is a software development certification that demonstrates a person's fundamental understanding of Disciplined Agile methodologies and is ready to execute them. It provides different competencies, from a beginner to the highest level of expertise.

CDA is an entry-level certification, is the best choice for people who are new to software development or individuals with prior experience but want to advance their career.

SAFe Agilist Certification

It is also known as a Scaled Agilist (SA), is the central part of the introduction into the SAFe principles and is awarded to individuals who can prepare with the guidance of a 2-day course called Leading SAFe. As companies strive to apply the basic Agile foundations to their company, SA dilutes the principles of popular practices into an easy-to-use mode called SAFe.

These certified SA knows how to incorporate Agile profile management into an efficient organization that offers constant value to their shareholders and end-users with a short turnaround time.

The average salary earned by a certified SAFe Agilist:

• India - INR 1200K-2 Lakhs
• US - $ 80K-135K
• UK - £ 33K-75K
• Australia – AUD 100K-157K

PSM I Certification

It is a highly look for certification as it permits IT experts to demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of Scrum methods within the Scrum Master role. The Professional Scrum Master (PSM I) is recommended for individuals in the role but merely has the basic Scrum Master concepts.

This certification is for anyone who wishes to demonstrate their basic knowledge of Scrum principles and apply them to real-life scenarios. Once you are done with PSM I, Scrum professionals can continue to advance to Level III by taking corresponding exams.

The average salary earned by a certified PSM professionals:

• India - INR 564K-2 Lakhs
• US - $ 61K-142K
• UK - £ 42K-56K
• Australia – AUD 95K-145K

What are the12 principles of Agile?

The 12 principles of Agile Methodology are:

• Customer satisfaction through continuous quality delivery
• Welcome changes according to customer’s demands
• Business and development go hand in hand
• A collaborative approach to work
• Establish projects around motivated individuals
• Encourage sustainable development
• Precise in-person conversation
• A measure of progress is working software
• Continuous attention to excellence
• Simplicity
• Self-organizing teams
• Reflect for Effectiveness

What Are the Challenges Faced by Companies on Agile Implementation?

Challenge 1: Boosting the communication

One of the leading reasons behind the failure of Agile in a company is the lack of communication. To go Agile, all senior management, executive, and middle-tier management must be aware that there will be some transformations in project management practices. They must understand the advantages of the Agile changes and how the changes will impact the organization's workflow. Hence, companies need to develop proper channels to interact for smooth and efficient communication among different teams.

This creates a good flow of information among the employees, keeping them up-to-date on the project progress. If the teams are located in one place, it helps in the swift adoption of the methodology as it takes place more organically and assists in creating a proper feedback system on each project.

Challenge 2: Developing ownership

The prime objective of Agile transition is to create a sense of ownership with the teams. For a project to be successful, the crucial point to understand is the responsibility of completing the task on/before the deadline.

Once ownership is developed among the members, they will be more prone to work dedication and time-oriented to complete the projects. Tasks' independence is also a factor that will aid the teams to finish their task on time and create engagement with the project.

This will also help the members to have the freedom to come up with solutions to the issues that arise during the project without approval from their superiors due to full task ownership, thus motivating the workforce to achieve better outcomes.

Challenge 3: Resistance to change

Resistance to the change by the company's internal infrastructure is one of the biggest challenges faced by the organizations. It is challenging to transform people's way of thinking and work.

The belief and habits of technology giants are naturally well-established. People often argue against the change of traditional software processes, and when Agile transition is leveraged to challenge them, they create a barricade or an obstacle to resist the transformation.

For instance, a project manager takes a one-hour-long meeting with the developer to discuss the essential requirements for their latest projects. The manager is adjusted to this type of working environment.

Imagine if the manager is asked to shorten the meeting to 15 minutes and develop the product updates in sprints? What would happen? The person would find it a challenge, which they might try to resist and lead to Agile implementation failure.

Challenge 4: Inconsistent practices and procedures

Customer satisfaction is the central part of the Agile methodology, or in other words, we could say customer satisfaction determines whether the method is a success or failure.

To meet customers' demands, Agile frameworks like Kanban create service networks within the company, where all teams, departments and individuals can self-organize around the task, evolve and collaborate their operational method by quality enhancement.

For optimal working of service network, the employers must follow the same rules and apply the same principles. A team that collaborates and communicates entailing the project delivery's cross-functional responsibilities.

Challenge 5: Lack of education and training

Another top reason for Agile methodology failure is insufficient education and training. For the method to work, one must have a thorough knowledge of its concept, principle, frameworks, values and practices. This is when an Agile coach or trainer comes into action.

They ensure that the company succeeds with flying colour with the implementation of Agile. They will train on how the process works and approach decision-making according to the Agile mindset.

Challenge 6: Fragmented measurements and tooling

To choose an apt solution to the existing problems in your company, you must consider the business nature, pros & cons of different agile methods and company characteristics.

To be successful with Agile, a crucial requirement is to choose the right tools such as Jira, Kanbanize and ClickUp. But for these tools to be beneficial for an organization, you must be consistent in its leverage.

After leveraging any of the tools mentioned above to an extent where you have gained significant experience, start customizing the tools to suit your company or project prerequisites. To keep in mind, project-related measurements and data are precisely defined.

Which Are the Industries That Benefit by Agile Implementation?

1. Marketing and Advertising

Agile practices help advertising and marketing companies to make better decisions to produce valuable content for attracting consumers. Some of the successful companies in this industry, thanks to Agile methods, are:

Teradata Applications that sell software for marketing support. They leveraged the Agile approach to automate their work procedures and approval processes. It helped them in enhancing the project communications.

Next is a business named CafePress that sells customized designer gifts and services to people interested in launching their own merchandise. The company adopted the method to communicate with their customers and assist them in uploading their designs in no time.

2. Healthcare

It is one of the most profitable industries with numerous breakthrough innovations. Agile adoption in the healthcare industry is more likely to benefit the owners and their customers.

Healthcare is the most booming industry vertical as people require treatments. However, in several countries getting proper therapies has been a daunting task due to its lack of seamless procedures. People feel hectic and frustrated with the setup.

If healthcare marketers are willing to create real-time solutions and connect with the customers, then Agile principles can help. By leveraging the technique, the industry can quickly transform the features that are not working as expected. By using Scrum, weekly Sprints can maintain privacy and security when new features are rolled out.

3. Engineering and Product Development

Agile methodologies are leveraged in IT sectors where people leverage traditional software like a waterfall to create their products. Agile practices became a perfect approach to stay on top of their games due to increased market competition.

With the introduction of the practice, companies can plan for a short period and choose to execute and organize their projects or tasks. It helps businesses to bridge the gap between employees and shareholders. It also minimizes the risk of reworking in product development, saving its budget and time.

About Us

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