Ron Jeffries and Chet Hendrickson gave a closing plenary session at Agile 2010 in the form of a dialog with lots of few cute photos thrown in for fun.
Ha refers to the Shu-Ha-Ri model of Beginner-Practitioner-Master from Martial arts. Stuck in Ha means that as a community we are practicing and unfortunately a lot of what is going is not that great.
Ron and Chet were courageous in touching on the sensitive topic of certification (a controversial subject in the community).
Training is the start, not the end
Consider the road of life-long learning in the diagram (top right corner) below. If our goal is mastery and learning, then courses and certification such as CSM (Certified ScrumMaster), CSD (Certified Scrum Developer) just start us on this road.
Need to map the territory
In order to plan where we want to go, it is helpful to have a map. Right now, we only have part of the map identified – maybe a few states. Initiatives such Agile Skills Project, ICAgile and Scrum Alliance Registered Education provider are ways the community is seeking to build the map. Once we build the map, we can share this with individuals and companies to help them travel the road of learning.
The Joy of Agile is about shipping software
A fundamental tenet of NLP is that the map is not the territory. The map only guides us. The real territory is something different and much richer. Education and certification is a means to an end. Agile is about shipping quality software and delivering value. We can only find that in the real world and not in certification and credentials.
