Today I completed my ScrumMaster certification. After the two days with [Joseph Pelrine in early November](http://www.thomaskeller.biz/blog/2010/11/05/why-i-do-open-source-development/) they finally send me some login for their website scrumalliance.com, offered a short web-based test (which you couldn’t really fail) and tada – now I can call myself [“Certified ScrumMaster”](/bewerbung/csm.pdf).
So everything seemed to look fine, but wait, why has this certificate an expiry date tacked on it? Uh, yes, erm, I’m supposed to renew it every year beginning from 2012 for 50 bucks. Its not like your drivers license – once you’ve learned to ride your car you cannot unlearn it, right? All the knowledge about Scrum is of course totally forgotten and buried in my head when the magic year 2012 has been reached… now thats business!
But hey, I got something in return. I’m listed with the other 112122 fellows on their website as CSM and are “allowed” to use the term “CSM”, the “logo” (which I had to extract via photoshop from the certificate itself, because they do not offer a download) and the nice little Scrum community they build around the website.
Thank god that Joseph was entertaining and educational enough for the two days in November that all the (company) money was worth the certification. The certificate itself and the “services” around it are certainly not worth it.