Which certification course should an IT PM choose?

Submitted by Peter Beck on 01/02/2014

"Which certification course should an IT PM choose?"

You should look at where your main responsibilities and personal priorities lie. A Product Owner bears all the responsibility for the product (which functionalities will be delivered) and for the release planning. A ScrumMaster is responsible for the process. The role definitions should help you to make the decision.

The Product Owner represents the customer and all stakeholders. He is responsible for the success of the product, and communicates the product vision to the team. He provides a measurable and appropriate Product Backlog and prioritizes it by business value.

The ScrumMaster acts as coach and facilitator for the Scrum Team. He ensures, that the agile values are respected and the Scrum rules are followed. He demonstrates the Product Owner how to maximize ROI, and helps the team to become more productive.

Participants who successfully complete the Certified Scrum Product Owner course become Certified Scrum Product Owner. Those who successfulle complete the Certified ScrumMaster course only qualify for the Certified ScrumMaster certification by Scrum Alliance. To get more information about it, please consult our article about Scrum certifications.

Both certification courses are introductory courses. They overlap in content, and in both there is time to ask questions. So you will in any course be able to acquire the necessary Scrum knowledge, even if you should work in a different role later.

If you are a product and IT manager at the same time, you probably have exactly the responsibilities typical for both of the roles: ScrumMaster and Product Owner. Should the decision therefore be difficult to take, we would recommend our Certified ScrumMaster PLUS course (3 days). Here you get the broadest overview of Scrum and can later on decide, how you want to proceed.

Yuliya Mijuk

About the author

Yuliya Mijuk

Yuliya’s professional life started with Scrum. She is a Certified Scrum Professional and received her certification as ScrumMasters in 2006. She studied Computational Linguistics at the LMU in Munich. After the graduation in 2004 she came to WEB.DE where the transition to Scrum was taking place. Later on Yuliya worked as a ScrumMaster and Scrum Coach at SPRiNT iT and billiger.de (solute GmbH).

Peter Beck

About the author

Peter Beck

Peter has set himself the task of creating companies that deliver value for their customers and employees. That was also the motivation behind his decision to found DasScrumTeam. Peter is a passionate Scrum Trainer (Certified Scrum Trainer, CST) and consultant with a solid background in engineering. Since 2007, he has trained and advised a wide range of development teams, specialist departments, project managers and those in leadership positions, helping them to apply the Scrum framework, agile planning methods and software engineering practices. Peter is a graduate engineer (Dipl.-Ing, TU) specialising in electrical engineering and information technology.

  • Experience with Scrum since 2004 as Team member, Scrum Master, Product Owner, Coach and Trainer.
  • Served as ScrumMaster in internationally distributed Scrum Teams
  • Co-founder and Product Owner at DasScrumTeam AG
  • Key interests: Agile companies and Scrum beyond Software

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