By Jen Girdish, Robbins-Gioia, LLC

When PMI announced in March that they were going to offer an agile certification, it didn't surprise some project management practitioners. In fact, the practitioners were the reason PMI chose to offer this addition to their certifications. PMI spent a great deal of time talking to project managers and agilists alike, and the consensus was: There should be a certification process that unifies the different agile methodologies.  In light of this new offering, we interviewed Frank Schettini, Vice President, Information Technology of PMI. Frank was the executive sponsor on the agile certification project, and he shares his insights into the certification process, how the test is validated, and the response from PMI members.

PM Boulevard: What prompted PMI to develop this certification? Was it demand from practitioners?

Frank Schettini: PMI, as a leading advocate for the PM profession, is always tracking trends and doing research. We really try to keep a finger on the pulse of the profession to see: What are the trends in the different parts of the world, where certain areas are being successful and others aren't so we can really focus on where to go towards the future? One of those trends that we've seen over the last several years, obviously, has been the growth of agile in certain pockets. Primarily in the software development arena, but also in other areas, such as construction, financial services, and consulting.  The first thing we did was we started sponsoring sessions and training education on those different topic areas at our different congresses and seminars.

From those processes, we decided to create a community of practice within PMI, so we encouraged different agile thought leaders to participate to launch that community of practice and really start those conversations. We realized was that there was a very keen interest, and with the economic downturn, organizations were looking at faster ways of getting results, and how they incorporated results in the bottom line. All these things came together, and we decided we would start investigating the process. We held a numerous focus groups across the world with PMI members and non-PMI members, certificate holders and non-certificate holders, to find out what the interest level was. Also, should we just provide training, education, standardization, or what?

From those results we actually created an agile leader steering committee of leaders from different methodologies. Agile is really an umbrella, and within that there are different methodologies: Scrum, XP, Lean, etc. We picked up some thought leaders in those areas and got them together and asked: What is the market demand, what should we be doing, and does it make sense for us to do anything? From those studies, with the combination of the research, the focus groups, and those steering committees, we found that there is a real demand for those certifications and education. Our surveys found that 68 percent of organizations, or hiring managers specifically, were interested in a certification, because of the market space as it was. It was the same thing with practitioners.  We saw a big demand, and a very large interest in project managers expanding their skill set to learn agile practices and techniques.

PMB: How long was this process?

FS: We actually started sponsoring these sessions in congresses over three years ago. The community of practice was launched August 2009, but we had been working with them to launch the community since October 2008. This has been a long time coming for us. The steering committee actually celebrated our one-year anniversary of working together a couple of weeks ago.

When PMI looks at certification, there has to be a real value that we bring to the market place. We don't do certifications just to do certifications, really we're there to try and help solve a problem and enhance the profession.

PMB: How would this certification be different than the other agile-based certifications, such as ScrumMaster?

FS: You have the methodology-specific ones--those are really focused on a specific methodology. When we got together with the steering committee, what we realized was that there were overall agile concepts, if you will, that were present in all of these methodologies, and individual practitioners and organizations may apply one of those methodologies, or a different one, depending on the organizational needs. There was a need for this overarching certification across the board.

PMB: What has the response been, since you announced this agile certification?

FS: It has been pretty positive. To say it succeeded our expectations is probably an understatement, and those responses have not just come from practitioners, but also from organizations who have reached out to us directly asking us with significant interest on how they can leverage this across their organization. And I'm talking about very, very large organizations.

PMB: What was your specific role in developing this certification?

FS: I'm the executive sponsor for the project. I was in charge of the overall business plan we put together initially, the project team reported to me on a day-to-day basis--really soup-to-nuts.  The implementation of the agile certification itself with the PMI framework also falls within the auspices of my team as well. But I branched over into the business aspects as well. I worked directly with these agile thought leaders at a lot of these steering committee meetings.

PMB: Do you have any advice organizations that currently offer PMP training, on how they can become an agile certified trainer?

FS: One of the challenges and concerns we initially had was not having enough trainers for agile across the board. The wonderful thing that happened was because there are existing agile trainers in the world, they really stepped up to become registered education providers for PMI. We actually have very large contingent of Registered Education Providers that are more than qualified to provide that level of training now. That was an initial concern when we kicked off the project, but because of the positive response we've received from the industry, we don't see that being a challenge going forward.

PMB: When will the certification officially be available?

FS: The pilot will kick off in May, and the exams will kick off in September sometime this year. We'll go through our cycle metrics, and all the things we do to make sure the exam questions are the right questions, they that have the right number of people responding positively (as well as correctly), to make sure it's a very adequate exam.
PMB: Can you explain a little more about that part of the process?

We actually have standard process that we implemented for the PMP©, as well as for our other credentials. What we do is we leverage volunteers from all over the world, and they get together and they write the questions that are both skill- and knowledge-based. Then they get validated by other individuals that don't know who they are. There are other levels of quality that are checked on top of that to do further validation. The final proof is when the exam questions gets provided or included in the exam. The scores, and how the individuals responded to those questions, is called psychometrics. It's a very scientific process, which ones get accepted as formal questions, and which ones go by the wayside.

PMB: Since you've announced this new credential, what has the response been like from the PMI community?

FS: We're really excited at this stage. We're overwhelmed at the response. We really haven't done any marketing, and they really have come out of the woodwork contacting us about getting more information about it.

We can't say enough positive things. None of this would be possible without the volunteers.


Copyright © 2011, Robbins-Gioia, LLC. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.