(2021-09-07) Jeffries Certifiers Gonna Cert

Ron Jeffries: Certifiers Gonna Cert. ...who the customers of the Scrum Alliance are... The Scrum Alliance receives essentially all of its revenue from selling certifications, most of them CSM (ScrumMaster) certifications....the bulk of the fees for the courses are paid by the would-be certificant’s company. (enterprise)

the certification fee is paid, not by the individual, but by the trainer, when they submit their class list for certification

Trainers, coaches, and reps are the Scrum Alliance’s customers. If they were to look beyond that immediate layer, the second-tier customers are the companies that pay for the courses, probably primarily managers in the development organizations.

Your primary job would be to keep hundreds of trainers and coaches happy. Based on my past history with them, most of the focus is almost certainly on trainers.

And what do the trainers sell? They sell certifications

I’m concerned with the lives of people who work under the thumb of Scrum, especially developers

I am sure that inside Red Cross there are bean counters who make hard decisions about what will be funded and what will not. But even those bean counters surely understand that the mission is to help individuals who need help. Scrum Alliance is not that kind of organization, and it’s unlikely ever to become one