Agile Project Management Certification
You should be pursuing an agile project management certification. Whether that’s the PMI-ACP® certification, CSM Certification, or other agile certifications, you will learn new skills and receive an incredible education.
Any agile project management certification that you choose will help you advance your career. It is your job as project managers to provide the best service possible to your customers and stakeholders, and that is not possible without pursuing extracurricular project management education. In the growing project management industry, it is our job to better ourselves with additional education in order to fully understand every aspect of project management so that we can confidently perform our job and advance our careers.
In this blog I’m going to discuss a few certifications, and why you should consider pursuing education with an agile certification.
What Is It?
An agile project management certification is simply extracurricular education, something outside of your day job, that you can pursue to improve your overall knowledge on Agile methodologies and principles.
I highly recommend you pursue a certification in agile. Agile is widely becoming adopted as the gold standard in project management. Agile, and the number of companies adopting agile methodologies, will only continue to grow creating demand for Agile experts.
Why should I do this?
To put it simply, pursuing extracurricular education in Agile will set you apart from other applicants and co-workers. A certification in agile will help you get that job, get a promotion, and get a raise. An agile certification proves that you are well versed and educated in the agile space. A designation like the PMI-ACP® takes that one step further and proves that you have real-life on the job expertise in managing agile projects (the PMI-ACP® requires that you have agile experience before taking the exam).
The Project Management Institute stated recently in a study that a project management professional certification holder earns up to 25% more in median salary (in the United States) than those that do not hold the professional certification. It’s clear that professional certifications, especially specialized certifications such as agile, lead to career growth, job security, and increase salary.
Three Agile Certifications To Consider
There are a number of agile certifications to choose from. For more detail, I recommend checking out this blog we wrote on the top 10 agile certifications.
For the purpose of this blog, I will list three agile certifications for you to consider:
- PMI-ACP® – otherwise known as The Agile Certified Practitioner, this certification from the Project Management Institute is one of the premier certifications in the agile industry.
- CSM® – otherwise known as the Certified ScrumMaster®, this certification from Scrum Alliance is a certification specifically about SCRUM methodologies.
- SAFe® – Scaled Agile offers a variety of Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe) certifications including from SAFe® Agile Product Manager, SAFe® Agile Software Engineer, and SAFe® DevOps Practitioner.
Agile Project Management Certification – My Recommendation
If you are truly looking for the best agile certification, I recommend the PMI-ACP®. This certification stands alone as a premier certification in the agile industry.
As I stated in my blog about why I pursued the PMI-ACP® instead of the PMP® certification: “If you want to stand out as an expert in applying project management in the real world, with most companies using Agile, I recommend the PMI-ACP®. Agile and the number of companies adopting agile methodologies, will only continue to grow. As the PMI stated, the PMI-ACP® is the fastest-growing certification, simply because more and more companies are applying Agile principles and looking for experts in the field of applying Agile in a real-world project management role.”
Agile Project Management Certification – How To Get Started
You can get started today on your agile project management certification journey by reviewing my list of the top 10 agile certifications. Choose one and get started studying. You can’t make a wrong choice. No matter what you do, no matter which certification you choose to pursue, you are advancing your knowledge and advancing your career. Choose one to start with, start bettering yourself today, and help us create a more educated project management community.
Start Studying
Ready to get started studying? We’re here to help (for free). Download one of our free PMI-ACP® practice exams to get a feel for the type of content you will be studying.