Frequently Asked Questions - FAQs
Question not answered here? Reply to any email or ask directly — I read these, and if your question exposes something we’ve got wrong, it goes in the FAQ.
What does the assessment test?
What does the assessment test? Your knowledge of the Scrum Guide Expansion Pack (SGEP). That’s it. It’s a knowledge reading, not a skills test, and we don’t pretend otherwise.
Is this a “master” certification?
No. It certifies that you knew the SGEP, on a date. It doesn’t claim you’re a better practitioner, a master, or more capable. It claims exactly what it measures, and nothing more.
Does it score how agile or adaptive my team is?
No. This test measures SGEP knowledge. It produces no number that ranks people or teams. (We build separate adaptiveness instruments — and those don’t rank anyone either.)
Adaptiveness is complex — how can a test have right answers?
A fair challenge, and we took it seriously.
Every question is framed according to the SGEP. We’re not claiming a universal best practice — we’re testing whether you know what a specific, published guide says. “What does the SGEP say about X” has a correct answer the way “what does the offside rule state” does. Testing it implies nothing about whether the guide is the last word.
And where the honest answer is “it depends,” “it depends” is a correct answer. Contextual judgment scores as fluency, not as a cop-out. The wrong answers are things that are wrong in any context — misconceptions and anti-patterns — never things that are defensible elsewhere and merely lose on balance. If an expert could pick a “wrong” answer and defend it with a real context, that’s a bad question, and we cut it.
Who decides what’s correct? Who appointed you?
The SGEP is an openly published guide. I co-authored it, alongside the Kanban Guide and the Open Guide to Kanban. The test measures knowledge of that guide — the guide is the authority, not us.
You don’t have to think the SGEP is the final word on anything. You take this because
you value the guide. If you don’t value it, this isn’t for you — and that’s fine.
Isn’t a renewable certificate just a money grab?
I’ll name it plainly, because it’s the obvious suspicion: renewable certs have a bad reputation, and they earn it when they’re rent on something you already bought.
This isn’t that. We don’t sell permanent entitlement. The badge is a dated fact: you knew the SGEP, then. It was never “yours to keep forever,” because we won’t pretend a 2025 fact is a 2027 fact.
The decay is real, not invented. The SGEP launched June 2025, had a major update in January 2026, and another major update lands in the fall of 2026. A lifetime badge would let you trade forever on a claim everyone knows went stale. We just won’t forge the date.
The commitment that keeps this honest: the clock tracks the guide, not the calendar. If a cycle passes with no material change, renewal is light or automatic. You don’t pay us for a fact that didn’t decay.
Haven’t you spent years criticising certification?
Yes. So here’s exactly what I criticised, and why this isn’t it:
Recall tests that imply mastery — this claims only knowledge, openly.
Permanent badges trading on stale claims — this expires, honestly, on a real cadence.
Theatre — this tests one specific, named thing, and says so.
If this ever drifts into the thing I mocked, say so publicly. I’d rather be held to it than quietly become it.
What actually changes when I renew?
Three things, doing three different jobs — worth not confusing:
The guide moved (decay) — new and changed content to know. This is the real reason renewal isn’t rent.
The questions improve (value) — broader, sharper, community-informed.
The bank rotates (integrity) — so answers can’t be memorised or passed around.
That’s hygiene, not a reason you owe anything; every honest exam does it.
Why pay for a knowledge test when AI knows everything?
Straight answer: it’s a knowledge reading, and yes, a model can answer SGEP questions. We’re not pretending otherwise.
What you’re buying isn’t “questions AI can’t do.” It’s a dated, verifiable signal that you engaged with the current guide and knew it, under test conditions, on the record. That’s different from asking a chatbot.
It’s also the entry point, not the whole product. The knowledge test is the most replaceable thing we offer — on purpose. It’s the front door. The harder, less copyable instruments sit behind it.
How much, and are there discounts?
$49 per seat, per reading. Individual or group. No discounts (other than alpha/beta testing). Priced to be accessible and expensable, not to extract — the margin was never the point.
Can anyone become an ambassador, or is it a closed club?
Open application, public terms, the same terms for everyone — including competitors, if they qualify. Entry is gated on track record, because every ambassador's audience ends up wearing the badge, so we care who that is. The gate protects the credential; it isn’t there to shut people out.
What happens to my data? Can my employer see my individual results?
Consent-based, always. Your individual reading is yours.
The group option produces an aggregate summary only — what’s going OK across the group, and what’s worth asking more questions about. No individual breakdowns, no leaderboard, nothing a manager can use to rank or single out a person. It’s developmental, opt-in, and it is not a surveillance tool. Where your context requires explicit consent (works council, union, co-determination), that’s built in.