Scrum.org (formally scrum.org) was founded by ken-schwaber in 2009 following his departure from the scrum-alliance. It offers the Professional Scrum Master (PSM) certification series, distinguished from the Scrum Alliance's Certified Scrum Master by its examination-based, competence-verified approach. Where the CSM requires course attendance, the PSM requires passing a substantive online assessment — candidates can sit the exam without mandatory course attendance.
Founding Philosophy
The schwaber-leaves-scrum-alliance-2009 event produced two distinct institutional philosophies about what Scrum certification should mean. Schwaber's founding of Scrum.org embodied the view that certification should attest to genuine competence, not merely attendance. The PSM examination is deliberately rigorous: timed, scenario-based questions that require understanding of empirical-process-control, inspect-and-adapt, self-organizing-teams, and the details of how scrum events and roles function together.
The open assessment model — anyone can attempt the exam, courses are optional, the scrum-guide is freely available as the canonical reference — reflects a commitment to accessibility and competence over commercial capture. Schwaber's stated position was that the Scrum Alliance's attendance-based model had produced vast numbers of certified practitioners who did not actually understand Scrum.
The Professional Scrum Series
Scrum.org offers a tiered certification series beyond the foundational PSM: Professional Scrum Master II and III for advanced practitioners, Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO), Professional Scrum Developer (PSD), and several specialized credentials (Professional Scrum with Kanban, Professional Agile Leadership). All use examination-based assessment.
This stands in contrast to the scrum-alliance model of course attendance with ongoing certification maintenance requirements. Scrum.org certifications, once earned, do not expire — a deliberate policy choice that Schwaber justified on the grounds that competence demonstrated does not become incompetence through the mere passage of time.
Role in the Agile Ecosystem
Scrum.org is smaller than the Scrum Alliance by volume of certifications but has significant influence among practitioners who prioritize depth over breadth. It also maintains a body of Scrum resources and guidance beyond the scrum-guide itself.
During the enterprise-scaling-era and post-agile-era, Scrum.org has positioned itself as a guardian of Scrum's original intent — a lean framework for empirical-process-control — rather than an enabler of the scaled enterprise frameworks that critics describe as waterfall in Agile clothing (see safe-scaled-agile-framework). This position reflects Schwaber's own skepticism of heavyweight scaling frameworks that add the kinds of predictive, structured planning elements that Scrum was designed to replace.
Relationship to the Scrum Alliance
The existence of two competing Scrum certification bodies — the scrum-alliance (CSM, attendance-based) and Scrum.org (PSM, examination-based) — is itself a significant fact about the agile-industrial-complex. The split illustrates the tension between broad adoption (which requires low barriers) and meaningful certification (which requires demonstrated competence), a tension that runs through the movement's entire enterprise-scaling-era.