Scott’s Certification und Mentoring (SCUM) Alliance

The mission of the SCUM Alliance is to enrich the alliance by soaking developer und programming engineers (DUPEs) for as much money as we possibly can. The way that we do this is we train people in an incomplete “process framework” called Huddle which applies non-sensible terminology to a small collection of ideas and practices found in numerous other methodologies. Huddle is attractive to DUPEs because it provides a simplistic solution which focuses on the DUPE-palatable aspects of development while downplaying many of the inherent complexities of software development which other methodologies foolishly choose to address.

Our motto is that as long as your check doesn’t bounce, we’ll do business with you.

What We Do for the Community

1. We’ve found that we need to do little more than charge people lots of money to give them knowledge that they could have gained by reading a $60 book or even simply reading a few articles available online free of charge.
2. We also administer and ruthlessly control the conversation on the huddledevelopment@yahoogroups.com mailing list.
3. We wrote and follow the tenets of the Software Graftsmanship Manifesto.

The SCUM Alliance Organization

The SCUM Alliance is an incorporated, not-for-profit organization. Any profit resulting from our activities is dispersed mostly to the Inner Circle Diety (ICD), which would be me, although to keep my inner circle puppets loyal I do in fact share some of the profits with them. The primary advantage of being incorporated is that if the SCUM Alliance ever gets sued, perhaps for our involvement in misleading organizations around the world into thinking that we’ve done something to ensure that SCAMmers are even remotely qualified to take on the roles that they claim they are now certified in, then we can quickly disincorporate the organization with very little risk to ourselves.

The SCUM Alliance organization structure, in order of importance:

• Inner Circle Diety (ICD). The undisputed leader of the Inner Circle, me. Always remember that I am in complete control of the alliance at all times, regardless of what I or the President may state publicly.
• The Inner Circle. A small number of SCUM Certified^TM SCAM Artists whose unmitigated greed keeps them in complete thrall of the ICD. They are typically writers, bloggers, and help maintain order on the mailing list without making it appear to DUPEs that the conversation is being carefully manipulated.
• The SCUM Alliance President. The public “leader” of the SCUM Alliance, a member of the inner circle. The role of President appears to the outside world to be important, much like the role of Russian President appears to be important, but the reality is that when someone else other than the ICD is in this role that they are merely a puppet whose strings the ICD pulls.
• SCUM Certified^TM SCAM Artists. People who pay the monthly SCUM Tithe. Also, they deliver the SCUM Certified Agile Master (SCAM) course to DUPEs.

Other paying members are self-organized into two categories.

• SCAMmers. SCAMmers is a colloquial term for one of the elite few who have become SCUM Certified Agile Masters via the SCAM Certification program.
• SCAM Wannabees. People willing to pay for access to SCUM Alliance material (which they could have found elsewhere on the web for free) but who haven’t taken the SCUM Certified Agile Master (SCAM) course yet.

Join the SCUM Alliance Now!

The SCUM Alliance is happy to take your money. The nominal fee of $50 per annum gives you the right to associate yourself with this ultra-exclusive organization by including the title SCAM Wannabee on your business card and in your email signature. Our hope here at the SCUM Alliance is that SCAM Wannabees will choose to go through the grueling process of becoming a SCAMmer at some point in the future.

Parting Thoughts

Yes, this is an April Fool’s Day joke. Sadly, this collection of pages is a parody of a very serious ethical lapse within the agile community. I believe that we can do much better. My hope is that this joke has made you step back and think about what’s going on around you. Being a “Certified X”, whatever X happens to be, implies that you’ve done something to earn that certification. If you’ve done very little to earn a certification then at best that’s what your certification is worth: very little. If you’re involved in a questionable certification scheme, regardless of whatever justifications that you tell yourself you have still shamed both yourself and your so-called profession. If you turn a blind eye to people who claim to be “certified masters” after doing almost nothing to earn that certification then you too are complicit: As Edmund Burke first said, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. I invite everyone in the agile community to read Ethics for the Real World and to stand up and show some integrity — Until then, our integrity debt will continue to grow. Enough is enough.

Page creation date: April 1, 2009