Agile Foundation Course

slinkydonkey

I have studied and tried once to do the Agile Foundation BCS Certification I got 20 I needed 26 to pass.  I was studying v1 and apparently there is now a v2 however when I phoned BCS they haven't got any plans to update there training book which is a bit lame I thought. They also don't provide free retakes and at £175 a go the exam isn't particularly cheap particularly when if someone is out of work.  

I am thinking of doing my Agile Foundation with another provider however I am a bit confused why are their different versions of Agile? example (PRINCE2 Agile, BCS Agile and, Agile PM) and which one is the most useful?

Cheers

tacpot12

I would say that they are all basically as useful as each other. Ideally, an employer is looking for evidence that you have used Agile successfully in many projects, but in the absence of this evidence, a formal qualification from a reputable provider will show that you at least understand how the methodology works and why it is better than the other options. 

I would suggest you check out the charges for the tests from the other providers, and check out the cost of the study materials as you don't want to be caught out by a different provider using slightly different definitions - you should buy the official study materials and learn them thoroughly.

Sandtree

slinkydonkey said:

I am thinking of doing my Agile Foundation with another provider however I am a bit confused why are their different versions of Agile? example (PRINCE2 Agile, BCS Agile and, Agile PM) and which one is the most useful?

If you've been studying you hopefully already know the answer to your own question.

Agile is really just a manifesto that gives principles of how the creators of the manifesto think things should be done. Many others have then developed agile frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, Devops, SAFe to name but a few and these give more detail of what you should do based on those principles. Prince2 is a different one though as if you read their preamble they talk of Scrum and that it says what you should be doing but lacks the how you should do it and thats what they claim to bring to the party (so a fair amount on governance and approvals).

What is best? Depends on what industry you are in, what you do, what you want to achieve out of it.  If you're employed where you want to be then speak to people there, if you are currently looking for work then see what job adverts are asking for. 

Most large companies, outside IT anyway, havent fully embraced Agile yet and so just generally want any level of experience and are a little agnostic about if its the continuous flow and boards of Kanban or the iterative sprints of Scrum.  In my world at least Scrum was most commonly mentioned outside of developer roles but SAFe seems to be making a bit of a charge recently (which is a logical progression given SAFe is basically about getting multiple Scrum teams to work together on a larger project/programme)

Add to all of that, anyone in the world can create a course called "Agile Basics" and give you a piece of paper after saying you've passed. Stick to those where the piece of paper will have a name that others have heard of on it otherwise you can just knock up your own certificate at home.