Below are excerpts from Scrum Alliance's monthly providers newsletters sent to active Scrum Alliance trainers and training providers regarding ethics and compliance updates. Note: There was not a providers newsletter sent in May 2024, which is why there is not an ethics and compliance update for that month.
If you have any questions about updates or policies, please contact legal@scrumalliance.org.
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- January 2024
- February 2024
- March 2024
- April 2024
- June 2024
- July 2024
- August 2024
- September 2024
- October 2024
- November 2024
- January 2025
January 2025
As we extend our offerings and trainers differentiate their courses with additional content, we wanted to share some guidelines for how to present these courses on both the Scrum Alliance course search and trainers’ sites.
- Trainers must use official course names and branding when referencing SAI courses. Please do not alter, modify, or create additions to any course names.
- When offering SAI microcredential, trainers must use the provided SAI training materials. We are updating the ILT materials to clarify that trainers may add their own content and use cases but cannot delete the existing material.
- Trainers may choose to bundle SAI certifications with non-SAI offerings (i.e. their own AI content) as long as all the LOs are covered and the required student contact time for the SAI course is met. Trainers are able to extend class time beyond the required student contact time to cover additional topics/materials and may include details regarding the non-SAI offerings within the course description.
Additionally, please always ensure SAI courses are in alignment with any applicable trademark requirements which may be referenced in the Brand Guidelines. As always, please let us know if you have any questions!
November 2024
As a reminder, our Course Requirements were updated in 2024, including a few changes that will officially go into effect on January 1, 2025. A key change is that certification courses, whether delivered in person or live online, require at least 16 total hours of trainer:student live contact time. Those 16 hours include reasonable breaks for lunch, coffee, etc. This is intended to simplify and consolidate the prior rules, which had different standards for in person and live online. We don’t expect that these changes will materially impact your course materials or curricula, but wanted to provide a reminder to ensure that all course listings are in compliance.
We’ve also seen a number of reported course guideline violations that turned out to be simple mistakes resulting from administrative error or system issues. Working closely with our Providers and Technology teams, we are in the process of improving Course Manager and, in conjunction, our Course Requirements, to make course listing easier, support common use cases that are challenging in our current Course Manager, and create some controls and alerts to hopefully avoid some of the common issues we’ve seen. Please keep an eye out for updates to both Course Manager and the Course Requirements in early 2025.
Finally, thank you to all of our Guide Community from the Scrum Alliance Ethics and Compliance team! We greatly appreciate all of your proactive feedback and collaborative approach to addressing issues as they arise, and look forward to continuing to work together into 2025.
October 2024
Scrum Alliance has recently been made aware of a number of course listings providing “guarantees” of different sorts. We wanted to address some common questions and points of confusion regarding use of “guarantees” to help trainers and training organizations stay in alignment with the Code of Ethics and your license agreements.
Guarantees are permissible only where the subject of the guarantee is within the trainer’s control. For example, “Guaranteed to run” is acceptable as long as the trainer can actually guarantee with 100% certainty that they will definitively run the course.
Guarantees are NOT permissible where the subject of the guarantee is NOT within the trainer’s control. This is why any guarantee that students will pass an exam or receive a certification is not permitted under Section 4.1 of the Scrum Alliance Trainer Agreement (“You may not make any guarantee of passing any test or of certification to any student”). Whether a student passes an exam depends on the student’s preparation, focus, performance, and attendance at the exam. Similarly, since Scrum Alliance offers only two free attempts for the CSM exam, we do not permit messaging likely to cause consumer confusion, such as guarantees of “unlimited free attempts” to pass the exam.
Instead, we’d suggest trainers focus on promises that are clearly within the trainer’s control, such as guarantees of additional services or support in the event a student does not pass their exam, or an offer to pay for exam fees if the student has to take the exam more than twice. Some examples include:
- Providing additional study materials or practice exams
- Providing refunds or discounts to students who failed their exam
- 1:1 tutoring for struggling students
- Covering the $25 exam retake fee for up to X retakes (or unlimited)
We hope this clarifies Scrum Alliance’s rules and reasoning with respect to “guarantees”, but please reach out to us with any questions or comments.
September 2024
It's that time of year again to vote for your Scrum Certified Member (SCM)
Director! Ahead of the kickoff of the election process, we wanted to take this
opportunity to share some information about the SCM election process.
In May, we petitioned community members to submit nominations for individuals
to represent our vibrant community on the Scrum Alliance Board of Directors.
After receiving all of your nominations, our board's Nominating Committee
partnered with a third-party recruiter to evaluate all candidates and select three
top contenders based on a number of criteria, including how their backgrounds
fit into our existing board's skill sets, governance experience, agile experience,
community involvement, diversity factors relating to identity, geography, and
professional background, and more. No single factor is used to select any
candidate.
Now that the Nominating Committee has selected three candidates, Scrum
Alliance will be opening the vote to all members in good standing with an active
certification. The voting process takes place through an independent voting
platform that administers the collection of votes and ensures the integrity of our
election to ensure every vote is counted and no one votes more than once.
Scrum Alliance takes the selection of board member candidates seriously, and
we are continuously refining our process to maintain the highest level of
integrity, objectivity, and consistency.
The three finalists are Alex Sloley, Braz Brandt, and Raj Kasturi, and voting
will be open from October 1-15, 2024. You can learn more about this year's
finalists here. If you have any further questions please feel free to reach out for
more information.
August 2024
Recently Scrum Alliance has received a variety of complaints regarding
marketing practices. The Scrum Alliance Code of Ethics requires that trainers,
and any partnering organizations, refrain from engaging in practices that are
"disreputable or improper," including SPAM marketing practices and false or
deceptive marketing. While the line can be blurry between "aggressive"
marketing and "SPAM" marketing, we ask that everyone please exercise
thoughtful judgment with respect to the amount and type of student outreach
you engage in.
Additionally, it is important that we are all mindful of consumers' rights to opt in
(and out) of marketing communications. These rights and requirements vary by
location so it is important that we all educate ourselves on any legal
requirements applicable to the student data being collected. Each trainer is
responsible for complying with applicable law, but regardless of where you are
located, it is always best practice to respect any consumer request to opt out of
further marketing communication.
False claims, SPAM or aggressive marketing practices, or failure to comply with
any opt-out requests do not align with the high ethical standards we expect
from Scrum Alliance trainers or with the Scrum Alliance Code of Ethics. These
practices may negatively impact both your and Scrum Alliance's credibility and
brand reputation. It's important to remember that we are shaped by the
collective conduct of individual practitioners and your business practices are a
direct reflection of our entire organization and community.
As always, please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions, or requests!
July 2024
Thanks to the diligence of our community members and staff, the Scrum Alliance
legal team receives regular reports of unfamiliar third parties using Scrum Alliance
trademarks or offering Scrum Alliance courses. Scrum Alliance takes action in cases
of trademark infringement or unauthorized class offerings, but in other instances the
reported website/organization is legitimately working with a trainer to deliver Scrum
Alliance course offerings, but is not meeting all trademark, branding, or course
listing requirements. To better assist our trainers and their partners in maintaining
awareness of and compliance with these requirements, we have developed two
resources:
-
Brand Guidelines for Partners and Collaborators: Included in the
guidelines are explanations of how to properly use Scrum Alliance
trademarks, a list of Scrum Alliance's United States registrations, and a variety
of other resources and assets to ensure the Scrum Alliance brand is properly
represented. If you have questions regarding trademark registration in your
specific country please feel free to reach out. -
Trainer/Reseller Agreement: A free template provided by Scrum Alliance to
align with Scrum Alliance's trademark usage terms and requirements. While
Scrum Alliance cannot provide legal advice or recommendations, we hope
that combining all applicable Scrum Alliance trademark terms and references
into one template will make for a useful resource for trainers partnering with
third-party organizations. Of course, we strongly encourage you to read all agreements and adapt and update them as necessary for your specific business purposes and to seek legal counsel if you have any questions or concerns when contracting with third parties.
As always, please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions, or requests!
June 2024
Thanks to strong engagement from the community in reporting potential ethics
issues through our Community Conduct & Complaint form, we have revised the
Course Requirements to better address common trends of course listing violations.
These changes are intended to continue our commitment to ensuring a high-quality
student experience while reducing challenges for trainers. While not an exhaustive
list of policy changes in the revised Course Requirements, we have highlighted a
selection of changes below:
- The "Register" button on a Course Search listing and any on the Course
Details page must link directly to the webpage where a student can easily
register for that specific course. It should not go to the trainer's home page,
general course listings, or any other page that may require extra links from
students. - The limitation on posting more than two courses in a seven-day period has
been removed. The new Course Requirements clarify that trainers may not
post a course without good faith intention and ability to hold such a course
and may not post more courses than they can reasonably teach in a given
period. Courses approved as "Live Online + Self Paced" formats with "rolling
admissions" may be posted up to one time per week for each approved
course type. - The 50-student capacity policy has been extended to in-person courses, other
than private courses (effective early 2025). We ask that you include the
maximum number of students that you'll allow in the course listing details so
students know what class size to expect. - All courses require 16 hours of contact time, inclusive of reasonable breaks,
with the exception of approved "Live Online + Self-Paced" courses. We trust
that Scrum Alliance trainers will use their best judgment to reasonably ensure
equivalency of student contact time and all LOs are met regardless of course
structure (effective early 2025). - Co-instructed courses must list both trainers to provide transparency to students and students must be promptly notified in the event there is a change from the listed trainer. In event you are co-instructing with an aspiring trainer, the course listing details must clearly convey this.
We are always looking for opportunities to improve, so please let us know if you have any questions or concerns about the new policies, but we hope these will be simpler for trainers and students alike.
April 2024
We have continued to see strong engagement from the community in reporting
potential ethics issues through our Community Conduct & Complaint form. We've
received some very helpful flags about potential unauthorized or improper use of our
Scrum Alliance trademarks, including badges associated with discontinued
programs like REP and Continuing Education. Another commonly observed misuse
of Scrum Alliance trademarks is incorrectly separating ScrumMaster, for example
"Certified Scrum Master". For proper trademark usage please reference the Partner
Brand Guidelines for clarification.
Within the 29 complaints we've received in the prior 90 days, the major themes have
been student challenges relating to refunds from certain REAs and complaints
relating to courses being taught by instructors other than those listed, either due to
last-minute instructor changes or unexpected co-instruction. Unexpected deviations
from the description of the course, whether it is cancellations, rescheduling, or
alternate trainers, negatively impacts the student experience. We understand that
not all last minute changes are avoidable, but ask that reasonable measures be
taken to reduce impact to students.
March 2024
Over the past months, we’ve continued to make our ethics and compliance program
more consistent and more efficient. This has included updating the Disciplinary
Policy to be clearer and more understandable in order to reduce confusion. We’ve
also added more structure to our internal processes to ensure consistency in our
responses to ethical complaints, including testing an ethics violation severity matrix,
a disciplinary action matrix tied to the severity rating, and creating consistent
complaint categories and types. These changes are allowing us to respond more
quickly to complaints and to track intakes and produce better insights and data from
the ethics process, which will inform our policy-making process going forward.
Recent complaints have run the gamut in subject matter but have been primarily low
severity issues relating to course listing inaccuracies or potential trademark
infringement issues, which we continue to address through the legal process.
As always, please report any concerns related to potential violations of Scrum
Alliance policies, Code of Ethics, or otherwise through our Community Conduct &
Complaint form.
February 2024
In an effort to make the Scrum Alliance Disciplinary Policies and Procedures
more transparent and understandable, we have revised the policy to make it more
clear. The substance of the policy and the procedural process have not materially
changed, but we hope this updated version will be more user-friendly for our
community. The updated Scrum Alliance Disciplinary Policies and Procedures is
linked from the Code of Ethics.
As a reminder, you can report any suspected ethical or policy violations here.
Thanks as always for your active participation in the Scrum Alliance community!
January 2024
Thank you all for continuing to report areas of ethical concern! We appreciate the
active participation from all of our guide community. Please continue to submit any
concerns here.
Over the last few months, the bulk of the intakes we’ve received have been related
to the publishing of large numbers of courses and the last minute cancellation of
those courses, as well as violations of restrictions on the number of courses that
may be posted in a time period. We are actively investigating these issues and will
take appropriate remediation steps as needed. In the meantime, we ask for
everyone’s patience as we assess situations and gather facts.
In addition, SAI is in the process of improving our ethics and compliance processes.
Improvements will focus on creating faster responses, greater efficiency, as well as
more transparency and consistency. More to come soon!