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Trainer Ethics & Compliance Updates (2025)

Rob Hill
  • Updated

Below are excerpts from Scrum Alliance's monthly newsletters sent to active Scrum Alliance trainers and training partners regarding ethics and compliance updates. Note: There was not a newsletter sent in May 2024 or 2025, 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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November 2025

Scrum Alliance is transitioning fully to the Licensed Training Partner (LTP) program, recognizing organizations that are officially authorized to deliver and promote Scrum Alliance training—whether through instructor-led courses, on-demand formats, or both. This organizational change includes a significant update to how Course Listing Compliance is managed and enforced.

To ensure greater consistency, clarity, and management of public course listings, the administrative responsibility for Course Listing Compliance is being centralized within the LTP framework. Effective 1 January 2026, the primary responsibility for ensuring that public course listings comply with any and all applicable Scrum Alliance policies will shift from the individual certified trainer to the organization licensed as an LTP.

This policy change directly ties the ability to offer public training and utilize the Course Search platform to the organization's LTP status. Any individual trainers operating as a non-LTP organization may only offer private courses and neither the organization nor the affiliated trainer may post courses on the Scrum Alliance Course Search.

Specific questions regarding course listing compliance as we transition into the LTP program may be directed to our support team.

October 2025

Scrum Alliance trademarks and branding are essential to maintaining the integrity and recognition of our certifications worldwide. Training partners are responsible for ensuring that all course promotions, websites, and marketing materials reflect the Scrum Alliance brand accurately and in accordance with established guidelines.

Training partners should follow the Scrum Alliance Branding & Trademark Guidelines (Training Partners Marketing Toolkit). These guidelines define how Scrum Alliance brand assets and trademarks may be used. They also include examples of appropriate and inappropriate usage.

Use of Scrum Alliance trademarks must align with our Trademark Guidelines, which may be found via the Marketing Toolkit and nested within the “Brand Language” tab. Additionally, please be sure to include any corresponding trademark symbol (i.e. ® or ™ ) on the first or most prominent reference within any material. Proper use of these symbols helps protect the integrity of Scrum Alliance trademarks and ensures consistent global representation. If you have questions regarding use in a specific region, please reach out for clarification. 

All materials must display the most up-to-date Scrum Alliance brand assets, including certification badges and Scrum Alliance logo. Older or outdated badge/logo files should be removed from all websites, course listings, and promotional content. The most current badge/logo assets are available for download via the Marketing Toolkit under the “Primary Brand Assets” tab.

Please be aware, Scrum Alliance will soon release updated badge assets for organizations participating in the Licensed Training Partner (LTP) model. Partners preparing to transition to the LTP model should plan to replace all existing badge files once the new versions are made available. Additional details and timelines will be shared as the rollout begins.

Questions regarding proper badge usage or access to updated assets may be directed to  support@scrumalliance.org.

September 2025

At Scrum Alliance, our goal is to support trainers and providers in delivering meaningful learning experiences while also ensuring fairness and consistency across our community. One part of this effort is our course cancellation policy, which can be found within the Course Requirements.

This policy has generated a lot of feedback from our community. Many training partners have shared that cancellations sometimes result from factors outside their control, such as shifts in market demand, scheduling conflicts for learners, or unforeseen changes in participation. Many also reported a trend towards an increasing percentage of registrations occurring in the days prior to the course start date. We hear you, and we understand these challenges.

As with all of our policies, we approach them with the mindset of agility: inspect, adapt, and learn. To that end, and based on your feedback, we are adjusting the rule to only apply to cancellations within 14 days prior to the course start date (instead of 30 days, as in the prior version of the rule).

We recognize this is a significant change and we appreciate the thoughtful feedback we’ve received from many of you. We intend to continue monitoring, sharing cancellation rate results with training partners, and engaging in dialogue to find the right balance for this rule. During this adjustment period, our focus will be on improving the policy and hearing your feedback rather than on disciplinary actions, except in exceptional circumstances.

We will keep the community updated as we learn more from your experiences and determine if additional refinements to the policy are needed. Thank you for sharing your feedback and for continuing to partner with us in shaping a healthy, sustainable training ecosystem.

August 2025

Scrum Alliance recognizes that training partners often use promo codes or coupon codes as part of their marketing strategies. These can be a useful tool for attracting learners and encouraging registrations. However, under the Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) Policy, there are important limits on how these codes may be used.

While promo codes are not prohibited, the effective advertised price after applying any publicly promoted discount must remain at or above the MAP amount for the applicable region and course type. This means:

  • If a course is already advertised at the exact MAP amount, any publicly promoted promo code or discount would automatically lower the effective price below MAP, and therefore violate the policy.
  • To use promo codes compliantly, the base advertised course price must be set above MAP so that applying the discount still results in an effective advertised price that meets or exceeds the MAP.

A few additional key points for our training partners to keep in mind when offering discounts are:

  • Any promo code delivered via chatbot, landing page, ad, or even auto-send email is considered public and therefore subject to the MAP Policy.
  • Private negotiations (e.g., discounts via one-to-one email or phone) aren’t subject to MAP restrictions and remain permissible.
  • Publicly advertised promos must not exceed a 30% discount, including slash price advertising, and bundles are limited to 15% off MAP across all courses in the package.

We appreciate your support in maintaining a high-quality, trustworthy learning environment. For details or assistance, contact our support team.

July 2025

To protect the reputation of Scrum Alliance credentials, we have recently implemented two new policies focused on pricing transparency and course delivery accountability.

Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) Policy - Effective 1 August 2025

Scrum Alliance has adopted a Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) Policy to discourage price-based advertising that harms the Scrum Alliance brand by lowering the perceived value of Scrum Alliance credentials, creating consumer confusion, and diminishing the investments Scrum Alliance and our members have made in these credentials.  This policy sets regional (i.e. US, Canada, and India) price floors for publicly advertised courses (including on Course Search, your website, third-party platforms, and ads). You can find full details and common questions answered in our MAP Policy FAQ. While private pricing remains unrestricted, public discounts must:

  • Not reduce the final advertised price below the MAP
  • Not exceed 30% as a total advertised discount
  • Follow bundling limits of no more than 15% off combined MAP value

Circumvention tactics, such as masking discounts or advertising a course to a higher-MAP region while listing it in a lower/no-MAP country, will be treated as violations. 

Course Cancellation Policy - Effective 1 July 2025

We are also addressing a rise in publicly listed courses that are ultimately not delivered. To improve learner trust and Course Search reliability, any partner posting 9 or more public courses in a calendar month will be subject to the following rule: No more than 15% of publicly posted courses may be canceled in a given month. A course will be considered canceled if:

  • No students are uploaded within 14 days of the course date, or
  • It is deleted within 30 days of its scheduled start

Exceeding this threshold will trigger escalating Course Search suspensions, leading to possible license termination. To support enforcement, editing of course dates was be disabled two (2) hours after course creation on 23 June 2025. If a date must be changed, please duplicate and repost the course.

We appreciate your support in maintaining a high-quality, trustworthy learning environment. For details or assistance, please contact us. 

June 2025

Scrum Alliance understands that many trainers and REAs partner with third-party marketplaces, training companies, and other organizations (“Resellers”) to market, promote, and sell into your courses. Scrum Alliance has created Reseller Guidelines to ensure to ensure that these partnerships remain in compliance with Scrum Alliance’s rules and standards,

A few key points for our training partners to keep in mind are:

  • Training partners must enter into a written agreement requiring Resellers to comply with Scrum Alliance’s brand protections and trademark licensing requirements (to facilitate this, we provide an optional draft agreement that you may choose to use with your Resellers).
  • Training partners must ensure that Resellers follow all Course Requirements, including displaying the name of the Scrum Alliance trainer for each listed course.
  • The Reseller must include your name and/or company logo in each listing so it is clear which approved Scrum Alliance training partner they are partnered with to offer the course.
  • Course details like trainer, date, and time must always be accurate and kept up to date.

You are responsible for your Resellers’ compliance, and your agreement should allow for any course to be removed upon Scrum Alliance’s reasonable request.

By ensuring compliance among Resellers, we are able to maintain a professional brand image, lessen student confusion in the marketplace, and more effectively enforce our policies. If you have any questions regarding these guidelines please do not hesitate to reach out to learn more.

April 2025

As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance students’ experience using Course Search, we are introducing a new course requirement impacting early bird discounts. Moving forward, a discount may be referred to as “early bird” only if the discount ends at least 14 days before the course start date.

Please keep this policy change in mind when creating any new courses and review any currently posted courses for non-compliance as soon as possible. Our backlog for Course Manager improvements includes technical controls to reflect this rule when creating new courses.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation while we work toward this release.

March 2025

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.

We continue to receive complaints of cancellations, last minute rescheduling, and/or trainer changes. We understand at times cancellations occur due to unforeseen circumstances or an insufficient number of students register for a course, resulting in a poor student experience. However, we have observed instances of trainers and organizations consistently posting multiple courses of the same type on the same dates but ultimately running only one. 

As a reminder, trainers may only post courses they have a good faith intent to teach. If you allow any organizations to post courses on your behalf, please ensure that they are only posting courses that you expect to teach, and please let us know if you experience abuse of this rule.  Additionally, please note that Scrum Alliance will be tracking course listing data proactively in hopes of identifying ways we can work with trainers to reduce student complaints of this nature. 

As always, please let us know if you have any questions!

February 2025

In order to align our in-person and live online course policies, we amended our course requirements in mid-2024 to clarify that, beginning January 1, 2025, course listings for all Scrum Alliance certification courses must list at least 16 hours of trainer:student contact time (inclusive of reasonable breaks). 

In early February, we contacted all trainers with courses with less than 16 hours of trainer:student contact time to request they update their course listing to reflect the required minimum total contact time to ensure fairness among all course listings. 

We are happy to announce that within 2 weeks of making this request, we have observed a 70% reduction of flagged courses. We appreciate the cooperation of the trainer community in addressing these issues in a timely manner and their dedication to ensuring the consistent application of our course requirements. 

Trainers with courses that have yet to be updated have until February 28 to bring them into compliance.  Any non-compliant courses not corrected by this date will be removed from Course Manager by the system. 

Moving forward, please be sure to keep this policy change in mind when creating any new courses. Our backlog for Course Manager improvements does include course contact time validation to reduce any unintended administrative errors.  Thank you in advance for your patience while we work toward this release. 

As always, thank you for your support as we continue to fulfill our commitment to streamlining our policies!

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!

 

 

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