Advanced Certified ScrumMaster®

Why take this course

A CSM teaches you the framework. A year in, the framework is rarely what is stopping you — the room is. Advanced Certified ScrumMaster is about the part nobody hands you a diagram for: disagreement, coaching people who did not ask to be coached, and influence you cannot enforce with authority.

It is also the credential most employers now look for as the signal that you have moved past running events into leading teams.

What makes this class different

• Twelve seats. You practice; you do not watch.
• No lectures. Simulations, case work, and situations you bring from your own team.
• Direct feedback from Mark, one to one, on how you actually facilitate.
• Built in Miro. Real collaboration, not a shared slide deck.
• Coaching that does not expire. Email, calls and office hours after the class, with no end date.

What your seat includes

• Live and online with Mark, capped at 12 seats.
• Two years of Scrum Alliance membership.
• Lifetime coaching with Mark. Email him, book a call, bring him the retrospective your team has stopped taking seriously. There is no end date on it.
• A library of downloadable resources, kept current after you leave.
• A first-day guarantee: if the class isn't right for you, tell Mark before the end of day one for a full refund.

Bringing a team?

Groups of three or more get a group rate. Want this class for your team only? Mark teaches private classes too. Email [email protected].

Reschedule and refund policy

Before class starts, you can move to any later Great Fish Agility public class within 12 months, take a class credit for the full amount (good for 12 months), or send a colleague in your place, all at no charge. We don't refund a change of plans. If we cancel or move a class, you choose a full refund or a free move. If the class isn't right for you, tell Mark before the end of the first day: you get a full refund, and you don't receive the certification.

PMI PDUs

Claim one PDU per hour of instruction in PMI's CCRS (Education, then "Course or Training"), with Great Fish Agility, LLC as the provider. Step-by-step guide: greatfishagility.com/blog/pdus-for-csm-cspo-classes

How the time is spent

Every session is built around practice. You work in small groups with Mark moving between them, on situations drawn from real teams — including your own, if you bring them.

• Facilitation under pressure. Running a session where people genuinely disagree and still reaching a decision. Structures for surfacing what nobody is saying.
• Coaching stances. When to instruct, when to ask, and when to say nothing. Practicing a coaching conversation with someone who did not ask for one.
• Conflict and psychological safety. Naming a conflict without escalating it, and building the conditions where a team raises problems early.
• Working with stakeholders. Holding a boundary with someone senior, and making a trade-off visible so a decision gets made instead of deferred.
• Seeing the system. Why a team keeps missing when the cause sits outside the team, and how to say so in a way that gets heard.
• Retrospectives that earn their hour. Rebuilding a retrospective people have stopped taking seriously.

Who this is for

• Scrum Masters a year or more in, who have hit the limits of running good events.
• Agile coaches and team leads who want sharper coaching and facilitation.
• Product Owners, business analysts and delivery managers who work closely with Scrum teams.
• Anyone supporting Agile teams, whether that is one team or many.

Who it is not for

If you are new to Scrum, start with the CSM. This class assumes you have run the events and met the problems.

Prerequisites

• An active or inactive CSM or PSM certification.
• At least one year performing Scrum Master responsibilities within the last five years — whatever your job title was.

Who is teaching it

Mark Palmer is a Certified Scrum Trainer and a Certified Team Coach, a pairing most trainers do not hold. He has trained more than 12,000 professionals, and his students rate him 4.97 out of 5 across more than 1,000 Trustpilot ratings. He has coached and trained at Capital One, State Street, Anthem, Phillips 66, SWIFT, and federal agencies in Defense, Justice, and Transportation. Before that he held the jobs his students hold, at Advance Auto Parts, Prison Fellowship, FamilyLife, and WMATA. He teaches every Great Fish class himself.