If you are already an Agile expert and you want to increase your skill level and move forward in your career, you need to think about getting a relatable certification. There are a lot of institutions out there that are offering this type of certificates, therefore, making a decision may not be as easy as you think. With so many options to choose from, you can easily get confused, that is why we are going to list the top 5 Agile certifications that you should pay attention to. Let’s go!

1. SAFe Scaled Agilist

This is a two-day course, which is intended for those specialists who have five years of working experience in project management, software testing, and development. During this training, the candidates will get in-depth knowledge of leadership principles of Lean Agile and launching SAFe in Agile. A person who is a SAFe Agilist also knows how to release software that will continuously increase the value of any company.

2. Scrum.org

This is an organization that is known for offering some of the best professional-level certifications. Some of the main credentials that the platform provides are as follows:

• Professional Scrum Developer-I;
• Professional Scrum Product Owner;
• Professional Scrum Master.

In case you are able to get your hands on any of these certifications, this basically means that you have a good understanding of Scrum and know how to apply these practices in real-world problems. If you are planning to pursue one of these certificates, you don’t need to go for any training program to prepare for it.

3. Certified Scrum Professional
When you talk about the top Agile certifications out there, you cannot miss the CSP credential. This certificate is from Scrum Alliance, so if you obtain it, this opportunity can open a lot of doors for your career. If you earn this certificate, it will recognize your skills in artifacts, advanced practices, and procedures pertaining to the Scrum framework. One of the best things about this certification is that you can pretty much study on your own.

4. Scrum Alliance Certifications

When it comes to software development, you can use Scrum methodologies to move things along. Scrum is a subdomain of Agile and can be used to manage Agile projects. If you are interested in Scrum practices, you should know about Scrum Alliance. It is one of the leading organizations that are utilizing Scrum techniques in its projects. The company is currently offering 3 main certifications for the Agile Scrum specialists, and they are as follows:

• CSM (Certified Scrum Master);
• CSD (Certified Scrum Developer);
• CSPO (Certified Scrum Product Owner).

No matter which of these certificates you choose, you will have to complete a training program. Thus, you will be able to get all the necessary knowledge and skills. For the Developer certifications, you will have to take a 5-day training course. And as for the Product Owner and Master credentials, the students should attend a 2-day training session.

5. PMI Agile Certified Practitioner

The PMI-ACP certification is at the top of the best project management credentials that you can pursue. If you are someone who are trying to use Agile methodologies in your projects or trying to adopt its techniques, you should think about going for the Agile Certified Practitioner certificate. Having this credential in your resume validates your skills and shows that you had some real experience with Agile. Obtaining PMI-ACP also means that you have the relevant knowledge in a number of Agile subdomains, such as Lean, Scrum, and Kanban. Once you have earned your certification, you will have to gain 30 PDIs annually to renew it.

Why Should You Consider Agile Certifications?

The IT world is moving forward very quickly and is adopting new techniques, as we say. Agile is something that has matured over the years, and that is why the organizations are on the lookout for the qualified experts. Since these specialists are in high demand, you need to try and earn an Agile certification because it will give you a better chance of getting a job.

Obtaining this credential will increase your credibility, and more importantly, you will be in line with the latest market trends. It is a common fact that almost every employer considers choosing a candidate with a certificate in his/her CV. Your chances will double if it is a certification that covers knowledge of a potential job position. That is why getting any Agile credential is really important for those specialists who want to succeed in their career path.

Conclusion

These were the top Agile certifications that you need to know about. Obviously, there are many more credentials that you can find but these ones will prove to be more helpful. Utilizing Agile methodologies is a great way to deal with project management, and that is why so many organizations out there are using these techniques. If you are an Agile expert who wants to become part of these projects, you should go for a certificate. With having one in your hands, the recruiters will know that you mean the business and that you actually know what you are doing. It will greatly increase your chances in the eyes of the potential employers if they see an Agile certification as one of the achievements that you have in your CV.

As many of you know, Agile is a collection of similar methodologies, and the PMI-ACP exam covers most of them. This includes : Lean, Kanban, test-driven development (TDD), Scrum and extreme programming (XP), which makes this certification very versatile and applicable in almost any organization.

PMI has recently announced changes to the PMI-ACP exam. The pilot for the new exam began on July 15, 2015 and continues through October 15, 2015, so you can now try and take the updated version of the exam and save 20%. Most notable among the 2015 changes is the addition of an entirely new practice domain — Domain 1: Agile Principles and Mindset. It will account for 16% of your exam score. According to PMI, this domain helps candidates “explore, embrace, and apply agile principles and mindset within the context of the project team and organization.” The domain covers nine practice areas:

• Modeling agile principles and values to develop a shared mindset across the team;
• Ensure a common understanding of agile values and principles, and a common knowledge of agile practices and terminology;
• Support change through education and influencing processes, behaviors and people;
• Practice visualization;
• Contribute to safe and trustful team environments;
• Enhance creativity; encourage experimentation with new ideas, processes, and techniques;
• Encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration;
• Encourage leadership;
• Practice servant leadership.

Besides this domain, the exam will include the following: Value-Driven Delivery, Stakeholder Engagement, Team Performance, Adaptive Planning, Problem Detection and Resolution, and Continuous Improvement (Product, Process, People).

The pilot for the new exam began on July 15, 2015 and continues through October 15, 2015. For those who are adventurous and willing to take the exam early, PMI is offering a 20 percent discount to all PMI-ACP test takers before August 16, 2015. The normal exam fee is $435 USD for members and $495 for non-members, so this is a nice savings. After August 16, regular exam fee rates apply. The pilot phase ends on October 15, 2015.

For more information, visit the PMI website, and keep an eye on latest PMI exam dumps at ExamCollection.

We’ll review the newly updated VMware vSphere certification program soon. But today let’s take a closer look at the newly released version of the vSphere. What makes VMware vSphere 6 so cool?

What You Need to Know About VMware vSphere 6

Compared to the previous version, the vSphere 5, this generation boasts over  650 new features and innovations, VMware vSphere 6 provides customers with a highly available, resilient, on-demand cloud infrastructure to run, protect and manage any application. VMware vSphere 6 will be complemented by the newest releases of VMware vCloud® Suite 6, VMware vSphere with Operations Management™ 6, and VMware Virtual SAN™ 6.

Furthermore, VMware vSphere 6 will deliver breakthrough new capabilities to address the unique needs of business-critical and cloud-native applications, and drive higher performance, scale and consolidation ratios. VMware vSphere 6 will also re-define infrastructure and application service-levels and availability. According to VMware’s press release, new features include:

• Broad Application Support – VMware vSphere 6 will address the specific challenges of cloud-native applications, including agile development cycles and multiple application instances. With VMware vSphere 6, organizations will be able to manage thousands of component instances of a single cloud-native application. New scale, performance and availability capabilities also make vSphere 6 the platform of choice for virtualizing scale-up applications such as SAP HANA, scale-out workloads such as Hadoop, and business-critical applications such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, and SAP ERP.
• New Long-Distance Live Migration Capabilities – VMware vSphere 6 introduces Long-Distance vMotion®, which will enable zero downtime live migration of workloads over long distances such as New York to London. With multi-processor fault tolerance, another industry first, customers will benefit from continuous availability for larger virtual machines up to four virtual-CPUs.
• Instant Clone Technology – Introduced as Project Fargo, a technology preview at VMworld® 2014 San Francisco, VMware’s Instant Clone technology will make it possible to rapidly clone and provision thousands of container instances and virtual machines to make new virtual infrastructure available in sub-second timeframes.
• 3D Graphics for Desktop Virtualization – VMware vSphere 6 will enable enterprises to deliver high-end workstation and graphics-intensive applications to virtual desktops such as VMware Horizon® 6 for industries such as engineering, automotive, education and architecture. Using NVIDIA GRID vGPU technology, immersive 3D graphics can be delivered from the cloud enabling greater density, scalable performance and increased cost-savings. Read the NVIDIA and VMware joint announcement.
• Enterprise-Class Hypervisor-Converged Storage – VMware’s flagship will provide enterprise-class scale, performance and new data services making it the ideal storage platform for virtual machines including business-critical applications. Read more about VMware Virtual SAN 6.

• Virtual Machine-Awareness for Third-Party Storage – VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes is the industry’s first solution that will enable native virtual machine awareness on a wide range of third-party storage systems, extending VMware’s software-defined storage control plane to the ecosystem. Read more about VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes.

Although there is a variety of QA tools and platforms available and the choice depends on the priorities, needs and processes of your organization, HP’s solutions like HP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and HP Unified Functional Testing (UFL) are popular with organizations and their QA professionals worldwide. Recently, HP has introduced 2 certifications to validate the skills using these tools. HP ATP: Application Lifecycle Management v12 addresses using HP’s ALM platform to support QA, while HP ATP: Unified Functional Testing v12 supplies training to those engaged in preparing and executing automated test cases.

Let’s take a close look at these credentials.

HP ATP: Application Lifecycle Management v12

This certification verifies that you can deploy, demonstrate, use, and manage the HP ALM platform to support all phases of the quality and test-management process when working as a QA team member or under the supervision of a senior consultant. It validates your ability to do the following:

• Create releases and release cycles
• Manage requirements and analyze associated risks
• Create and organize test cases and test sets
• Execute manual and automated tests
• Record and track test execution results and defects
• Configure and use version control, libraries, and baselines
• Generate reports and graphs and use the Dashboard
• Work with project planning and tracking (PPT) graphs and reports
• Use the business process models
• Plan for ALM implementation
• Create and manage domains, projects, and templates
• Plan project groups, users, and permissions
• Determine entity customizations
• Implement basic workflows
• Identify and use ALM integrations and extensions, including ALI and the ALM synchronizer

Why earn this certification?

• This certification qualifies you as a recognized QA consultant.
• Certification enables you to become a valuable contributor to your software development team.
• Certification lays the foundation for your career in IT as a QA engineer or ALM administrator.
• Certification prepares you for innovative technologies, methodologies, and approaches that are rapidly transforming the QA landscape and practices (e.g., agile, testing in the cloud, mobile testing, testing as a service).

HP ATP – Unified Functional Testing v12

This professional level certification verifies your understanding of workflow and tasks to automate test cases with HP Unified Functional Testing (UFT). Typical candidates for this certification include testers, automation engineers, services specialists, and technical personnel who implement and integrate GUI, API, and BPT test automation by creating, enhancing, running tests and analyzing run results with HP Unified Functional Testing (UFT). Six months of UFT experience is recommended.

This credential validates your ability to:

• Discuss and plan test automation with HP UFT
• Describe HP UFT testing solution for GUI, API, BPT
• Build modular tests and integrate HP UFT testing solutions
• Create basic GUI automated tests and describe how HP UFT works with objects
• Create basic API tests
• Enhance basic tests with verifications, checkpoints, and parameterization
• Run UFT tests and analyze results
• Describe the HP UFT to QC/ALM integration, including its features and benefits
• Illustrate basic troubleshooting tools and techniques
• Identify how to use VBScript programming elements and advanced scripting techniques
• Recognize how to overcome automation challenges in a Web environment
• Use the HP UFT automation object model
• Use service virtualization in HP UFT

Why earn this certification?

• This certification is a milestone in your career as a QA engineer and verifies your skills in test automation.
• To complement your proven experience and projects track record in test automation with an industry-recognized credential.
• To improve your effectiveness in understanding automation requirements when working closely with build/development teams.
• Certification helps you stand out as a subject matter expert in the crowded QA arena.
• To increase your credibility in a highly competitive, yet still promising job market.