Holding a Scrum Alliance certification is quite prestigious and remunerative. Many people nowadays are seeking Scrum Alliance certifications due to their increased popularity and global acceptability. Once you have put your effort into earning your Scrum Alliance certification, you will then also require to maintain it. Scrum Alliance requires all its credential holders to maintain their certification and renew these every few years. Scrum Alliance Certification renewal is a mandatory requirement to keep your certification active. If you do not maintain the certification, it will expire and then you will have to re-take the exam to be again certified.
What are the Scrum Alliance Certification Renewal activities that can earn you SEUs?
- Education
- Authoring Books
- Authoring Blogs, Articles
- Preparing Presentation
- Watching a Video of a Scrum Webinar or Training – Learn more at Free Scrum SEU post.
- Reading a Scrum Book
- Volunteering
- Scrum Alliance Global Gatherings
- Regional Scrum Gatherings
- Non-Scrum Alliance Sponsored Events
How to Go About For Scrum Alliance Certification Renewal?
What is Scrum Alliance certification maintenance? Well, Scrum Alliance defines certification maintenance as your continuous effort to upgrade your Scrum knowledge and skills that you have gained from your certification.
By participating in many different types of activities, which Scrum Alliance has allowed, you can maintain your certification. Scrum Alliance certification renewal is an easy process. What you need to do after you have earned your certification is to earn Scrum SEUs and submit them to Scrum Alliance for the certification renewal. What are SEUs? SEUs stand for Scrum Education Units and these are basically hours that you have spent in certain learning or contributing activities that will earn you SEUs. For more information, you can check out our Full Scrum SEU Guide.
Scrum Alliance certification renewal happens every two years from the date of your certification and the process completes with a certification renewal payment.
How Many SEU Credits Do You Need for Scrum Certification Alliance Renewal?
Scrum Alliance certifications have different SEU requirements. For instance, Scrum Alliance CSM Renewal requires 20 SEUs.
Master of Project Academy offers Free Scrum SEU Training. You can enroll for FREE and earn 2 SEUs.
You must earn the required number of SEUs every year to be able to renew your certification. The table below shows the SEU requirement and also the certification renewal fee.
| Scrum Alliance Certification | SEU Credit Requirement | Renewal Fee |
| Foundational (CSPO, CSM, CSD) | 20 | US$ 100 |
| Professional (CSP-PO, CSP, CSP-SM, CAL II) | 40 | US$ 250 |
| Advanced (A-CSPO, A-CSM) | 30 | US$ 175 |
| Leadership (CAL-O, CAL-E, CAL-T) | 10 | US$ 50 |
Note that if you are holding more than one Scrum Alliance certification, you will only need to renew the higher-level certification. When you renew it, the lower-level certification would automatically be renewed.
Scrum Alliance Certification Renewal: SEU Earning Activities
There are many activities that you can do to earn the required SEU credits and fulfill the Scrum Alliance certification renewal requirement. These activities are explained below.
Education
Scrum Alliance allows you to earn SEU credits by participating in a variety of learning activities. The activities you can participate in are detailed below.
Authoring Books
Did you ever wish to write a book? This is the opportunity for you to become an author. When you write a book, you will earn SEU credits for your Scrum Alliance certification renewal. It does not matter how big the book is. As long as the content of the book is about Agile or its related stuff, you will earn SEUs.
You can choose the title of the book. For instance, you may like to write about a particular Agile methodology or Agile practices. If you write a practice test in your book, even this will be acceptable by Scrum Alliance. Once you have completed a book, you may then want to publish it online or with your local publisher.
Authoring Blogs, Articles
This is a quick and easier alternative to writing a book. Writing a blog post or an article takes much less time than writing a complete book. If you have your own online blog or a website, you may choose how many articles or blogs you like to publish every week or month. You may even choose your own topics for these articles and blogs.
Writing posts or articles is fun and it often requires you to research before you write. Hence, it’s an opportunity to learn something new and also share your knowledge with others. The more articles or blog posts you will write, the more SEU credits for your Scrum Alliance certification renewal you will also earn.
Preparing Presentation
Preparing a PowerPoint presentation is another way to earn some SEU credits for your Scrum Alliance certification renewal. When would you create these presentations, you would wonder. Well, you can prepare a presentation to give a small lecture to your office fellows, on Scrum. You can also teach someone online or give a lecture at a college. You can of course choose topics for your presentation. It’s a good opportunity for you to teach someone Scrum and also earn SEU credits at the same time.
Watching a Video of a Scrum Webinar or Training
Searching for Scrum training videos or recorded Scrum SEU webinars is very easy. If you search on Google or look at the websites of online academies like Master of Project Academy that offers Scrum Alliance SEU course bundles.
There are free and paid videos, both. Master of Project Academy’s free Scrum training videos give a basic introduction to Scrum practices, tools, and techniques. The paid ones are comprehensive for in-depth knowledge and understanding. Watching these videos is a simple way of earning SEU credits for your Scrum Alliance certification renewal.
Master of Project Academy offers Free Scrum SEU Training. You can enroll for FREE and earn 2 SEUs.
Reading a Scrum Book
How good would it be to be able to earn SEU credits while just reading a book? Who doesn’t like book reading? To upgrade your knowledge or also to get busy in your free time, you can read books on Scrum and earn SEUs.
There are tons of e-books available on the Internet. Some are free and many are paid. You can look for books at various websites like Scribd, Google Books, etc. Whether it is an e-book or a physical copy, book reading is surely very valuable and a prime opportunity to expand your knowledge of Scrum.
Volunteering
Volunteering is another way of earning SEU credits for your Scrum Alliance certification renewal. There could be many things you could do to contribute to the community. For instance, if you have a colleague who is learning Scrum, you can teach them to prepare them for a Scrum Alliance certification exam. Alternatively, you can coach someone who is implementing Scrum in their organization. You can give a lecture at a college, help someone document Agile practices for their project. So, you see there could even be more things you can volunteer for. And, when you are volunteering, you will also be earning SEUs for your Scrum Alliance certification renewal.
Scrum Alliance Renewal Events
Scrum Alliance holds regular events throughout the year where people participate to earn their SEUs. The purpose of these events is to allow people to learn and exchange their knowledge with others and earn SEUs at the same time.
Scrum Alliance Global Gatherings
This is a global event, held by Scrum Alliance and it takes place twice every year. It is once held in North America and the second time it is held in the European region. In these events, Scrum Alliance certification holders, and other Agile aspirants participate and benefit from the experts and other knowledgeable people present in the event.
The Scrum Alliance Global Gatherings give you the opportunity to learn about the Agile success stories, developments in the industry, and new emerging trends in the world of Agile. In the event, many presentations, open space sessions, and workshops are held. You even get a chance for one-on-one coaching sessions with the industry experts. It is a three-day event so you learn a lot from here for sure.
If you could afford to travel for these global events, you must not miss these Scrum Alliance certification renewal opportunities. The event not only lets you learn, make connections with others but also earn SEUs, needed for your Scrum Alliance certification renewal.
Regional Scrum Gatherings
These are the local events organized by Scrum Alliance. At different times of the year, many regional Scrum gatherings are held and in many different cities. These events are held over the duration of two to three days. And, in these too, you get to meet with Agile coaches, experts, and practitioners.
In a regional Scrum gathering, you get the opportunity to attend workshops, presentations and open-space sessions and also earn SEU credits. If these events are not being held very far from where you live, you may even want to attend many of these events in a year.
A detail of the regional Scrum gatherings is published on the Scrum Alliance website. There, you will find schedule and the location information for all the regional scrum gatherings being held in the year. Registration form to register yourself for an event is also available on the website. You must make sure to register yourself for an event well before the event date, to ensure that the registration is not closed.
Non-Scrum Alliance Sponsored Events
Scrum Alliance accepts your participation in non-Scrum Alliance sponsored events, too. Events that are organized by individuals, or companies are another opportunity for you to attend Agile workshops, presentations, and one-on-one coaching sessions.
If, for some reason, you are unable to attend one of the Scrum Alliance organized events, then keep an eye on other similar events. You may find out about these events on social media, for instance, Facebook pages, on Twitter, or by your acquaintances. Privately organized Scrum events could be equally beneficial and these will earn you SEU credits for your Scrum Alliance certification renewal, too.
Others
All the activities mentioned above are not the only ones that Scrum Alliance accepts for Scrum Alliance certification renewal. Scrum Alliance actually accepts many more Scrum-related activities, which you can do to earn SEUs. The other activities could be formal or even informal activities. For instance, you can have a group discussion on Scrum, at a dinner, with your colleagues. If you participate in online Scrum forums, giving valuable inputs to queries of people, this too will be counted. Similar to these activities, you can think of many other such activities that you can volunteer for.
How To Claim SEUs and Complete Your Scrum Alliance Certification Renewal?
In the cycle of every two years, you should have earned the SEUs that are required for your Scrum Alliance certification renewal. Once, you have earned the SEUs and the time has come to renew your certification, you will need to follow the steps below to submit your SEUs to Scrum Alliance and renew your certification.
1. Open the Scrum Alliance’s website – https://www.scrumalliance.org/login
2. Enter your username and password to log in to the website.
3. At the top-right of the page, click on your name and then click ‘My Dashboard’.
4. On the right side of the page, beside the “Scrum Education Units” text, click on the blue button that is labeled “Mange SEUs”.
5. Choose the SEU category from the “Select an Activity Type”, which best suits your continuing education opportunity.
6. Finally, you will enter information in all the required fields and then submit the form.
You have logged your SEUs with Scrum Alliance and you are ready for your Scrum Alliance certification renewal. To renew the certification, follow the steps below:
1. If you have logged out from your Scrum Alliance account, log in again, at https://www.scrumalliance.org/login
2. At the top-right side of the web page, click on your name.
3. Click on ‘My Dashboard’.
4. Where you see the text “Actions”, next to it, you will see “Renew Certification”, click on that.
5. Select the Scrum Alliance certification that you want to renew now. As you will select a certification, you will see the amount you have to pay now to complete the certification renewal process.
6. Now, using your credit/debit card, make the payment for your Scrum Alliance certification renewal.
That’s it! By completing the steps mentioned above, you have renewed your certification for another two years.
Summary – Scrum Alliance Certification Renewal
Like many other certifications, if you hold a Scrum Alliance certification, you will need to renew it every few years. And to do this, Scrum Alliance’s requirement of certification maintenance allows you not only to renew your certification but it is also an opportunity for you to continue upgrading your Scrum knowledge and stay up to date in the industry.
In this post, we mentioned the details about the Scrum Alliance Certification renewal fee and the SEU credits that you need to renew your certification. We also explained how you can maintain your Scrum Alliance certification in order to earn SEUs. So, as you know now how to maintain your certification, you can make a plan about the activities you should participate in to earn the required SEU credits.
You do not have to participate in activities continuously. You can spread these activities over the two-year time if you rather prefer a slow pace. Hence, it is up to you how you want to go about maintaining your Scrum Alliance certification.
However, it is actually easier to complete the SEU earning tasks early in your certification renewing cycle and then stay free for the rest of the time.