SD-Agile · Certification
Six credentials. Each one earned.
The ladder runs from the vocabulary to the evidence. The first four are coursework. The last two require work you actually did, reviewed by somebody who already holds the credential.
The ladder
Start at the bottom. Everyone does.
Each rung assumes the one below it. There is no test-out, because the point is not the certificate.
- 01SD-Agile Foundation
The Inference Gap, the argument for specification discipline, and the vocabulary the rest of the ladder uses. Where everyone starts. - 02Certified Specification Author
Write a specification a machine can build from without guessing: structured elicitation, constraint taxonomy, edge-case enumeration, and Build Package construction. - 03Certified Alignment Authority
Own the integrity of a Build Package. Run the Assurance Cycle, adjudicate ambiguity, and escalate what cannot be resolved rather than letting a machine guess. - 04Certified Org Admin
Operate the platform for an organisation and curate its standard library — chassis, templates, session guides, and instruction documents. - 05Enterprise Practitioner — Level 1
The coursework plus one documented real-world implementation. Not a case study. Something you shipped. - 06Enterprise Practitioner — Level 2
A documented body of work — signed specifications and builds produced from them — attested by an already-certified Level 2 practitioner.
Two routes
Free and self-paced, or with an instructor.
Same credential either way. The difference is whether somebody is in the room when you get stuck.
Online, self-paced
Every course is on the learning platform, in six languages, at your pace. Free for full-time government and nonprofit employees, with tuition waivers available if you are unemployed or underemployed.
Learn more →Inside a live programme
Organisations run the same material as an instructor-led programme scheduled over weeks, so a whole team gets certified together and argues about their own systems rather than our examples.
Learn more →What it costs
The courses are free. The credential isn't.
You should know that before you start, not after you finish.
Training is free — the courses, the material, all six languages. What costs money is earning the credential, and that fee is a large part of what funds the free training and the open-source work. The people who want the letters after their name are paying for the people who just want to learn the method.
Nobody is meant to be priced out of it, so the fee moves with your situation:
Out of work, or underemployed
Waivers are available for the certification fee, the same as for tuition. Ask when you register — this is the case the waiver exists for.
Government and nonprofit employees
Heavily discounted. Your training is already free; the credential is priced so that a public servant can actually afford to hold it without a purchase order.
Commercial organisations
Bulk pricing when you are certifying a team rather than a person. This is separate from Partner Program rates — you do not have to be a partner to get it.
The honest part
The top two rungs are not coursework.
Enterprise Practitioner is gated on work you did, not modules you finished. That is deliberate, and it means the top of the ladder is deliberately slow.
Level 1 requires the coursework plus a documented real-world implementation. Level 2 requires a body of work — specifications you signed and builds produced from them — attested by a practitioner who already holds Level 2.
Which raises the obvious question about the first ones. The inaugural Level 2 credentials will be attested by Joe together with a founding panel. That panel has not convened yet, so nobody holds Level 2 today. We would rather say that plainly than let you assume otherwise and find out later.
Start at Foundation.
It is the same first course whichever route you take, and for most people it costs nothing.