The Grow-Lean Certified Scrum Professional Scrum Master (CSP-SM) builds on the A-CSM to complete the Scrum Alliance Scrum Master Path to CSP. After completing this workshop you will be able to pursue Guide level certifications like the CST, CTC or CEC.
Our CSP-SM is 100% live, completely interactive and slide-free. It is delivered online using the tools Mural and Mentimeter. You will learn from the industry’s most experienced CSP-SM Trainer, Arlen Bankston, as well as other advanced attendees.
Unlike other companies where you mostly study alone, this is a live online class, with deep interaction, numerous exercises and the opportunity to learn from your peers.
Request your discount on the session (a class on date/time with a trainer) you want. If more than one discount applies explain in your comments.
You can pay in up to 12 installments by choosing Splitit at checkout.
For Grow-Lean Alumni, log in or use your account email when registering, and receive an automatic discount. If you also qualify for another discount, request it, and, if your email matches, we know you are an alumni.
If you have a Visa or Mastercard credit card you can pay in up to 12 monthly installments. There are no fees or interest if you pay on time! Your available credit must be enough to cover the full cost and there is a hold on your credit card for the amount that you have not paid.
For example, if your final fee is $1,000 and you chose 10 installments:
If you are not familiar with the term "hold" this is similar to what hotels do when you check in, to cover extra expenses you may incur including the mini bar.
The benefit to you is that you do not pay any interest or fees if all payments are on time.
Find Session
Find the session you want on the class list, then click "Discounts" link. Early-bird discounts do not need to be requested.
Choose Discounts
You will be on the discounts tab for the class.
Select Discount
Choose the appropriate discount then click the link for it. Not all discounts are available for all sessions.
Enter & Submit
Provide the requested information then click "Submit".
Combines With: Everything
Able to register in advance?
The Early Bird discount is available on many of classes.
There is no need to request it. Simply register while it is available.
If you receive another discount it will combine with the Early Bird.
Combines With: Alumni, Early Bird
Paying yourself and won't be reimbursed?
The Out of Pocket is for you if you won't be reimbursed. If you are unemployed, a military veteran, or a student request the appropriate discount.
Choose a specific session (class on a date with a trainer), click on Discounts, and complete the request form. If you are not sure of the date, choose a session and explain in the comments.
Combines With: Early Bird
Bringing friends or colleagues to one or more sessions or want a private session?
The Group and Private Discounts are for sending three or more attendees to one or more events or for private events (i.e. just for your team).
To request, choose a session (class on a date with a trainer) you are interested in, click the Discount Link, and when filling out the form describe your situation.
Our Training Team will reach out to you.
Combines With: Early Bird, Hardship, Out of Pocket, Student, Veteran
Get 5% off for each public session, over $495, you took with us, up to 20%.
The Alumni Discount provides you discounted rates to future Grow-Lean training.
For each Grow-Lean session* you take with us, at a rate of $495 or above, you accumulate another 5% off of a future training, up to 20% off*.
* We have a small number of partner events where the alumni discount does not apply.
Combines With: Early Bird, Alumni
Suffering an economic hardship and able to provide an unemployment notice or separation agreement?
The Hardship Discount is for you if you are suffering an economic hardship and are able to provide an unemployment notice or separation agreement and are not being reimbursed.
Choose a specific session (class on a date with a trainer), click on Discounts, and complete the request form. If you are not sure of the date, choose a session and explain in the comments.
Combines With: Early Bird
Are you a full-time student or educator, with a .edu email address?
The Student Discount is for you if you are a full-time student or educator with a .edu email address.
Choose a specific session (class on a date with a trainer), click on Discounts, and complete the request form. If you are not sure of the date, choose a session and explain in the comments.
When completing the request tell us your major and expected graduation date or explain what you teach and where.
Combines With: Early Bird
Are you active duty military or a veteran?
The Military / Veteran Discount is applicable if you are active duty, reserve, or retired from the military.
Choose a specific session (class on a date with a trainer), click on Discounts, and complete the request form. If you are not sure of the date, choose a session and explain in the comments.
When completing the request tell us if you will be reimbursed or not.
CST | CSP-SM | CSP-PO | CAL | A-CSM | CSM | A-CSPO | CSPO | LSS MB | SAFe SPC5
Arlen Bankston, a pioneering figure in the agile movement, was one of the first to integrate lean systems thinking and user experience practices with agile software development methodologies. His innovative approach has left a lasting impact on the field.
Currently, Arlen is a sought-after coach and trainer, specializing in advanced courses such as the Advanced CSPO, Certified Scrum Professional PO, Certified Scrum Professional - ScrumMaster, Certified Agile Leadership Essentials and Team, as well as custom sessions including the Grow-Lean Remote and Hybrid Work. His expertise extends beyond the realm of software, exploring Lean, Six Sigma, BPM and other process management and systems thinking approaches to provide organizations with a comprehensive perspective.
Arlen's journey in the agile world began with his early involvement in the Scrum Alliance (member number 41) and as one of the first Certified Scrum Trainers . He further expanded his knowledge by becoming a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt during his six-year tenure leading a Lean-Agile practice. His entrepreneurial spirit led him to co-found the consultancy LitheSpeed, which he successfully led for fifteen years before joining Grow-Lean.
Known for his thought leadership and dynamic, entertaining, and practical training style, Arlen has trained and mentored thousands of ScrumMasters, Product Owners, team members and executives. He designed the Agile Leadership Academy to address the leadership and structural challenges that many successful companies still face.
Arlen's client list spans across every industry and includes notable names such as RBC, Monster, Marriott, NBC Universal, CNBC, NGA, Capital One, T. Rowe Price, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and the Armed Forces Benefits Association. His book “HR and the Agile Organization” provides valuable insights on how human resources departments can adapt to support organizations striving for adaptability while enhancing employee engagement and retention.
Explore lean principles that explain and expand upon key aspects of agile methods, applying them to a variety of real-world situations ranging from product designand portfolio management to team structures and organizational change management.
Experience a range of different facilitation techniques that can be used to foster effective team and stakeholder interactions, addressing common issues likepower dynamics and role disparities.
Investigate how organizational development, professional coaching and behavioral modeling techniques can amplify your coaching effectiveness.
Practice techniques to support the development of self-managing teams and adaptive organizations, focusing on ways to deal with difficult situations.
See how different team structures, role definitions, working agreements and more can affect team effectiveness, and learn how to launch new projects with alignment and clarity.
Learn about advanced agile engineering techniques and ways to introduce and promote them within your teams.
Find out how to connect team members beyond the transactional level, creating closer connections, better flow, consistent quality and higher trust.
Use techniques like value stream and customer journey mapping to align Product Owners and teams against tangible goals and manage risky product assumptions.
Learn how to visualize a complex adaptive system like your organization and run defensible experiments to improve it.
Learn how to scale pragmatically with a proper balance of forward planning and adaptive approaches.
Are Story Points stressing out your teams and confusing your stakeholders?
We’ll show you several other ways to estimate work based on what you’re trying to accomplish (e.g. sizing a project, splitting stories, loading the Sprint, forecasting, reporting etc). We’ll even explore some situations where you might not need to estimate at all! We’ve worked directly with the authors of techniques like story points, user stories and Kanban, applying each in many real-world projects, and we understand when and how they work as well as when they don’t.
Are your Retrospectives stale and ineffective at driving real improvement?
We’ll explore numerous ways to enhance the design, facilitation and follow-through of retros, practicing several truly engaging ways to run them in class. We’ll also provide a wealth of ideas for how you can tune retros to your specific context and create custom templates that hone in on problems that really matter. Finally, we’ll show how to ensure that true improvement happens on a regular basis, as many retros are more talk than action.
Is your scaling approach a huge morale-sapping monstrosity?
We’ll dive into five different scaling methods to compare and contrast them, showing how you can pick and choose practices to build a development process that fits your organizational challenges and culture without being overwrought, slow and disempowering. Some of these methods are quite popular and some are lesser known, so you will definitely walk away with a few fresh tools and very different ways to think about optimizing large-scale delivery.
Are you confused on how to blend principles from XP, Kanban, DevOps, Lean and Lean Startup?
We’ll dive into popular methods beyond Scrum. For XP and DevOps we will look at engineering disciplines and continuous delivery. For Kanban we will explore visualization and creating flow. For Lean we will understand how Lean principles can be applied to knowledge work. For Lean Startup®we will cover how to apply build-measure-learn loops to pivot the business case and improve outcomes. You will leave ready to go beyond Scrum with a variety of practices.
Taking the session earns you the coveted CSP-SM Certification if you meet the requirements.
Earning the CSP-SM allows you to pursue guide level certifications. At present, less than a 1,000 individuals at this level.
Rose
The CSP-SM Training session from Arlen was engaging. He used an assortment of presentation tools and games that made for an interesting learning experience.He is really knowledgeable with a lot of experience that thus his real world examples help with understanding context. Lots of useful content and tools to use in real life.
Ruben E. Rodriguez
Mr. Arlen Bankston was an outstanding instructor. He is very knowledgeable of the topic and speaks from his own experience and not from a slide. The class was very interactive and fun. I enjoyed the Mural presentation because they were a lot of fun and easy to understand. I also liked the assignments that required us to get in teams. Sometimes articles aside from the reading book gave me a better idea and understanding of the subject for the course. I never expected to learn so much from an online class; I now see Scrum in a whole new way. I will reach out to him for future classes or some advice.
James W Walls
The instructor was very knowledgeable and the curriculum was current and relevant. Great course. Would recommend to anyone.
Jeff F.
Arlen Bankston absolutely MADE my CSP-SM Certification an absolute joy. He facilitated and guided our cohort to be the best versions of ourselves as we grew into our coveted new certifications. It was more than a learning experience, but rather a learning, networking, sharing, growth experience all in one.
Tricia M
This was an excellent class. There are several educational options out there, and I am glad I chose this one because Arlen's real-life experience and skill in designing this course made it valuable and fun. It was two days, and Arlen made it so relevant and interesting, I would be happy to spend many more days learning from him! Thank you!
customer
Arlen is knowledgeable and clearly explained all the concepts
Anika Topete
Arlen was amazing, he took the time and effort to answer every question that I asked and others asked. I would definitely sign up for a course with him again.
customer
Great course. Interactive and very interesting. Arlen Bankston was a great instructor.
customer
ARLEN IS A GREAT INSTRUCTOR! Scrum is about people > process, and Arlen made everyone feel like they were a part of the training! GREAT TRAINER!
Lance
Arlen was AWESOME in the CAL E & O course. I took away tons of stuff to try out with my organization. I will be back! I'll also send some colleges your way.
Brandon
Great course! The content was very relevant and the way it was presented made it immediately applicable. The collaborative nature of the course also enabled for more meaningful delivery of the concepts AND different perspectives on how to apply it. Arlen is great and I would definitely attend another session led by him in the future. Thanks!
Mark
It was a great class and Arlen was an excellent instructor. He adapted and adjusted the focus of the course as we went to make sure that everyone in the class got the most they could out of it.
customer
Arlen is a skilled facilitator and brings a wealth of experience to the table. This enriches the experience significantly.
customer
Great training with lots of additional, personalized material. Arlen was terrific.
customer
Arlen was excellent and brought some excitement to the course. Perfect blend of practical exercises, class discussion and instructor lead information.
customer
One of the better Agile courses I have taken. The content was very well presented, interesting, and useful. The format was engaging and interactive, and it moved at a smart pace (I didn't doze off once). The instructor (Arlen) clearly put a lot of effort into preparing the course material/resources. I would definitely recommend.
L M
David Bulkin and Arlen (Grow-Lean) are great instructors! I've already taken part on three certifications provided by them, and am every time grateful that I took the time to do it. They have a lot of experience and thrive on teaching us how to use Scrum on an real-life Agile Environment! Would recommend to anyone!
Kevin Kappeler
Arlen is a wonderful instructor and comes prepared to coach up and down. He brings a wide variety of domain knowledge, practical shared experience, and remains open to ideas from students. A class is only as good as the instructor leading it. Thank you!
Dexter
The entire course was well structured and started with asking attendees what they wanted from the course. Arlen made sure to check in multiple to make sure we were covering the topics we asked for from the beginning. I found the exercises to be very well thought out and beneficial to applying the techniques and topics reviewed.
Michael C Hunter
One reason I selected this course is it was completed without one PowerPoint slide. The instructor, Arlen Bankston, would facilitate the lesson and move the participants into break outs using a Mural board. It was beneficial to be hands on and partnering with others while learning.