The value of your certification was never yours to decide
Let me start with a sentence you may not enjoy hearing.
Over the years, I have watched too many people finish their CSM or CSPO full of energy, carry a set of practices back into their company, and then discover one thing: the team is willing to cooperate, but decisions still run the old way. Why? Because Scrum has never worked bottom-up alone. It needs the top and the bottom moving together. When your manager doesn’t value Scrum, that certificate is, in his eyes, just a piece of paper that says you “took a course.”
This is not your fault. It is the problem our whole Scrum community has left unsolved for too long — we have poured our energy into teaching front-line teams, and far too rarely walked into the room where decisions are actually made.
Scrum’s biggest opportunity is winning the respect of senior leaders
I believe Scrum’s greatest room to grow is not in issuing more certificates. It is in winning the hearts of senior leaders.
Especially the executives who hold real decision-making power. In their hands sits the organization’s most important judgment, yet many of them still think of Scrum as “something engineers use.” The moment they personally feel how Scrum improves the quality of their decisions, everything turns around — they begin to respect the people around them who hold a CSM or CSPO, and they start handing real judgment calls to those people.
That respect is the key that makes your certification truly appreciate in value. It is not bought with a few more marketing events from Scrum Alliance. It is earned one persuaded CEO at a time.
I don’t just teach Scrum — I bring it into the CEO’s office
There are three candidates this time, and members may cast only one vote. The biggest difference between me and the other two is this: I am not only a CST. I am a market leader who brings Scrum into the executive decision layer.
Becoming Taiwan’s first and only CST was a starting point for me, not a finish line. After earning the credential, I personally trained more than 300 CEOs to become CSMs and more than 100 CEOs to become CSPOs. Note that it was the CEOs themselves in the classroom — not a delegate sent in their place.
I founded Taiwan Agile Tribe, Asia’s largest non-IT agile community, with more than 4,500 members. The RSG Taipei gatherings I built drew 888 people in 2022 and 1,111 in 2024 — back-to-back world records for Scrum Alliance attendance, and the seats were filled with executives from non-IT industries.
Most trainers wait for teams to sign up. I choose to walk into the room where decisions get made. The fastest way to make every CSM and CSPO truly matter is to persuade the people who decide whether transformation happens at all.
Real names, across industries, at the executive level
I don’t rely on slogans. I let the record speak.
At Pfizer, 58 leaders completed CSM, and 92% of them were at CXO level — which means the decision layer showed up in person, rather than handing it down to middle management. Galaxy Software Services, a firm that has practiced agile for 18 years, still invited me back to train its senior leaders in CSM and CSPO; an 18-year-old company willing to sit back down in the classroom is something every Guide should sit with for a moment — our value has never been in the beginners, but in whether we can get the most experienced people to learn again.
Hong Sheng Construction, the largest contractor in southern Taiwan, had its management lead from the front, with 62 mid-to-senior leaders becoming CSMs. Shin Yeh Group, a 1,200-person hospitality brand, had its executive director step in personally to launch its transformation for the AI era. The 70-year-old Nani Publishing had its leadership team lead the way.
Many people see a stack of certificates. What I see is a group of companies choosing to have their highest decision-makers learn again, before the crisis arrives. That is exactly the perspective I want to bring into the Scrum Alliance Board: Scrum is not only a delivery framework — it can be a board-level discipline for decision-making.
A word to the Guide community: this relationship deserves to be rebuilt
The next part, I want to say directly to the CSTs, CECs, and CTCs.
You are the people who have taught thousands of CSMs and CSPOs. You are the true roots of this community. Over the past while, between Scrum Alliance and the Guide community, there is trust and rapport that needs to be realigned and rebuilt.
My second commitment as a candidate is to rebuild that relationship. Not with more public-relations language, but with three concrete things: honest dialogue, financial transparency, and shared decisions on the work ahead. Stronger Guides mean better learning for every member — that is one thing, not two.
I also want to be clear: on matters of Licensed Training Partner policy, I will recuse myself from the vote. Because I am a stakeholder myself, and a director worth trusting must know when to take his hands off the table. Good governance begins with honesty, and honesty begins with not pretending you have no stake.
What you get when you vote for me
Let me put it even more plainly.
When you vote for me, here is what you get: your manager trusts your CSM more; and if your manager holds a CSPO, he recognizes the value of yours. You will see Scrum actually start to move inside your own company — because the top and the bottom moving together has always been the only way it succeeds.
If you are not in Taiwan, this vote still matters to you. What I want to do knows no borders: to make senior leaders take Scrum seriously again. When the decision layer starts thinking in Scrum, the beneficiary is every CSM and CSPO in the world, no matter which country you are in.
Nine seats, three elected, one vote: yours is rarer than you think
Let me lay out the rules, because they truly matter.
The board has nine seats in total, and only three are elected by members — and each member may vote for only one person. In other words, the rarity of the single vote in your hand is far greater than your intuition suggests. The voting window is only two weeks: June 10 to 24, 2026. Once it closes, it’s gone.
Choosing not to vote is also a decision. It simply carries a price — letting someone else decide the future direction of Scrum for you. You’ve read this far, which means this is not truly unimportant to you.
My campaign information is all here: https://rogersnotes.com/vote-roger/. If you share this direction, do one thing for me — forward this page to one person you know who holds a Scrum Alliance certification and hasn’t voted yet. Bring just one more person to the polls, and we’re one step closer.
Closing: the one thing I hope you remember when my term ends
This is a focused term, and I know it. I cannot lift the whole world on my own, but the Scrum Alliance Board can — it can amplify this influence across the globe.
So on the day I step down and am no longer on the board, if there is one thing people remember, I hope it is this: there was someone from Taiwan who made Scrum Alliance rethink the way it sees Scrum — that agile should not stay in the IT trenches; its real trend is to move into every non-IT industry, to take a seat at the executive’s decision table, and to return to where decisions are truly made.
This is the future of Scrum, and it is everybody’s challenge.
Voting opens June 10. When it does, remember to cast that vote — for yourself, and for this community.
https://rogersnotes.com/vote-roger/
