A few years ago a few of us asked ourselves the question - "what would we need a person to know before we trusted them to touch code?"  We put together a set of competencies that we felt were the minimum that was required.  The rationale was that if they didn't know these, then faced with a situation that called for one of them, the person would likely write code that was of insufficient quality.  We put this list together in a roadmap form.  That is, start at one end of the list and keep going until you've learned all of what it details.  We call this the "Roadmap to Lean-Agile Programming Competencies." Although you'll have to register at our site to look at it, it's likely worth your while if you are a developer.

Anyway, I recently got the same idea with process.  What would someone have to know in order for me to let them run a project of mine?  Interestingly enough, the list is not contingent on the type of projects they'd be working on.  Much of the knowledge centers on Lean and Agile.  For example, there are many Lean principles they'd have to be familiar with:

Poppendieck's 7 principles of Lean Software Development

• optimize the whole
• deliver fast
• eliminate waste
• build quality in
• respect people
• defer commitment
• create knowledge

Basic Lean Concepts of Flow, and Just In Time (JIT), and Utilization Theory

• Manage with pull
• Strive for minimizing your cycle time, not the utilization of your resources
• Minimize Work in Process (WIP)
• remove delays to reduce costs and improve time
• work on smaller batches, strive for one piece flow
• Limit work to capacity
• avoid thrashing

There are others, of course.  There are many Agile practices people should know as well.  People should know how to do:

• Lean-Agile Release Planning 
• Team estimation
• The need for and how to do Sprint 0
• Writing user stories based on tests
• ...

And, of course, there are certain Agile practice they should understand:

• why time-boxing works
• how to plan an iteration
• how and why to move testing up to the front of the development cycle

I can see a new project coming up to explicitly detail all of this. 

What strikes me, however, is how little of this is in Scrum.  And, with the exception of those Scrum trainers who also endorse Lean (Jean Tabaka, Hubert Smits, Jim York, for example) I've never seen these concepts talked about in a ScrumMaster training endorsed by the Scrum Alliance.

In fact, when I think about it, most of the Scrum Master training I have seen focuses on practices and coaching ability.  But where are the concepts that one must have to be successful? 

Do people think we don't need these for process?  We certainly have a lot of them on the technical side. It's true process may be more difficult to define, but I think the principles on which it is based are getting more and more understood.

I've posted these items at the Lean-Agile Yahoo User Group Wiki.  I'll update that as time permits. I invite suggestions from people for what they would include.