Scrum Master

This is an excellent option for entering the software market without having a computer science degree or knowing how to code. Scrum Alliance describes the role of a scrum master as

“The scrum master is the team role responsible for ensuring the team lives agile values and principles and follows the processes and practices that the team agreed they would use. The responsibilities of this role include: … Ensuring a good relationship between the team and product owner as well as others outside the team”

The scrum master has tons of daily interactions with developers. So if you want to learn to code one way to do it is to surround yourself with people who code. Not only will you determine what it’s like to live as a developer you will also interact first hand with the issues that developers face daily.
Now there are a few things to consider before you sign up for your first scrum class.
Do you like helping people work through problems? While a scrum master does not spend the day solving problems with code. They spend tons of time problem-solving. Are you up for spending your days helping others and moving obstacles away from the development team?
Do you have management experience? This question is a hard one for me. Some of the best scrum masters that I have met started with no experience in management. On the other hand, many companies only want to work with scrum masters who have some management experience. I could write an entire post on why I think this is a bad idea, but that is not the focus of this article.

Now let’s talk about the Pros and Cons of taking this approach to entering the software market:

Pros:

Cost: The cost of the class for the first scrum certification is about 1,000K. Compared to the price of a code camp, this is very affordable. Scrum Alliance has a list of courses that you can sign up for, and no experience is required.
Time: You can get the first scrum certification after taking a two-day class. That’s pretty awesome.

Cons:

Risk: Many companies only hire people with a cert and several years of experience. This approach is one way to enter the software market, but it is not a guaranteed approach. You have to be willing to put in the effort to get experience and look for companies who are eager to take the risk.