In this post I’d like to briefly summarize Professional Scrum Master I training and certification exam. I attended the course in September and passed the exam at first attempt this week.
Course
I find the course was quite useful. This provided more information than is available in scrum guide [3]. It especially is addressed to soft skills which a scrum master should posses. There were also presented some scenarios which may be met in scrum. Most time of the course was a presentation given by the trainer. There were also team-based exercises and the trainer was open to our questions. See also the official course resource page [1].
Course materials:
- PSM student workbook
- Poker planning cards
- Voucher for the PSM I exam
Exam
Being familiar with scrum guide [3] is a must in order to pass the exam. This even may be not enough. Little experience in scrum environment or research in scrum scenarios will be very helpful. Studying proper use cases will clarify scrum theory presented in the guide. The questions are rather straightforward. You must be fluent in the scrum area. There are only 60 minutes to answer 80 questions. In my opinion there is required deep understanding of the whole content provided in the guide. In addition to the guide it is valuable taking open assessment [2]. The general advice is to taking it until you’ll be able achieve score of 100% each time. I’ve over two years experience in scrum and I’m currently a scrum master at my work. After the course I went through scrum guide few times and finally done open assessment.
References
[1] https://www.scrum.org/Courses/Professional-Scrum-Master