Passed PSM I in first attempt with 97.5% score

I am very happy (and somewhat relieved) to say that I cleared PSM I couple of days back with 97.5% score (78/80).

Learning Process

• I had good exposure of working in Agile work environments and had bit of Scrum Master experience as well. However, I had to unlearn few things like Sprint 0 and Hardening Sprints. Just goes to show that you may be practising something for some time but it may not be the right way of doing things. So, if you are new to Scrum, don’t fret – you too can pass the assessment in your first try.

• I picked PSM for many reasons but my main reason was that its assessment is not the easiest to crack and you simply can’t pass it by looking your answers online during the exam. Even though it’s an online assessment, you must have a good idea about Scrum framework to clear the test. And it takes at least 85% to clear – as I said, not the easiest assessment. It will force you to learn and that’s a good thing.

• Make the Scrum Guide as your main learning source. Nothing else. Although the content is condensed in only 16 pages, every word and sentence is important. Take a printout for easy reading but don’t try to underline as you will end up underlining almost all the lines. Prepare separate notes/cheat sheet for easy reference.

• For additional study material, again I would like to emphasize that you stick to Scrum.org only. Plenty of reading material, community discussions over here – try Scrum.org’s youtube channel too.

• Practise the open assessments on Scrum.org many (many many) times. And try all open assessments – be it for SM, PO, Dev, Agile leader (Kanban and Agile Measurement are not that critical but nice to try in case you want to expand your knowledge base).

• If you practise the open assessments multiple times, you would have a decent question bank of over 100 questions related to Scrum. I got around 35 questions directly or very similar to the open assessments in real assessment. So, if you have good practise, they will save precious time when the heat is on during real assessment.

• You can try multiple other assessments online to practise but be cautious - some of them may have incorrect answers. The only other good practise assessment is Mikhail Lapshin’s free assessment at https://mlapshin.com/. Don’t bother with anything else – I haven’t used any paid practise tests so I can’t say if they are good or bad. However, you won’t really need them if you have used the freely available knowledge base to its full extent.

Exam Process

• I took the exam on my phone to avoid any power or internet breakdown situation. Remember you only get one shot for the exam and that window is open for only 60 minutes - so make sure you are ready for everything. (Don’t forget to charge your phone 100% before starting the exam)

• Keep the printed Scrum Guide and your notes nearby for quick reference. Also ensure that you have a notepad and pen to note down all questions that you would like to revisit before finishing the exam.

• Set a countdown on a separate phone so that you can track the time during exam. This is important to pace your speed. Have a bottle of water and something to eat handy too.

• The real assessment interface was exactly the same as the open assessments (that’s what I experienced on my phone). You won’t be able to bookmark any questions but you will have Display previously viewed questions link at the bottom (just like you have it in open assessments) to revisit any questions that you have noted down in your notepads.

• To my surprise, I didn’t face any lag between question loading – I took the exam late night on Sunday (well Monday 1AM) so probably that would have helped. Hence, pick a time when you feel you will have the best internet connection and less load on Scrum servers.

• I had practised the open assessments so many times that I think I developed muscle memory. I was able to finish the exam in 30 minutes and had more than enough time to go through all the 22 questions that I noted down for review. Hence, practise and practise the assessments so that you don’t have to rush during real exam.

• Take every single minute of your 60-minute window to make sure that you are happy with your answers before clicking on complete assessment. Don’t rush even if you have finished answering all the questions in 30-40 minutes.

Hope my experience will help all those who are preparing for the assessment. Good luck and scrum on.

Hi,

I would like to take the exam ASAP.

Can you please list for me the best study material simulation exam, cheat sheet , mock exam , question bank, etc.

Thanks a lot!!

Suheer 

Hello PSMs,

May I request you to kindly share your to-do list for preparing for the PSM-1 exam with us, as fellow PSM candidates, to help us achieve our goals?

Thank you and best regards.