Failed PSM I - Please Help!

I followed the recommendations of others on this board and don't have anything else to add: 1.  read the Scrum Guide several times (read actively, think about the implications of everything).  2.  Take the Open Assessments until you consistently get 100% in less than 4 minutes.  3.  Use the resources on Mikhail Lapshin's site, which are fantastic.  4. Read the blog posts.  They give you valuable insights about applying Scrum principles to the type of hypothetical situations you might find on a test.

If you do all of that you'll pass with flying colors.

Hi Seth,

First and foremost: do not let down!

In addition to what Arthur says, being short of time might be a symptom for needing more training on some PSM areas. Review your results sent by scrum.org to your mail. There you'll find the feedback about the areas you need more focus on. Questions falling in those "weak" areas are the ones slowing you down during the exam, so each time you need to check the Scrum Guide, review your notes or simply think more on them it consequently eats up a bit more of your exam time. A nice approach when in doubt is to mark the answer(s) you feel correct and bookmark the question for later review. If the case is that you are bookmarking a lot of them (let's say more than 20? in my case) looks like you still need more training. Memorize but also feel confident on what you are answering, and also deep-know why the other answers are not correct or less correct from a Scrum point of view. Hypothetical situations are exactly that, hypothetical, but they are based upon reality. If you have none to little experience on practicing scrum for real you'd find them quite too much to tackle in 40 seconds. You should be able to go over the 80 questions once in 20-25 minutes, then do a second pass spending more time on your bookmarks to deliver a right answer.  

Also consider buying some online resources like mplaza and others you may find throughout this forum. Even though you must take a bit of care about their questions/answers since they are not 'official' resources, they make a good job on training your velocity and orienting about how to perform faster.

Hope this helps.

Hi Seth - What books have you used for your studying?  You now have some empirical evidence of what the exam is like, how might you adapt the next time you try the PSM I?

Keep at it - next time will be better if you use the feedback on areas to improve.

Chris

It takes practice. It also really takes a solid understanding of the Scrum Guide because otherwise, you spend too much time thinking about what the answer is.

Something else that seems a bit unorthodox but will help, take the Open Assessments and look for the blatantly wrong answers. In other words, your goal score should be 0 within 4 minutes. Do this in conjunction with making 100 on the Open Assessment within 4 minutes.

The reason is because if you keep redoing the Open Assessment, you start memorizing the answer to certain questions and you stop thinking about the answer. Switch gears to point out the obvious wrong answers will shock your brain and help your learning. 

Make your self comfortable with Scrum Guide & Scrum open assessment before attempting the exam. Read about burn-down & burn-up chart as well.