PSK 1 Passed: Some Tips to share
Hi All,
I passed PSK 1 (94%) a couple of days ago on my 2nd attempt. I had taken the 1st attempt previously in the 1st week of May. I wanted to share some of my learning experiences with the larger community. Here it goes:
- The Scrum Guide and the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams are obviously the bedrock for the PSK 1 Assessment. It is also important to understand the interaction between both Scrum and Kanban Practices and if employing any of the Kanban practices alter the existing Scrum Framework (rules, artifacts,events or roles). Many of the questions would test your understanding in this subject.
- The blogs '4 Key Flow Metrics and how to use them in Scrum's events', Limiting Work in Progress (WIP) in Scrum with Kanban - What? When? Who? How?, and 'Kanban Service Level Expectations and how to use them in Scrum' are quite important and provide a deeper understanding of the application of Kanban Practices. This is a core subject area for the Assessment.
- It is also important to understand atleast the basics of Little's law, and the article 'Little's Law for Professional Scrum with Kanban' by Daniel Vacanti is quite helpful.
- It is also useful to read the book Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability: An Introduction by Daniel Vacanti, again to have a deeper understanding of the key Agile metrics including CFDs and Cycle Time Scatterplots and the assumptions for Little's law (in greater depth)
- I would suggest also to read each question carefully as some times you would get a hint to the answers in the framing of the questions itself. In some of the instances, it might be easier to use a process of elimination of the incorrect options to validate the correct options.
Hope these tips are useful. It is certainly a tough exam but not insurmountable. Best of Luck to everyone!!
With Regards,
Salil
Great info Salil! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the info Salil. Reading Scrum with Kanban, you got me interested :)
One more point. You should keep in mind that the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams doesn't cancel any events, artifacts, roles or rules from the original Scrum Guide. Here's the suitable quote from the "End Note" of Scrum Guide.
Scrum’s roles, events, artifacts, and rules are immutable and although implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum. Scrum exists only in its entirety and functions well as a container for other techniques, methodologies, and practices.
Hi Salil, congrats for the PSK 1.
I have some doubt about "the explicit policies" part. Is "Sprint goal" an explicit policies? The fact that a meeting like sprint retrospective should be a meeting of 3hours also an explicit policies ?
In the Kanban guide, they only spoke about Definition of Done. Can you please help me about the meaning of explicit policy in scrum with kanban context ?
Youssef - The specific Sprint Goal for a certain Sprint isn't an explicit policy.
Agreeing that "Every one of our Sprints should have a Goal" IS an explicit policy.
Agreeing to "Have a Retrospective every Sprint. It should be up to 3 hours (for our 30 days Sprint)" is another explicit policy. some policies will be based on Scrum rules. Some will be created locally by the Scrum Team and evolved/adapted over time.
The Scrum with Kanban Guide talks about definition of Workflow which explicitly defines how the team's flow should look like. e.g. states, card types, WIP limits, prioritization approach, pull mechanisms, cadences, etc. Definition of Done is PART of the definition of Workflow in a way.
Hope this helps.
Hi,
Where to get "The Scrum with Kanban Guide" from?
Where to get "The Scrum with Kanban Guide" from?
There seems to be a discrepency between this article (https://www.scrum.org/resources/littles-law-professional-scrum-kanban) and the one I have found on a different site (https://scrumandkanban.co.u... in regards to Little's Law. Which one should be used for the PSK exam?