It's not difficult to pass PSM 1

@Eric If the aim of organisation is promoting Scrum worldwide, the certification should be free. Otherwise it is impediment in developing people's skills.

Essence of Scrum Master's daily work is eliminating impediments for the peoples who are developing an increment. In that case the increment of Scrum usage is endangered.

It is a kind of impediment to eliminate by all people who would like to promote Scrum. 

The organisation can get benefits from donations.

Hi Guys,

I prepare exam for scrum master certificate and you knows the guide changed.

Do you think shall i wait or ??

Thank You

@tomasz, you are exactly right which is why we provide all information including the Scrum Guide for free.  You do not need certification to promote Scrum, that is optional.

@burak, On November 18th, a new version of the Scrum Guide was made available. All Assessments and Classes will be based on the previous version (2017) through January 9th 2021.  Remember though, Scrum is still Scrum and although there are some minor changes to the test to support it, how you apply Scrum doesn't change.

I passed PSM 1 with 100% score (Scrum Guide 2020).

My advice:

1. Do not be stressed. The exam is not difficult (of course you must be well prepared).

2. Do not buy any external exam mockups. What you need is:

• The valid version of Scrum Guide (reading and listening)
• Open assessments (Scrum Open, PO),
• Scrum.org forum (feel free to ask)
• Free tests online (mostly to practice work under time pressure, do not trust answers without any descriptions, nor possibility to discuss each question with other people)
• Time to absorb the knowledge (do not aim to pass the exam in next few days after first contact with Scrum Guide, give yourself time to understand it and think about how you can implement it in real projects)

3. Experience as Scrum Master, or working in Agile organization (not mandatory, but really helps to understand the concept)

As a final thought, some people say that the real exam is slower because it takes time until next question is displayed. It did not happen in my case, so I do not think it is a case. Maybe it is a good idea to check the internet connection before taking the exam.

If the organization's goal is to promote Scrum around the world, why the certification is paid?

Tomasz, with regards, but a little bit strange question. Scrum.org is the best scrum platform that you can find on internet. Furthermore, scrum.org forum is the best online place to discuss about many Scrum topics. And it costs too much money (traffic, advert, servers and so on). 

Here is what I recommend noting that the exam is not any harder than the many of the practice exams available:

- be careful you are only learning from update scrum material post Nov 2020 (lastest update) since some things have changed

- understand the agile manifesto https://agilemanifesto.org/

- read the scrum guide carefully several times and make sure you understand it

- do a udemy course on professional scrum master, pick the highest rated course

- pay for the test exams on https://www.volkerdon.com/ as they are brilliant

- review this website https://scrum101.com/

- learn about the difference between scrum.org and scrumalliance.org https://www.thescrummaster.co.uk/scrum/scrum-org-scrum-alliance-compared/

- once you are scoring in high 90s for exams, you are ready to pass PSM I

Hi everybody!

I've taken two certification (PSM-I and PSD-I) with a quite quick preparation and good results.

I took PSD-I on January 9th, just in time before the switch to SG2020, preparing it intensively for about a couple of week (during X-mas holidays).

After that, as I realized it would have been quite simple to take also PSM-I (and I didn't have to pay for the assessment, thanks to my company), I studied the new Scrum Guide for a couple of day and last Sunday I took it too.

Now I'm looking for a new job where I can apply this knowledge. In the while, I'm happy to share with the community a document that I realized during my studies: it's a big glossary for PSD that I got by merging several documents. Unfortunately it's based on SG2017, so there is some outdated entry. You can take it from there:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14GkGebSsfBQwSbRXzy8XiSaIW_037MBh/view

I hope it will be helpful for someone ;)

Marco

If you find a given exam a cakewalk, easy, challenging, hard or impossible, depends on a few things - 

• your knowledge and mindset before you became aware of the topic,
• what you do to learn abou the topic, 
• what you do to adjust your mindset in line with the topic, and
• what you do to prepare for the exam.

I personally found PSM1 and PSPO1 straight forward. I did not set myself an objective beyond that required to gain the accreditation. For me in Australia one of the biggest challenges I faced was simply "internet connectivity" which I am sure was never intended to be an area being assessed by the exam, but with a significant number of pages to load and responses to submit - the technical makeup of the activity was one of my biggest challenges.

I rushed some questions which I got wrong because I was pressed for time due to the time it was taking to load pages.

Having said that: if you find the exam is a challenge then it's because you've started in a different place to people who find it challenging. My approach was primarily read the guide, review the forum, watch several videos, attempt the practice exam. Repeate until the practice exam score is 100%, three sittings in a row. Wait 2 weeks then do the practice exams again. When you can do the 3x practice exams and get 100% on all of them, every second week, a few times in a row - then the practice exams are not going to add to your preparation.

I think a different approach is needed beyond the level 1 exams though.

I'm hoping to attempt the same approach for Professional Agile Leader. I'm hoping the exam doesn't surprise me too much compared to the practice exam, if it does I will be disapointed but I will simply have to work out how to overcome my shortcoming in preparing.

I'm a developer who has been a member of some Scrum teams for years now, in the past I have read some Scrum articles or books. Recently I decided to take the exam because I was thinking about switching my career from a developer to a more managerial position, so I did my best to get the PSM 1 Certificate by following tips in the forum.

I passed the exam with around 92% score but I don't think it's easy at all considering all the preparations that I have done.

• Scrum Guide
• Essential Scrum(not the best book for exam but one of the best for real understanding of Scrum)
• Articles in the Learning Path section as pointed by suggested reading

As for the training and mock test questions:

• Scrum Open Assessment - 5 times
• PO Open Assessment - 1 times
• Udemy mock Questions(made by the Agile Team) - 4 x 1 times
• mplashin mock questions - 3 times
• Other free mock questions - 1 times each

A lot of people in here suggest reading Scrum Guide multiple times, while it's a good advice for beginners who are new to Scrum, but unfortunately it's not enough and effective to just bluntly repeating reading it from the beginning to end after you reach a certain level.

For me, a quicker and most effective solutions is to do a lot of mock tests, note the wrong answers, think about it and ask them to forums and if you still don't get it. If you think you understand Scrum Guide enough and won't achieve further understanding then do not re-read it from beginning to the end. Do a lot of mock tests. The open assessments won't be enough as there are harder questions on the exam although I guess it still resolves in the fundamental area. Just don't expect that all of them will be like in the open assessment.

Hi Everyone,

I have started prepping for this exam by reading the scrum guide and doing the open assessments.

Are any questions in the open assessments repeated in the exam. I am constantly getting 93.3% in the open assessment.

I noticed that some people have stuck to the Scrum guide while some have used other sources as well. What is the best way to prepare?

How difficult is the exam by the way?

Thanks,

Hamid

Hi All,



Having passed PSM 1, I'd like to share a few words about what helped / what I recommend. (Background: I have zero work experience in software development, so had to learn everything from scratch.)



- There are good Scrum / Agile courses on Udemy; look for ones rated 4.5 and above and those explicitly stating that the content has been fully updated for SG2020. I took one called Agile Scrum Mastery and found it a good introduction. I also heard good things about mplaza; based on what they make available for free, their quality is good but I didn't buy the course or the tests there.

- Read SG2020, SG2017 and the Nexus guide several times. I didn't print anything out, but used an add-on for Firefox called "Multiple Search and Highlight" to mark up roles, artifacts, events and other keywords. If you're an auditory type learner, there are also youtube videos of people reading the SG.

- Practice / mock tests also help. I used Volkerdon (great quality, high relevance for the actual assessment); the Scrum, PSPO and Nexus open assessments here on Scrum.org; and another course consisting of practice tests on Udemy that shall remain unnamed as their quality was less than stellar. The Scrum.org opens were also helpful as the test interface is identical, so you can practice bookmarking, checking your time and navigating to questions you're unsure about. Practice the Scrum.org opens until you can do each within 5-6 minutes, at 100%, at least 2-3 times in a row.

- Read the test questions and answers very carefully -- don't miss a "not" or mistake a "which is false" for a "which is true" type question. In spite of several warnings in paid practice tests, I didn't get many questions like that (generally, the assessment was straightforward and not trying to "trick" you) but it's good to stay alert.

- I took a LOT of notes (on paper, in a notebook), then added other notes / detail / used highligter. You don't have to; it helped me because, as I wrote, I started from scratch and having it written down helped with seeing the logic / connections better.

- Once I got the framework down, my main issue was the "if x happens, what should the SM/PO/Devs do?" type questions -- again, because I don't have experience to rely on here. But if you understand the framework and terminology, you can deduce the answer (elimination of obviously wrong answers also helps).

- Terminology was a steep learning curve for me (burndown, burnup, velocity, baselining, refactoring, automated tests etc.) but didn't seem an emphasis on the assessment. Still, you won't pass based only on what's in SG2020; you must know some technical terms.

- If, like me, you're not a native speaker of English, you need to pay attention to another level of nuance: "attend" vs. "participate", "must" vs. "should" vs. "may", "plan" vs. "forecast" etc.). There's some material on this here on Scrum.org.

Good luck!

 

Just passed the exam with 93.8%. Thank a lot to everyone for suggestion in guidance in forum.

Thanks to Mikhail Lapshin for real time quiz and learning mode quiz. 

Refer following that will help you to crack exam. 

1) Scrum Guide (Every time you read , you will find something new, read it as much as possible)

2) Scrum Open Assessment (30 questions give it 10 to 15 times untill you score 100% consistently)

3) Quiz prepared by Mikhail Lapshin on learning mode and real mode(Multiple times). 

Actual exam is taking more time then Real Mode Mikhail Lapshin or any other assessment you use.

Don't bookmark to many questions.

I cleared my exam on May 8th with 96.3% (I was hoping to get 100% with the confidence I answered them though ;) ) You will not find this exam difficult if you've read and digested scrum guide multiple times. That's the only Mantra I felt..

I took 2 weeks for preparation, reading the guide everyday once and trust me, it would start making lot more sense when you read it like 4th or 5th time.

I did couple of courses from Udemy that my company had offered free of cost and took the Scrum.org open assessment multiple times  until I got to the level of scoring 100% consecutively 3 times and attempting it in less than 6 mins. That's when I knew I was ready.

I finished attempting all questions in 40 mins and then used the 20 mins window to review flagged ones first and the rest later.

Good luck to you all!

Thanks for your help, but how can I answer the scaled scrum 

I am agree with the thought and scrum is the only part that is becoming difficult for me to understand and digest. 

Hello Folks,

Hope all are doing great.

I am planning to attempt PSM1 & while going through few comments above I understand Scrum Guide is the key to pass the exam & a free guide from Mikhail Lapshin has also been helpful.

Are there any other suggestions I am missing out on ?. Do let me know. Thanks for your help in advance.

Regards,

Mona 

I have cleared the PSM I certification in first attempt with 98.8% score on 2nd November. The exam is not that difficult and two to three weeks preparation is good enough for clearing this test.

Read the scrum guide really well as you can expect questions on every line written in guide. After reading the guide 4 to 5 times , start doing the sample test ( Scrum Open and Product Owner Open ) given in scrum.org and  PSM I™ Preparation Quiz – Real Mode(MPLAPSHIN). Questions mentioned here will give you more understanding on scrum roles, events, rules & artifacts.

Review every incorrect question and try to understand the concepts behind them by revisiting scrum guide. You can schedule the exam when you start getting 100 % consistently in the above mentioned sample exams.

Thanks Jack and all for the valuable tips, I have successfully cleared my PSM 1 exam with 89%. 

All the best to the furture learners.

Happy Scruming😊

i have some questions

are these topics included in professional scrum master1 exam or not

1-- EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT GUIDE

2---Professional Scrum Developer glossary.

3---KANBAN GUIDE FOR SCRUM TEAMS

thanks in advance

Hi All,

Just sharing the good news... Passed PSM1 with 98.8%.  if at all anyone is interested in how I prepared, I will say the same what other peers have explained in other forums on scrum org. 

I will keep it short- 

1) Scrum Guide v2020 - after every wrong answer, I used to go to that part and read it carefully, to have a clear understanding of what it says.

2) I have taken a course by Vdespa, and more things cleared after that. 

3) Mikhail Lapshin - I find his quiz easy (if not very easy). but there, questions are based on v2017 so I was not very sure of a few answers. as they still using v2017 terminology. 

4) Scrum Open - I practiced Scrum/ Product owner/ Agile/ Nexus open - I guess that would be sufficient. 

also tried hands-on other Mock quizzes. Let me tell you, other forum quiz questions- they are not aligned with v2020 and some of the questions - might trick you with the wrong answers. so be careful where you are practicing.  That's one big issue with other exams - as there is a difference between the 2017 and 2020 guide, so pls mind it.  I would not brag, but my concept was clear so I was sure, whatever question will come in the exam, it would be based on scrum guide terminology and I will answer accordingly. 

A few questions came directly from scrum open so yes practice those. again, those are not that difficult. 

From an exam perspective, not very difficult if the scrum guide was understood properly.  Good Luck Folks..!! I am open to any questions.

Thanks

Sanjay

Thanks for helping with this problem.

I am really thankful for this forum

Thanks you all for your guidance. I have passed the exam in my first attempt with a score of 89%. I have followed everything which is asked to follow here in this forum and gave a lots of mock exams. I took 2 weeks to fully prepare on the course and cleared the exam in my first attempt.

Cheers

Hello All,

I have been preparing for PSM1 for last few months (managing some time out of my busy work and daily schedule :) ). I have been studying based on suggestion from my friend as well as the forum here. Below is how I have prepared.

1) Downloaded, printed the Scrum Guide 2020 and studied 2-3 times.

2) Made notes wherever possible.

3) Have been regularly taking Scrum.Org Open Assessments for Scrum Master (30 questions) and Product Owner (15 questions); But not Nexus or Developers or Kanban - I'll tell later why.

4) Have completed one Training in Udemy on PSM1 (by Mirko Perkusich, Ph.D).

5) Have been regularly taking PSM1 Mock Tests / Quizzes from Udemy, taken around 35 so far.

6) Taken a few Scrum Quizzes (Real / Practice) from mlapshin.com.

This is now where I stand now.

1) Can complete a full suite of Open Assessment of 80 questions in 20 minutes or less nowadays.

2) Able to score 95% on an average nowadays in Mock Tests / Quizzes from Udemy / Mlapshin (Haven't scored less than 90% in those tests for last two weeks).

3) Can finish 30 questions from Scrum.Org Scrum Master Open Assessment in 4-5.5 minutes and can score 100%.

4) Can finish 15 questions from Scrum.Org Product Owner Open Assessment in 3-4.5 minutes and score 93% /100%.

5) Tried the Scrum.Org Developers Open Assessments a couple of times, but couldn't pass as I saw many questions not from the Scrum Guide (some questions are even technical).

6) Same as Scrum.Org Nexus Open Assessments, couldn't pass those as well for the same reason.

I am not sure if my preparation is enough to pass the PSM1. Is there some other area from where I could expect questions to appear from? Should I try to master Scrum.Org Developer / Nexus / Kanban Open Assessments as well? (The Udemy Training I took says not necessary, also didn't see questions coming from there in the Mock Tests I took). Someone please advise. Thanks in Advance!

I did my PSM I exam and had 93.8%. I mostly used the scrum guide to practice, coupled with my experience and practice of Scrum. I also kept taking the Scrum Master Open Assessment till I had a 100% a couple of times. The scrum guide helps to about 50% but you need to check quizlet and watch a lot of videos.

The Professional Scrum Master certification, popularly known as PSM I and PSM II from Scrum.org, offers an excellent opportunity to validate your knowledge of Scrum and improve your career trajectory. 

Check this guide to know the complete detail of the dos and don’ts of taking your PSM exam to ensure you are well-prepared to pass your PSM certification exam on your first try.

The Professional Scrum Master (PSM) certification is an essential milestone for Scrum practitioners. It demonstrates your ability to apply the Scrum framework and your commitment to the profession.

Hi everyone, 

First off all, thanks a lot to every author in this thread for these helpful posts! I just passed Scrum PSM 1 with 97%. I advise everyone to read the Scrum Guide thoroughly and really understand the core Scrum concepts (e.g. epirism, lean thinking, self-management, etc.), accountabilities, artifacts, and events.

Because a lot of people on here did practice exams besides the open assessment, I also used an Udemy course with some practice questions. There are some questions in there that are not related to the Scrum guide at all. Overall, I generally would use additional questions carefully, as they are not provided by scrum.org.

In my opinion, it's more important to really understand the official scrum guide. The exam has a lot of questions that don't just test facts from the official guide. Most of the questions test your understanding of scrum. Some questions go beyond the guide, but most of them can be answered by thinking in scrum and excluding answers that don't make much sense.

Good luck!

Hi from Morocco,

Happy to share that I have succeeded the PSM I exam on my first attempt with 96.3% score (77/80).

Here are some takeaways:

1. I had no previous work experience with Scrum.
2. I took the exam in English, which is my 3rd language, and that was not an issue even with an intermediate level.
3. It took me 1 month preparation on a moderate pace.
4. I started with a deep study of the official Scrum Guide and tried the open assessment PSM I multiple times with 100%scrore.
5. I took a good Udemy course, helpful to understand key concepts.
6. I practiced many mook tests - with explained answers – in study mode.

I look forward to my first practical experience.

Wish you success.

I agree! However you need to study and try a lot of past questions and mock exams. I just passed my exams yesterday.

Hi everyone,

I cleared the PSM1 exam yesterday on my first attempt and wanted to tell you how I prepared. 



I come from a non-IT field and have no experience working with Scrum. It took me about 10 days of preparation. I scored 96.3%.



How I prepared :

1. Read the Scrum Guide 1 time to get an overview of what is Scrum, didn't understand most of the things. 

2. Did a course on Udemy by Mirko. Started understanding Scrum.

3. Did assessment of PSM 1 and PSPO 1 on Scrum.org aiming to get 100% on multiple attempts.

4. Did assessment on Mikhail Lapshin's website multiple times both in learning and real mode aiming to get 100% on multiple attempts.

5. Did mock exams of my Udemy course by Mirko again aiming to get 100% on multiple attempts.

6. Read the Scrum Guide 2 times again and understood many important things

7. Continued steps 3, 4 & 5 whenever I got the time

On the day of the exam : 

1. Did step 5 and step 3

2. Just before the exam did step 3, 2 times again and started my PSM 1 exam 

3. I finished the whole exam in 25 mins and flagged about 22 questions, which I answered thereafter after checking on Scrum Guide or Google.

4. Remember this is an Open Book Exam.



Good Luck everyone !!

 

When I started my Scrum Agile endeavour, some 8 years ago Scrum was like joining rock band. You go to audition(interviuw) you play the guitar or drums and you are in or out.

Then after 7 years of Scrum master and PO at the hotel, I re entered a market and felt like Rip Van Winkle (fictional character from Washington Irving novel who slept 100 years and woke up).

Its a pure corporate industry where everyone is asking for certificate, so I had to catch up-I got my PSM I already(90% from first try which I consider underachievement) now will go for PSPO I and then will try to beat the market with SPS (nexus)..

What is my opinion about exam:

Its difficult

It has lot of "trick" questions, answering 80 questions in 60 minutes takes plenty of concentration, and there is lots of hard core theory.

About preparation-if you are preparing on your own don't use any you tube videos or random "pass the test" courses.

They are confusing at best or plain misleading at worst.

There are resources which everyone recommends for practice, Michael Lapshins blog, and Management Plaza

As for Lapshin it is based on 2017 version of Scrum guide, not 2020, and this matters believe me.

One example-in 2017 there was a provision that Scrum team MUST include at least one process which improves their performance, if they discover such, in the Sprint backlog for next sprint.

In 2020 they changed it to the provision that team CAN do it.

Believe it or not there is a question related to this difference in the test!

So my suggestion is to practise Lapsihins blog until you will spot his mistakes. After that leave it.

As for Management Plaza, they are possibly dodging copyright when presenting their practice test, and as a  result the language is so botched, that it gives you a headache.

It is good practice to feel good at actual test though, because the language of test is much easier

What to do:

Read Scrum Guide daily while preparing. Like a Catholic reading a Bible or Muslim reading a Koran

Also put some audio and having on when you workout, eat or whatever.

Have it printed out and in front of you during the test.

DONT use any cheats or hucks, they are mostly misleading, and with 45 seconds to answer you will not make it, while verifying all answers by google.

Carefully read all the preparation links which scrum.org has sent together with a password, and follow all the sublinks.

There  are tons of useful videos, blogs and feedback which will help.

Try to memorize as much as you can.

If you are new to Scrum you will fail anyway, so keep repeating the cycle until ready, but if you have some experience like myself you might get to the test prepared.

Then use open assessments.

Not only for Scrum master but all, including developers

Practice until you get 100% on each, every day, every week. It is also great lesson, because they give you a feedback on each question.

Practice until you recognize all questions, so you don't even need to download them as a database of questions:.

How to pass the test

First of all make sure that you have no guest coming, and Internet is ok. If test is interrupted, you will have to pay for another try

1 Try to answer all questions as soon as possible creating a time leverage

2. Bookmark all questions you are unsure of, and back up all your bookmarks on paper with pen. Believe me you will need it.

3. Be prepared to some page loading longer, while you're moving to next question eating up precious time. Everyone has same thing.

4 After getting to last question use remaining time(I had like 30 min.) to roll back and correct all possible errors.

5. Concentrate. Biggest catches are questions with two or three possible answers. If you answer only one it will count wrong. Always check how many answers are required

6 Check for "trick" questions. For example you may get question asking what is happening "if scrum backlog item meets definition of ready" with 4 answers, among them "nothing" and "increment is born"

Your mind might trick you to believe that ""definition of ready" is actually "definition of done", and you may answer incorrectly...

I passed PSM I with 80/80 score, so 100%, just by following mirko's course on Udemy.

Read the scrum guide couple of times. It's the main source of the exam. When you read it first, it will feel strange. Just 11 pages but every sentence is important. Each time you read it, you get some new info out of it.

If you do all the quizzes and simulators from his course, check your mistakes, and learn them, you will pass the real exam.

Mirko's exam simulators are up to date and relevant to the scrum guide 2020 version. A lot of real exam questions came from this simulators and open assessments. Don't go to further forum threads or other test practices. Especially lapshin tests. They are outdated and written in a strange english. Sometimes it's hard to even understand the questions from his tests. Actually the real exam was way easier. So it will only confuse you.

Just mirko's course's and scrum.org open assessments was enough. If you pass open assessments in 6-7 minutes without any mistakes and you get 100% from the mirko's simulators, you should pass with a high score.

Keep in mind that the exam is open book, so you can google or search the questions anywhere. But if you're unsure about the question, just choose an answer, bookmark it first and continue with the exam. Once you answer all 80 questions, you should have some time left to come back to those marked questions.

NOTE: you can't copy and paste questions during the exam, so you will have to type it by hand which costs a lot of time. So it's super important to only come back to marked questions after you answer all other questions you know. Also it's not guaranteed that you'll find the answer to that particular question.

I hope my tips would be helpful for your guys.

Good luck!

Hi all,

I have just passed PSM I today on my first attempt with a 100% score and almost 30 mins of the granted time left. 

What I did and what might also work for others is the following:

(1) Study and understand the Scrum Guide 2020 as deeply as your time allows

(2) Watch all the scrum.org videos here or on YouTube. Take notes and add them to your Scrum Guide copy until it you have a clear understanding (incl. the background information given) of ALL the topics. For a 5 min. video it took me further 15-20 mins to gather alle the content that was helpful. A heavily note-crowded Scrum Guide on all 10 pages is a very good indication. Read your notes several times!

(3) Do the Scrum open assessment several times. Practice until the only outcome is 100%.

(4) 3 days before the exam, I started taking Mirko´s course on Udemy for PSM I exam prep ("Complete Agile Scrum Master Certification Training") and this was key and a game-changer! In terms of additional information, explanations and the chance to have (valuable) mock exams I would highly recommend considering to have this course to "make things pretty safe". 

Study time: 8 days, apprx. 3-4 hrs each day (during vacations). By proceeding as mentioned above, I was able to very quickly and correctly answer 65 questions since I could almost recognize 1:1. 

Good luck and all the best,

René