Professional Scrum Master

What Is Skill-Based PSM?

Skill-Based PSM is my way of delivering the Professional Scrum Master™ (PSM) class, including many extensions.

Skill-Based PSM is designed from the ground up as an immersive Professional Scrum experience.

It aims to be as representative as possible of Professional Scrum, and as practical as possible, while staying in line with the vision of the Professional Scrum Master™ class. This is the Professional Scrum Master™ class, supercharged with practice.

Skill-Based PSM is a superb first class to take, to get you started as a beginning Scrum Master.

This training is not lecture-based. It is 100% experiential, practical, and student-centric from beginning to end.

Each training is limited to a maximum of 8 students. You are guaranteed to learn in a small group, ensuring a high level of attention, customization, and Q & A access to the trainer.

For additional information on the Professional Scrum Master™ (PSM) class, please see the full datasheet.

What You Will Learn

Skill-Based PSM covers all course objectives, mandatory activities, memorable teaching moments, experience highlights, look-and-feel identity elements, and extras of the Professional Scrum Master™ (PSM) class.

In addition, you also get:

1. A zero-lecturing, 100% experiential and practical training
2. A student-centric experience that you will own and run collaboratively using Professional Scrum  
3. Useful tools and skills for introducing Professional Scrum into a team or organization
4. Nine (mini) Sprints of experience (75 minutes each) in using Professional Scrum
5. One or more Sprints of experience working as the Scrum Master
6. Opportunities to reflect on your skills and ongoing professional development as a Scrum Master
7. Development of foundational Professional Scrum Master competencies
   
    

Skill-Based Practice

You will learn and practice a range of foundational Scrum-Master competencies that will be useful later when working on the job.

These base on teaching, training, coaching, mentoring, revealing, facilitating, and taking free-form action.

For successful job performance, it is not enough to know or understand. You will have to do, and do so successfully.

Through live interaction with your peers, you will have the opportunity to:

1. Teach the purpose of Scrum
2. Teach the benefits of Scrum
3. Teach the purpose of the Scrum elements
4. Teach the prerequisites for success of Scrum
5. Support creating the Product Goal
6. Support creating Product Backlog items
7. Support forecasting
8. Support Product Backlog refinement
9. Support stakeholder collaboration
10. Support setting up the Scrum Team
11. Support self-management
12. Support creating the Definition of Done
13. Support the Scrum Events

Learn Scrum Using Scrum

A key challenge shared by many PSM students, is that they have never even been near a Professional Scrum Team. Many foundational Scrum-Master classes do nothing to address this. As a beginning Scrum Master, you can make it through many a class without attending even a single Sprint Planning or Sprint Review, much less supporting any of it as the Scrum Master.

In Skill-Based PSM, you use Professional Scrum to collaboratively run your very training. You plan empirically, self-manage based on the Scrum accountabilities, take guidance in the Scrum values, and create Increments of learning. In doing so, you experience and resolve impediments that are typical of beginning Scrum Teams. You also work as the Scrum Master for one or more Sprints.

In Skill-Based PSM, you experience a genuinely complex situation, and leverage Professional Scrum to navigate it. Professional Scrum is superbly positioned for this scenario: being a framework for solving complex problems, and human learning being a highly complex one.

Do not worry - you will be in a supportive, safe-to-fail space, where experimenting is fun. You can start from where you currently are, and safely work your way up to achieving each learning outcome, while the other students and me will support you.

Tacit Teaching

By using Professional Scrum throughout the training, you will get a taste of what "good" feels like. This is possible only through practical experience, not through talk and theory.

You will be part of a Professional Scrum Team, living and and breathing Professional Scrum for almost the entire duration of the training.

What you experience in class will directly transfer to situations that will find later on the job.

Based on the way you collectively run the training, you will gain a lot of subconscious exposure and sensitization, making the experience highly time-efficient.

Skill-Based PSM is designed to maximize this exposure. It aims to support you in making sense of every part of the experience and turning it into actionable insights.

What Skill-Based PSM Will Require of You

To get the best value out of this training, you will need to take responsibility for your own learning, and collaborate with your peers to work effectively as a Professional Scrum Team.

I probably hate homework as much as you do. However, I found that completing a few warm-up activities a few days prior to the class offers disproportionate benefits, relative to the time invested. It effectively extends the time for you to process key information, from just two days to several more. Therefore, for optimal preparation, I highly recommend completing a brief set of warm-ups a few days before the class. This will require about 2-3 hours of your time.

You will also need access to Zoom and Miro (both available online for free), a webcam, either microphone and speakers or a headset, and a reasonably fast and stable internet connection (3 Mbps downstream / 2 MB upstream at a minimum, faster being better).

Please find all needed instructions regarding login details, preparations, and schedule in the pre-class email that you will receive shortly after registering for the class.

Accessibility

I am constantly working to make Skill-Based PSM more accessible.

Screen captioning is enabled throughout so that you can turn it on in your Zoom client. In my Skill-Based PSM extensions, I use high-contrast visuals, and can provide special enlarged and maximum-contrast variants of the most important concept maps on request.

I also strive to make all content as screen-reader friendly as possible, and provide special transcripts where needed.

In addition, I use a high-quality voice microphone and audio interface for the clearest voice transmission. On request, I can also supply you with a separate high-bitrate voice feed.

For any activities that place demands on physical fitness, I make available lower-intensity alternatives.

If you desire special accommodations, please contact me up front and I will do my best to make this a great experience for you. I mean this truly.

If nothing else, the more sensitized I am to your needs, the better I will be able to cater to them throughout the training. So please do let me know.

Optional Pre-Session

As part of your booking, you will also receive access to an optional pre-session. This pre-session will take place a couple of days before the training, on Wednesday, May 17, 2023, 2 – 3:30 pm CEST.

You can use this pre-session to already get to know me and some of the other students. You can personally ask me anything that you have on your mind in terms of how to best prepare for and participate in the training. You may also use the pre-session as a tech-check. While the Zoom session will already be accessible for you to do a quick tech check at any time, successfully interacting with others may give you additional confidence that things are working as they should.

Do not worry if you cannot make the pre-session. It is strictly optional. While participating will likely provide additional value, all details needed to successfully start the class are also contained in the pre-class email. I will also give you up-front access to a Discord server where I am available to support you in best preparing for the class.

 

Your Trainer

I am an experienced Scrum Master and Professional Scrum Trainer with a proven track record of supporting Scrum adoptions across products and industries.

As a Scrum Master, I have supported teams and organizations developing products ranging from software, to electromechanical and electro-optical products, IT operations, and organizational change. Over time, I experienced first-hand many of the challenges teams and organizations face, and how Scrum can be used to address them. Building on a prior career as a software developer, I am sensitized to the complex working reality of technical product development. In teaching Scrum, this makes me connect well with a wide range of students.

As a trainer, my style is highly student-centric and practical. I have found my passion in supporting students through experiential trainings and through sharing my practical experiences.

An avid learner myself, I deeply believe that learning is our human superpower, and my trainings reflect that.

Part of the fun of taking a training with me is that you get to ask plenty of questions. I will do my best to give you examples and stories from practice, to make Scrum theory tangible for you in the real world.

You will be learning directly with the creator of the Skill-Based PSM extensions.

Summary of Your Benefits

1. Get all benefits of the popular Professional Scrum Master™ (PSM) class, including a free attempt at the PSM-I certification, and another free attempt should you try and not pass within two weeks after the training
2. Enjoy a zero-lecturing, 100% experiential and practical approach to training
3. Retain the teaching materials after class for later reference
4. Receive pointers to helpful books, gear, and other resources to help you advance your professional development as a Scrum Master
5. Learn useful tools and skills for introducing Professional Scrum into a team or organization
6. Get nine (mini) Sprints of experience (75 minutes each) in using Professional Scrum
7. Get one or more Sprints of experience in fulfilling the Scrum Master accountability
8. Learn and practice a broad range of foundational skills that are directly relevant to working as a Scrum Master
9. Ask questions and benefit from my experience in supporting organizations applying Scrum across products and industries
10. Learn directly from the creator of the Skill-Based PSM extensions
11. Work as part of a small group limited to 8 students, to enjoy close-knit interactions and share in each others learning

Contact Me

If you have any questions, please contact me at daniel@experiencescrum.com.

I am very happy to cater to student requests and usually respond within a day.

In addition to public trainings, I also offer private trainings for your organization on request.