Regarding Open Assessment question

At the Sprint Planning, the Development team commits itself to realize a selection of the Product Backlog. This selection can be tagged as The Sprint Goal. Note that commitment means dedication, not promise to deliver. This commitment is done without full knowledge of the details.

So in A) details can be clarified, C) is just the natural process of decomposition and D) is the acknowledgement that the size of the commitment was inaccurate.

B) is the only scenario that expects the Development Team to have full knowledge in advance.

Thanks for the detailed explanation Christiaan. I appreciate it.

The Open Assessment questions are very repetitive, i have kind of memorized all the questions and the answers. I understand that the actual PSM 1 Exam will have an entirely different pattern of questions. Are there any resources apart from testtakeronline, where i can get to practice the real kind of PSM test?

Short answer would be: No, I don’t know any other way to practice the specific PSM questions.

I think you should ask yourself is: ‘Do I want to be a certified and productive Scrum Master, or do I want to pass the assessment?’ I’d suggest you go the first option. For that you may need for example a lot of experience in SW development, seen a successful Scrum master in action and/or be well acquainted with the recommended books. Also, be aware what type of issues Scrums Master are discussing in other forums like LinkedIn groups as Scrum Practitioners and Scrum.org.

Keep in mind that the Scrum Guide is only 16 pages and one can read it in 15 minutes. The assessment is 60 minutes which indicates you will not find all the answers in the Scrum Guide. The assessment will probe your capabilities to act as a Scrum Master, challenges your own judgment and fulfill your responsibilities for this role.

Concerning your question if there are any other resources that can be used to practice for the assessment, there's this practice exam:

http://scrumstar.com/scrum-certification-practice-exam

Good luck!

I would be hesitant to use outside sources to study for the PSM Exam.

I was in the same situation as you were, I went through the assessment so frequently that I could almost give the answer without reading the question. I looked elsewhere to find other sources of questions, but what I found were many were using the older Scrum guide. I also found questions whose answers didn't correctly reflect what was in the current Scrum guide.

My best advice is to talk face-to-face to someone who just recently took the exam and ask them which questions they struggled with (there is always one or two they remember). Also, if you feel you've studied enough I would take the exam and either pass or find out the areas that you need to focus on.

Good Luck!

Ryan, I agree, a lot of resources out there are quite dated. The one I mentioned, though, has been recently recommended by some folks who passed the assessment, so it's probably OK to use.

Thanks Christiaan ,Chris & Ryan. That was very helpful!
I am also following a group on Linkdin from ScrumStudy. I find that useful too.
I think I am prepared to take on the test.. just wanted to make sure i have explored all kinds of question that may appear in the actual test.
Christiaan, you are right...instead of concentrating on clearing the PSM test, I should focus on UNDERSTANDING Scrum..I hope I get there :)
Thanks again!

As a Scrum master, it's your responsibility to protect the development team from distractions. The key mistake from option C is "grow". Yes, Scrum embraces the changes along the project progress. But during the sprint, if there is a higher priority task added into the sprint, the bottom one from the unfinished user stories should be removed from the sprint. The benefit of doing this is:

1: keep the sprint goal attainable
2. the morale of scrum team won't be affected

my 2 cents

Before take PSM 1 I prepared with
Scrum course (2 day)
Scrum guide
Scrum star
http://www.bostonagiletraining.com
testtakeronline
I take score %100 all of above But I failed the exam. All test of above not like PSM 1.

All say same advice for PSM 1 . I search different idea and advice.
Please not believe advertisement.

Sorry to hear about your exam, Semra. I'm just curious, how much hands-on experience as a Scrum Master do you have? PSM certifies that you are a Professional Scrum Master and, as you know, to become a professional at anything, you need to know the theory AND possess a good amount of practical experience. Studying the theory of the Scrum Guide (using whatever online resources) is only a part of the preparation. To become a certified professional you need to prove that you have grasped the essence of Scrum and can effectively implement it in a practical environment. This is what the PSM assessment is all about.

Now that you know what to expect from the assessment, you should also have a better idea of how to prepare in order to pass it, so don't give up!

I've passed the PSM 1 assessment with 89% first try by using the scrum guide, the open assessment and the scrum.org forum.
I must admit, I have some first hand experience with scrum at work (a couple of years).

However, I only got 25% at scrumstar.com

This means to me that the external sources (at least that one) is not so good for practice. It may induce you in getting the wrong interpretation of the scrum guide.

I would stick with the official sources of information, even if the content of the forum is not "official". The forum helps you see how other people, usually with some experience, understand scrum.

I'm no expert so I can't talk about the quality of those tests, but my friend who doesn't know anything about scrum clicked through it pretty much randomly and she got 35%. I'm not sure how you managed to get only 25% :)

As has been pointed out on other threads, the Scrum Star product is not very accurate. A lot of it is a English translation issues I think.

I don't have anything against the creators of the test, but let's just say it's a general software industry theme that people think they understand Scrum way better than they actually do.

Sort of like Chess... Just because you know how each piece moves, doesn't mean you're an excellent chess player.

Even many Scrum Trainers are incompetent. I'm proud to say that I've never met an incompetent Scrum Trainer who is certified through Scrum.org. OTOH, our trainer acceptance standards are extremely rigorous and stringent.

I like your chess analogy, it makes sense. As I mentioned in another thread, we released a new set of questions at scrumstar.com hopefully fixing the issues you mentioned.

On another subject, you mentioned the trainers certified through Scrum.org. I'm often asked about Scrum training and I usually refer people to the courses listed here: http://courses.scrum.org/classes. But there are relatively few courses in China and India. Do you know if any of the trainers you'd recommend do online live-streaming courses? Maybe this would be a solution for the folks there who aren't able to attend classroom training. Or is this not a usual practice?