Passes PSM1 with 93.8% First Attempt (Experience Share + Tips)

Good Morning all!!!

 I would like to thank everyone in the community by sharing their experiences which help others in exam preparation. Today I passed with 93.8% first attempt .

The exam is not that difficult however there were one liner questions and options given requires the understanding of what is being asked. However the trickiest questions are the ones which is around 15%(around 10-12) which decides your passing %.

My tips:

1)

Read Scrum Guide few times. (5 - 10 times, but go thro each line until you understand). Best to read couple of times just before the exam

2)Read Nexus Open Guide couple of times and understand Integrated development. There are couple of questions related to this in the real exam.

3)

Watch videos on about scrum here http://www.scrumtrainingseries.com/. Gives you good understanding if you don't have much experience.

Start attending these tests only after your read above books couple of times at least.

4)

Attend open assessment on http://mlapshin.com/index.php/psm-quiz/ until you score between 95% - 100%. Really good questions and really good help because it is completely free. Many Thanks to Mikhail Lapshin. But once u attend multiple times, you would start memorizing the queries and know the answers without even reading completely

5)

Attend PSM1, PSPO, Scaled Scrum open assessment on http://scrum.org ( I went through PSD as well however I don't think it is necessary for PSM1 exam)

6) I bought $17 Mock Exam Simulator from https://www.volkerdon.com/. This was really useful and gives explanations for few tricky questions

7)Don't Over do any of them except Scrum Guide . It might confuse you

During Exams, the interface was very slow and got only once to review all the answers and spend couple of minutes additional for the confusing queries.  Ensure you read the questions completely to understand / know if its a negative question , know the number of options required before you select the answer

All the Best!!!

Hi All,

I want to thank all of you for these golden tips which help me to pass the exam.

I successfully passed PSM-1 Exam scoring 97.5% today. Thanks to everyone on this forum for sharing their experiences which did provide me significant guidance.

I have worked on Scrum Projects for several years. However, spent a few days preparing using below steps.

• Read Scrum Guide and Nexus Guide few times - Making personal notes would be helpful.
• Attend PSM-1 open assessment on http://scrum.org
• Attend open assessment on http://mlapshin.com/index.php/psm-quiz/ - Learning and Real Mode
• Buy Mock Exam Simulator from https://www.volkerdon.com/ - Definitely helpful.

Good luck.

Practising from volkerdon. How much practise is needed from it? Do you recommend that once I start getting 100% from it then it should be a good time? Right now I'm getting 80-85% while giving the exams from volkerdon

Hi,

I passed the exam with 96.3% a few hours ago and it was my first attempt. Thank you very much for all of your advices and tips. 

Best Regards

Hello Kutnesh Rathod, thanks so much for the valueable tips. Can you also tell me one thing:

Even I am planning to give the PSM1 exam. I heard that this will be an open book exam. So, is there an opportunity that we can refer our material while giving the exam ?

Thanks

Aditya, Capgemini

@Aditya, while we do not prohibit referencing other resources during your assessment session (so it is technically "open book"), you must answer all 80 questions within 60 minutes. This leaves little spare time to look up questions and answers. Those who are unable to rely on their own knowledge, understanding, and experience using Scrum are highly unlikely to be able to earn a passing score.

For preparation, we strongly recommend that you follow as many steps as possible on our Ways to Learn About Scrum page.

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to share my experience. 

1.I went through Scrum Guide - made notes.

2. Revised it several times and started taking MLapshin quizzes -learning mode & then real mode.

3. I continued taking real mode until I got at least 95% in it.

4. Then I started taking PSM I open assessments on Scrum.org, 2 assessments a day until I consistently got 100% in it.

5. I also took couple of open assessments of PSPO which did help. as few questions are from this also.

6. I didn't take any other assessments. 

Lastly in case you're from a place where there are power outages, then you can take this from your mobile too. Just ensure you have a good signal.

Upgrade the OS and browser on your mobile.

As a trial just take few open assessments on your mobile just to ensure browser compatibility 

Hi, all. 

Just passed my PSM 1 Assessment and got 88.8% (I think that's one question away from passing, haha).

My recommendations if you want to get more than 90%:

1. Just like what others have already shared, I read the Scum Guide about 4 or 5 time and made lots of notes. 

2. After every reading, I took practice tests on MLapshin (both learning and reading modes), Scrumaster UK as well as the Scrum Master Open Assessments. I aimed to get 95% to 100% on each one. The Lapshin tests were the only ones I couldn't perfect (my best score was 96%).



3. Read (not just scan, like me) the other blog articles mentioned in this forum.



4. Take the Scrum Developer Open and Product Developer Open Assessments... I only did these once and at least 3 to 5 of the toughest questions I encountered came from these.



All in all, don't cram (like me) and really read and study the additional blogs and don't just scan them (like me) and take other Scrum Developer and Product Owner Open Assessments more than once (unlike me).



I believe if I didn't just rely on the Scrum Guide and 1 or 2 free tests, I could've gotten a score higher than 90%. However, they were enough to help me pass! 

Hello All,

I passed PSM1 exam yesterday. Thanks for all your tips mentioned in this forum. It was really helpful.

Please find some of my experiences mentioned below.

1. Many people complained that its very slow in loading questions. But in my case questions are loaded very quickly. I can able to answer  all the questions in  minutes.

2. After 25 minutes I went through the tricky questions. I feel that around 7-10 questions were tricky

3. After went through the tricky questions, I went through rest of the questions quickly.

4. Around 50-60% of questions are from PSM1 open assessment in Scrum.org. So I can suggest you to concentrate more on it.

5. Already I had few years of experience as Scrum Master and so I didnt buy any paid sample exams. I used the tests in Mikhail Lapshin and Scrum Open Assessment. Try PO open assessment also if you have time

Hope above points help you in preparation and feel free to get back to me in case of any questions.

Hi everyone!!

I want to take the certification as a SCRUM Product Owner, I'm often scoring around 93-100% on the open assessment here.

Where can I find more resources? 

The exam should be 80 questions and I only answer the same 15 questions on the open assessment. 

Any suggestions?

Thanks a lot!!!

@Raffaele, go to https://www.scrum.org/resources/suggested-reading-professional-scrum-product-owner

I am getting 95-98% in Mlashpin mocks. Should i go for the purchase of Volkerdon mock or not???

I am happy to share that I finally passed my PSM 1 in first attempt with 95%. I am thankful to all contributors at scrum.org for their articles and contributions which helped me in understanding Scrum and also successfully passing the exam.

I basically followed the below routine before giving the exam:

1. Read and thoroughly understood the Scrum Guide.

2. Took the open assessments for "Scrum Open", "Product Owner Open", "Scrum Developer Open" and "Nexus Open" till I got almost 100% each time.

3. Took the open assessments from http://mlapshin.com till I got almost 95% to 100% each time.

4. Took the free course and assessment from http://www.volkerdon.com till I got almost 95% to 100% each time.

5. Read blogs and posts online to understand real life situations and problems while implementing Scrum.

6. Actively scanned through the posts on Scrum.org Forum to understand the problems faced and suggested solutions.

I finished my test in around 40 minutes and did not review the questions where I had doubts because I had an unstable internet connection and did not want to give the entire test again if my internet went down.

Once again, thanks a lot for all your contributions.

Mplaza mocks or Volkerdon mock????

Which is best?

I feel both are good, both of them are free so you can practice on both Sites.

http://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/sm-real-mode/

https://www.volkerdon.com/courses/psm1

On Vokerdon when you take the course you can take mock exams for those particular sections also.

Hi All,

Today i have cleared my PSM1 exams with 95% score.

Putting my suggestions below  to pass the Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I) assessment from Scrum.org

Past expereince on Scrum - None

How i prepared myself?

Have gone through the Scrum Guide many times, line by line and understand the meaning for each of the point.

Scrum Glossary - Have a go through it.

Scrum Open Assessment - appeared many times scoring 100% within 5 mins.

Read the Q & A in Scrum Forum, whenever any thing answered incorrectly why it was wrong.

Took open assessments in Mlapshin.com, consistently 100% both in Scrum Master and Product Owner exams.

Noted down the wrong questions, key points to remember in a separate sheet, to revise it daily.

Exam Approach

Bought the exam a week before.

I took exam in  my work place environment - To make sure power supply and internet back-ups available.

Noted down the question nos which were not clear, it was 12 question nos.

I ended up to finish all the questions in 00:42:00.

No revisit to my marked questions, just submitted.

Thanks all for your inputs in the forum sections which helped to understand better 

Regards,

Pradipta

Hi Ramanan,

You mentioned that Volkerdon mock exam is free. But I see it is not free, am I missing something here? 

Can anyone else confirm if it is free?

Regards,

Nagendra

Hi Nagendra,

Its not completely free. Some part of the website is free (Study Material & Some Mock Tests). For full access you have to pay.

Regards,

Abhishek

Thanks for the confirmation Abhishek

Hello Guys,

It is 2:20 AM in the morning and I am adding this comment with great pleasure and relief. I've completed by PSM I certification with 98% just now. I wanted to share this right away and thank all of those who provided their valuable inputs. It is my turn now ...Hopefully it helps someone who is preparing for the exam ...

1) I was planning to study for 3 weeks straight and complete the exam on the 4th week but several distractions made me to drag it for 6 weeks but 3 weeks of good study is enough to pass this exam

2) As everyone said, we need to read the scrum guide several times to ensure you understand the true meaning of each and every line

3) I did the open assessment at least once a day cleared it with 100%. 

4) Read the scrum series for understanding the overall scrum concepts in a visual representation. It helped me to rediscover several hidden meaning in scrum guide. I also went through the https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/ several times until I consistently passed it with 100%

5) You definitely need to get either https://www.volkerdon.com/ or https://mplaza.training/ paid version so you can look for similar questions which you can expect. Personally I feel very few questions were closer  but it gave me good confidence when I started to clear their exams with 100%. mplaza is a bit costly so I went with https://www.volkerdon.com/ which seems to be ok with collection of questions ...Also dont read too much from various sources as I saw each of them have conflicting details which confused me on couple of instances ...

6) Time management - I used to complete all the exams( open assessments, https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/ and https://www.volkerdon.com/ )within 10-15 mins max so I was very confident but it is not the case in the real exam. It almost went down the wire till the last minute :-) so dont expect the same questions and be underprepared. I completed all questions and noted down atleast 15 which I wanted to revisit and had 10 mins to do that. 

If you do all these for 2-3 weeks you will get good understanding of overall scrum and what to expect in the exam. I would say 65% of questions were new to me but with what I read and exams I cleared helped me answer those questions to best of my knowledge and clear the exam eventually....

All the best and thanks again for the wonderful support ...

-Prakash

Just Passed with 95%. This forum was helpful in preparing for the exam.

As per most of the suggestions, I was planning to buy volkerdon mock test, but went without buying it in the last moment. Their free mock exam seems to be sufficient to go for the exam. In the middle of the exam, I thought I should have bought the mock exam because some of the questions were little tough, went with my best guess and it worked for me.

Thanks Volkerdon and Mlapshin. They were really helpful.

Passed PSM1 today with a 92.5%. Completed the quiz with 16 minutes still remaining on the clock. Took that time to review each question thoroughly. The way I prepared was reading the the scrum guide at least three times and taking the various online quizzes. The following websites are highly recommended for the preparation of PSM 1 exam.

https://www.exam4training.com/who-must-attend-the-daily-scrum-2/

https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/sm-learning-mode/

and of course the open assessment on scrum.org

Preparation time was one month from start to finish.

Thank you for your feedback Kuntesh! 

I did follow exactly your advise as you indicated and today I am happily certified in PSM 1. Thanks again for you advised and wish you the best!!  

Another success story! I obtained my PSM I certification a few hours ago with a 98.8% score. 40 minutes to complete the test and 20 extra minutes to recheck my choices.

About the exam: I was lucky to get many questions from the open assessments (PSM and PSPO) and would say that around 20-25% are behavioural (what is best in "X" situation). Just read them thoroughly and make your choice always having the scrum guide in mind.

About me: I have 7 years of experience as a PM and I had 0 knowledge about Scrum. Nothing really to add to what has been said already, but here are my two cents:

Read the Scrum guide as many times as necessary so it becomes part of you. Try (again and again) the open assessments mentioned (Scrum,org, volkerdon free, Mplaza free, mlapshin...), but be careful with doing random courses and tests found online. Many people out there believe to know what Scrum if about when they really do not, and that could affect you negatively.

I really recommend the book "Scrum Narrative and PSM Exam Guide". You can get a month for free at Scribd (right now no need to even put your credit card) and check it out. Active learning is used throughout the book to ensure you understand what you just read and the writer explains everything in detail highlighting what is Scrum and whatnot but useful to know anyway. Also, most of the questions from the tests at the end are situation based so you get ready for the real PSM exam. Kudos to Mohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali for such a great book.

Also, for the people mentioning that there are "Nexus" questions in the exam: I think there is a confusion with Nexus and having more than one Scrum team. The questions I got can be answered without having any Nexus knowledge even if several Scrum teams are involved, so it's up to you to add it to your study material. Really good to know about it, but I think you can pass the exam with 0 knowledge on Nexus.

Time to obtain my PSPO and some other certifications. Good luck to future exam takers and scrum on!

One more thing in addition to what I said before:

I didn't have any issues with the construction of the sentences (may/should/could/etc), but after analyzing my score, I am pretty sure I missed to select an answer in a "select the two best" question.

Because of that I didn't get a 100% score (totally my fault!). As a suggestion, maybe it would be good to have a pop-up every time a test taker forgets to select an option when moving to the next question (are you sure you want to proceed?). Not sure how easy would that be to develop/add!

Dear all, I have passed today with 97,5%. I would like to THANK to all of you, the contributors to this forum, for giving me hints for preparation. My plan for preparation was:

1. read the scrum guide, glossary, nexus

2. do the scrum open assessments https://www.scrum.org/open-assessments

2. do the https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/ 

3. do the https://www.volkerdon.com/

It took me 2 weeks to prepare (being on vacation at that time).  

Actually the exam was harder than the preparation mock tests for me. More wording in the questions, I read some of the questions aloud several times in order to understand and concentrate. The time was not enough for me. I had only 4 min for review the tricky questions I have written down on a list of paper and I couldn't review them all. I was surprised that I passed!

Good luck to all !!!  

Passed with 93.8%.

I had no scrum background, so studying it was much more fun.

I studied 3 weeks during COVID work from home. Here is my game plan:

1. Took video lessons from Scrum Essentials Exam Prep ( by William Davis) @ Pluralsight. ( had a free subscription for the April month due to Covid). 4 hours duration. This helped me to set up my basic understanding

2. Studied SCRUM guide the first time.

3. Watched animated video as http://scrumtrainingseries.com/ ( was really informative)

4. I practised the open exam and mlasphin exams until I got confident. Also, I tried the free questions on  https://www.volkerdon.com.

5. Read SCRUM guide the second time, and went for it.

The exam is doable.  It had a few challenging questions which obviously I was expecting.

My advice is practice until u get 100% score in open assessment ( both for PSM & Product owner) and a score of 95% in mlasphin.

Hey,

my advice to you..

I would like to my preparation here,

– I started with the affordable online courses from UDEMY, This helped me understand the basics of scrum, below are those courses.

Scrum Master Exam Prep: Practice Tests, Exercises, and Flashcards

Adv. Agile Scrum Master Training: Online Certification Prep

– After finishing the course, I started giving the Scrum Quizzes here on this website. https://mlapshin.com/

– I gained confidence after giving the tests from 5-6 times.

– After taking tests from 10 times I was getting 90+% all the time.

– Finally, I took another affordable course for just test questions on UDEMY. This was the game-changer for me.

Scrum Master Certification Preparation & 240+ Prep Questions

My requests to all the aspirants,

– Read Scrum Guide at least 3 times.

– Best way is take tests 1-2 times then read scrum guide and then again take tests. This will really boost your confidence and knowledge.

– Also read Scrum of Scrums/ Scaling Scrum / Nexus guide, there are around 10-12 questions on it in the exam. Do not ignore it.

– 50% questions are scenario-based and few of them are really tricky so prepare yourself for that as well.

Regards

Tejas

Hello,

Thank you all for these helpful advises.

I just passed the assessment with 88.8% at first attempt, after four full days of preparation.

I didn't have any experience in Agile, Scrum or coding, as I am a PM in the nuclear industry.

My feedback is that the assessment is not easy, especially for the non native English speakers. Harder than the free assessments on Scrum.org and other free assessments you can find online.

But if you score 95% or above to these free assessments, you may pass the PSM1 real assessment.

I didn't face any slow-down. But my remaining time at the end of the assessment was less than 2 min, so be warned and don't waste your time !

My tips :

1/ Read the Scrum Guide 3 times minimum and accurately. You need to picture in your mind the design of the Scrum framework.

2/ Watch this video from Ajeet S. D. which gives you a very good and synthetic vision of the Scrum framework. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAOTrBsJsoU

3/ Read the Scrum guide one or two times more.

4/ Pass the learning mode assessment of Mikhail Lapshin with 95% score or above (if < 95%, go back to 1). https://mlapshin.com/

5/ Pass the real mode assessment of Mikhail Lapshin with 95% score or above (if < 95%, go back to 1).

6/ Attend free Scrum Master assessments on Scrum.org again and again till you score 100% two or three times.

Best wishes,

Alex

Hello everyone,

I finally took the PSM1 test. 

I read the SCRUM GUIDE  and took the Scrum.Org practice test; https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/ ; https://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=mjewody3nqmy0o and the Scrum.Org open assessment for Product Owner.  I didn't do VOLKERDON. 

I noted down all the questions from practice exams that I didn't answer correctly. I also typed my notes from the SCRUM GUIDE and categorised my notes. I then added the questions that I answered incorrectly from the practice exams into the category it belonged to; i.e. Definition of Done; Scrum Master; Sprint Planning; Artifacts. This helped me understand why choices/answers were wrong.  I then took all the practice tests over and over until I scored 100% each and every time. By the time you get to this point, there's nothing left to do but take the test.

Overall, it took me 4 days to prepare.

I finished all 80 questions with 24 minutes left from the 60 minutes. I used approx. 16 minutes to review 8 questions which I flagged; then had more time to just rapidly go through each question to make sure I picked the right number of answers (when it asked to select 2 or 3 or all that apply).

I scored: 97.5% (78 points scored out of 80 maximum points). Is there anyway for me to find out which 2 questions I didn't answer correctly?

Hello ,

I just passed the PSM 1 Assessment with 100% on the first try! 

To prepare, I read the Scrum Guide and Scrum Glossary many times and took notes. As suggested in this forum, I also used https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/ both LM and RM and tried to focus on the concepts that I was not clear on as opposed to the questions (why is this correct or incorrect, according to the Scrum Guide). I took notes on those concepts until I understood them regardless of how the question is asked. Another thing which helped tremendously was this course on Udemy:  https://www.udemy.com/share/101Y5gAkIScV1URX4=/&nbsp;

One important tip is to read every question and every answer carefully. Be sure to know how many responses are required. I found that on the assessments, many of the questions I missed was due to only providing one response when two were required. So make it a habit of looking at how many responses are required before even reading the question. 

I completed the exam in less than 30 minutes, so there was plenty of time for review, if needed. I did not have an issue with the interface being slow; I took the exam at 6 am on a Sunday.

Thanks for all the tips provided in this forum. I hope my experience can help the next person

Hey Team! I used this topic as a guide for my PSM1 learning path. Much appreciated!



I summarized my 2-week-long prep time here: https://albertpalka.github.io/personal/psm_1_guide.html

I also created a line-by-line Scrum Guide to better understand what I'm reading: https://albertpalka.github.io/personal/scrum_line_by_line.html (there are some useful links there too)

tl;dr version:

If you have 100% in Open Assessments every single time (aim for less than 5min) and ~100% in Mikhail's Real Mode SM (aim for less than 8min) -> you're good to go and should pass the exam without any problems.

- Avoid paid mock exams / courses (unless you're new to Scrum in general)

- Mikhail Lapshin's mock test is more than enough when combined with Open Assessments

- Ready Scrum Guide a few times. Understanding its nuances might be key to answering the more tricky questions during PSM1

- http://www.scrumtrainingseries.com/ is great to have a more "practical" understanding of how Scrum events work.

Good luck everyone and thanks for this great thread!

Happy to share with you all, I passed PSM1 exam with 93.8% (75/80) on my first attempt.

Thankyou everyone in the community for sharing their experiences/tips.

I prepared for around a month for the exam and referred below materials:-

1. Scrum guide

2. Scrum Narrative and PSM exam guide (Must read)

3. Open assessment

4. Udemy online test

5. mlapshin.com (LM & RM mode).

6. volkerdon (Free test only)

Thanks, and Good luck to all! 

Hello Everyone, 

Passed PSM I test yesterday with 100% score in my first attempt.

I would like to Thank you all for sharing the preparation tip..

I will like to thank the Scrum.org community and forum members.

I passed the PSM 1 today. 

Reading Material:

1. Read Scrum Guide multiple times.

2. Do the open assessments from Scrum.org. You must score 100% in it consistently.

3. Mock tests:

https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/

https://www.volkerdon.com/enrollments

Tips:

The real exam is a little harder than the practice tests.

Read the questions very carefully

Time is of essence

Some questions are from Nexus 

A Big Thank You to all contributors for sharing their experiences with PSM I.

I have cleared the same in 1st attempt today:) 

Here's a few tips based on my experience -

1. Scrum Guide - To be read multiple (Atleast 5) times
2. Scrum Glossary Page scrum-glossary
3. Nexus Guide is an additional reading recommended to understand the way multiple scrum teams work together - online-nexus-guide
4. Give the 3 Open Assessments - scrum-open , scrum-developer-open & product-owner-open until you score 100% consistently.
5. Give mock assessments available at Mikhail Lapshin Website 
   • Start with the Learning Mode 1st - sm-learning-mode
   • then "Real Mode" - sm-real-mode

          Once you are scoring consistently upwards of 95% in these mock assessments, then you are Ready to GO for              PSM I.

Good Luck to everyone :)

Hello,

Thank you all for contributing to this topic. It was very helpful to prepare in the right way.

I passed my PSM I yesterday from the first attempt with 95%.

My experience in the preparation for the exam:

1. Read Scrum Guide several times and created my mind map of the guide
2. Open Assessment several times
3. Scrum Glossary Page
4. Read materials on SM Learning Path
5. Practiced mock assesments on Mikhail Lapshin Website

God luck to everyone!!

Hello All,

Today, I have passed my PSM1 assessment with 100% score, Thanks to all of you for very useful information on how to go for it.

Point for preparation

1.Scrum guide 3-5 times study

2.Glossary

3.Different Mock test as much as you can do.

Scrum on,

Pradeep Sati

Hey guys, just did it with 91,3% on the first go. 



This was much harder than I thought. The site was as quick as the open assignment and I needed 55mins. 



I read the Scrum Guide a few times and did the open assignment as well as mlapshin's tests until I got 100% regularly. Never dropped below 96%. 



There are a few tricky questions there that I dod not anticipated, but it all went great! Thx to you guys for all the input, helped a lot! Scrum on! 

Hello Everyone,

I am pleased to announced that I have successfully passed Professional Scrum Master I Certification with 96.30% (77/80).

One most Important thing I would like to highlight here is that, while taking exam I have put password and Click on START button after which it display exam related guideline page which I read thoroughly and click Next after which it shows Exam Instruction. As soon as I come to 1st question of exam i got to know that I had only 55

mins in hand to complete 80 question and 5 mins was already lapsed as timer already started.

I would request everyone, after clicking on START button, not to waste your time to read any Instructions and just keep in mind,you need to note down question numbers for which you want to take review at the end of exam because your 60 mins will already get started when you Click on START button.

I had given PSM I exam through Android Mobile phone using home Wi-Fi Internet connection with no speed issue observed with respect to interface while switching from one question to another as mention by other fellow mates here.

I have done preparations in following ways which might help you as well,

1. Read Scrum Guide from scrum.org 3 times thoroughly.

2. Read Scrum Narrative and PSM Exam Guide by Mohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali once.

3. Read Scrum Glossary from scrum.org thoroughly.

4. Take Scrum Open Assessment for both PSM I as well for PSPO I till you get 100%.

5. Take Mikhail Lapshin free assessment (https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/)

6. Take free assessment from whizlabs (https://www.whizlabs.com/).I have purchase whizlab test which contains 4 practice test each of 80 questions apart from free assessment test.

7. Take Udemy course for PSM I along with practice test (https://www.udemy.com/share/101Y5gAkIScV1URX4=/).

8. Take ProProfs free assessment test (https://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=mjewody3nqmy0o).

9. Take free assessment from volkerdon (https://www.volkerdon.com/courses/take/psm1/texts/5285480-what-is-scrum).

10. Take free assessment from techagilist (https://www.techagilist.com/practice-exams/psm-i-practice-test/psm-prac…)

11. Take free assessment from internet80 (https://internet80.com/psm-i-exam-simulator-1/)

Wish you all the best all for your Exam and I hope this feedback on exam helps you...!!!

I have successfully managed to pass PSM 1 exam.

I have shared my experience on how to pass the exam here

Though it's tricky to pass the exam it is not impossible.

Thanks to everyone  for the useful information and tips..

I passed the PSM 1 on 12th August 2020 and secured 93.8%. the exam is indeed thought and more than 65% questions were scenario based. 

My suggestions for everyone will be read the questions carefully. Ensuring you are paying attention to the words like 'must' , 'should be', 'may be'. These are all traps, do not hurry. 60 mins is short time, but if you hurry you will end up taking more time. Take the Open assessment from scrum.org and try to get 100% repeatedly.Lastly before you consider ready for taking the exam ensure you have read the scrum guide as many times as possible. All the best!

@Deenaa Bheeman, based on the 40 free questions at https://www.volkerdon.com/ it is difficult to decide whether the entire pack is worth it. I would say all tests written by others (not scrum.org) are only as good as they call the learner's attention to potential learning areas, question types, etc. The answers and consequently the evaluation of these mock tests are not necessarily correct. This one is not an exception either. Taking some of such tests definitely makes sense, but 1300? In the meantime, there are free mock tests available, not even requiring any sign-up, such as the https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/ and the https://solution-delivery.org/practice-tests. Actually, even https://www.volkerdon.com/ has a complete mock test for free as part of their free course. In the end, even the complete package is relatively cheap compared to a failure on the real exam, not to mention taking an instructor-let course. Maybe just I am notorious for not spending money on things with good free alternatives...

Thank you everyone for sharing what worked for you! I followed a lot of the suggested studying methods posted here; I would have been lost without your tips. I personally studied for about 5 days and felt ready to take the exam. I know that might seem fast, but I memorize things quickly and spent about 2-3 hours each day studying/taking practice exams. I only got one questions wrong on the exam and passed with a 98.8%.

I was able to answer all of the questions in 30 minutes and didn't have any issues with the interface being slow as some people described. I used all of the remaining time to refer back to the scrum guide and check my work. This extra time proved valuable to me since I did end up changing 5 or so answers, glad I went back through it! 

This is exactly how I studied (I had no prior experience with Scrum):

1) I read the Scrum guide carefully and took notes in my own words on all parts of it. This really helped me get a good understanding from the beginning. I referred to my notes each time I needed to look something up in the scrum guide since I included all of the information from it in my notes. I was able to condense it into 3 pages of notes!

2) I took the open source PSM I assessments from http://mlapshin.com/index.php/psm-quiz/ and https://www.scrum.org/open-assessments/scrum-open about 3 times each; I also took the PSPO I open assessment once or twice from scrum.org, but I'm not sure that was necessary.

3) I paid $15 for the practice exams from www.volkerdon.com. This was definitely worth the cost; it really helped me work through the exam problems that required a little more thought. I did each exam twice and was scoring 95%-100% by the end.

That's it! I really think that's all you need to be able to succeed at this exam. I'm sure some people might need longer to do all of this. so take as much time as you need. 

Hi All,

Thought I would add to this rich vein of knowledge with my own experience. I passed PSM1 at the first attempt with a score of 95% in early September.

So, without further ado here is my approach:

 

1. I ended up taking two weeks for the preparation after initially aiming for one week. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has kept me out of employment so as I had plenty of time on my hands thought it best to make the most of it.
   
   
   
    
2. Focus must be on the Scrum guide. I read it at least once a day to ensure that I’d semi-memorised the content. This is the source of all the questions.
   
   
   
   I know that there is a lot of confusion with the potential for questions relating to the NEXUS guide but I don’t recall any that used Nexus terminology as opposed to those in the Scrum guide that talk about multiple Scrum teams.
   
   
   
   It’s still worth reading the NEXUS guide but I decided not to semi-memorise as this might cause confusion with the Scrum guide.
   
   
   
    
3. I’m a big fan of practice questions both to boost knowledge and for exam acclimatisation.
   
   
   
   The Scrum and Product Owner Open Assessments are a must and I practiced until able to score 100% repeatedly. I didn’t find the Scrum Developer Open of any use and as said above didn’t do a huge amount on the Nexus Guide but did ensure that I got a good score in this Open.
   
   
   
   The Mikhail Lapshin preparation quiz is another must. There are more than the 80 questions in the real exam so take that into account for your test timings. I repeated until getting 100% every time. Some might be happy with getting 95% but this counts as a third of the 15% above the pass mark (85%) which isn’t a great stat for me.
   
   
   
   I also purchased the 360 questions from Volkerdon presented in 4 x 80 question exams. Initially I wasn’t too convinced as there were quite a lot of incorrect grammar in the questions which caused me to get some wrong. Having done the exam though I would say it was worthwhile. I’d rate the Volkerdon questions as slightly harder than those in the real exam which is a good place to be in. I practiced on these until I got to within 1-2 wrong questions as a minimum across all four tests.
   
   
   
    
4. Exam technique is very important for this certification given the time constraints. I ensured that I was hitting between 30 to 35 mins in the full practice tests as I knew that this figure would be greater in the real thing. This proved to be correct as in the exam I got to question 80 in 40 mins.
   
   
   
   It’s important to keep moving and not get held up by a question in the first pass. I attempted all questions even if I was unsure of the answer and ended up marking about 25 that I was unsure of and then using paper and pencil (yes really) to record 9 of the 25 that I was very unsure of.
   
   
   
   Having 20 minutes to review and knowing that I’d applied an answer to all questions helped keep me calm-ish. I ended up making amendments to only a small number of the 25 which proves that gut instinct is often correct and that changing can be the wrong choice.
   
   
   
   I had Adobe Reader up with the Scrum Guide, Nexus Guide and Scrum Glossary but didn’t use any of them. I did try on one of questions but used up too much time. Avoid the internet if at all possible.
   
   
   
   
   
   Well that’s it from me and good luck to all future PSM1 exam takers.

First of all, I would like to thank everyone in the community by sharing their experiences which help others in exam preparation. Today I passed with 95% first attempt.

My approach:

1) Scrum Guide: I read it about 5 times and 3 times very carefully with making notes and marking important words, e.g. words that could be "tricky" in the exam like "must be", "must help", "no one", "only", etc. or I draw some sketches, for example a box with "sprint planning" and then all that go in (input) and everything that comes out (output).

2) Mock tests: I know some people bought the "volkerdorn" mock tests, but here's another way without buying

• Scrum open assessment and PSPO open assessment, in my opinion the most important mock tests, because some questions appeared 1:1 in the actual exam (about 10-15%)
  • I took these assessments about 10 times, they are short and quick to do. It seems that sometimes 1-3 questions change, maybe it depends on the time of the day you do this mock test.
  • At the end I could achieve within 5 minutes 100% in both

• Mikhail Lapshin ( http://mlapshin.com/index.php/psm-quiz/), very helpful, because it does not only ask you questions according to the Scrum Guide but also some questions beyond the Scrum Guide and I am sure a few of them appeared in the actual exam as well. It especially helps with some unclear situations, that are not clear enough in the Scrum Guide.
  • I took the mock test 3 times in learning mode and around 5 times in real mode, until i achieved 100%

• Volkerdorn free Scrum Master preparation Course, you have 80 or more questions for free from Volkerdorn. I did not do the course material in order to avoid confusion with the Scrum guide, but I just went straight to the Tests and did them all until I achieved 100%. 

3) I started reading the suggested book "Scrum a pocket guide", and I have to agree with some previous posts, that it helps with the general understanding of agile, lean and scrum, but did not provided specific help for the exam. However, I think if you feel that you don't know anything about "agile" or "agile" project management, I suggest to read at least the agile manifesto. 

• I had to solve a lot of questions by thinking about the situation and what would be the most appropriate action according to the agile philosophy of Scrum.

Some general information about the exam:

• I suggest to live the philosophy of Scrum, because some questions described a situation and ask you what a Scrum Master should do or what appropriate actions could be.
• Some questions were exactly like the ones in the mock tests.
• I had around 20 minutes time at the end and changed maybe 1-2 answers afterwards, because I realized I misread some questions/answers - so read carefully
• Sometimes you can solve questions simply by looking which answers surely do not apply
• I was concerned about questions with the characteristic of "choose all that apply", but it was always mentioned how many answers you should choose. However, I am not sure if this was only in my exam like that.
• I did not have problems with long loading times between the questions, it was exactly the same speed and characteristic and layout as in the open assessment.

That's it and I wish much success for all future PSM1 exam takers!!

I am attempting to draw a conclusion from the hundreds of posts in this and in some related topics. I believe the conclusion is that the official Scrum Master learning path (https://www.scrum.org/pathway/scrum-master/) is difficult to complete and perhaps not the most efficient one. Taking the official courses definitely help, the only glitch is that they cost 10x more than the certification. It is certainly not essential to read all official/unofficial docs and take all tests which are listed in these topics. Apart from the Scrum Guide, nothing is strictly 'must-have' for achieving 85%, however, the guide does not answer everything.

Official guides

Scrum Guide (scrumguides.org)

https://scrumguides.org/revisions.html - while not essential, highly recommended, especially for level II and III

https://www.scrum.org/resources/scrum-glossary

https://www.scrum.org/resources/evidence-based-management-guide - a must-have for product owners, strongly recommended for scrum masters

https://www.scrum.org/resources/nexus-guide - Strictly speaking this is not essential for PSM and PSPO exams

Open Assessments

https://www.scrum.org/open-assessments/scrum-open - must have

https://www.scrum.org/open-assessments/product-owner-open - must have

https://www.scrum.org/open-assessments/agile-measurement-open - nice to have

https://www.scrum.org/open-assessments/agile-leadership-open - nice to have

(The Nexus, the Kanban and the Developer open assessments are mostly useful for those who prepare specifically for those exams.)

 

Third-party quizzes (a lot more are linked in multiple topics, however, many of them ceased or not anymore free)

https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/ - PSM and PSPO

https://www.thescrummaster.co.uk/quizzes/professional-scrum-master-i-psm-i-practice-assessment - PSM (not a full quiz but apparently from a scrum.org PST)

https://solution-delivery.org/practice-tests - PSM and PSPO

https://www.volkerdon.com/ - PSM, only partially free

https://www.techagilist.com/practice-exams/psm-i-practice-test/psm-practice-exam-practice-mode-questions/ - PSM

https://internet80.com/psm-i-exam-simulator-1/ - PSM

https://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=mjewody3nqmy0o - PSM