PSM 1 Certification - Do's Don'ts Myths

Thanks to Scrum.org, I obtained a quality and life time valid certificate.

Do's

- Pair with someone else preparing. Between you read out the Scrum Guide. After reading every sentence, mutually question so you can listen, deliberate and firmly anchor the meaning. If no one is available to partner, go for focused preparation by creating your own mind maps.

- Be very clear on what is NOT scrum - sprint zero, hardening, stories, formal status reports, managers, etc.

- Reading good material is the only requirement for a better preparation. There are only four things we need:
1. The Scrum Guide
2. The Scrum Narrative and PSM Exam Guide
3. Mikhail Lapshin's free online quiz
4. Scrum Open Assessment
A special mention of the book Scrum Narrative and PSM Exam Guide. This was the most helpful material for me to understand Scrum for the PSM test. Very elaborate in a simple language that I can understand. I am surprised that the book is not in the scrum.org reading list for the PSM Subject Areas. It deserves to be there.

- Optional: If you can afford little more time, search the scrum.org forums for threads with Dr.Ian Mitchell's responses. His understanding is rock solid and authentic compared to any other.

- Just minutes before actual test, attempt the Scrum Open Assessment. This last minute attempt will park the questions and answers afresh in memory. Close to 15% questions are direct copy paste of Scrum Open questions.

- Answer the questions where you get the right choice at the first glance. If your preparation is good, 80% questions fall in this category. Do not spend time on questions where the right choice is not quickly evident or have lengthy phrases. Simply bookmark and move on. If you do that, you can complete one pass in just 30 - 35 minutes. You can take plenty of time later to revisit the bookmarked questions.

- During the test, have scrum guide open in another browser. For the bookmarked questions, search by relevant keyword and look at the scrum guide content to get clues to answer the questions.

Don'ts

- During the test, do not search the net for answers (except the scrum guide).

- Do not trust the books (even recommended by scrum.org) if their latest edition is older than couple of years. Scrum has moved on. Books may not be in sync with latest changes.

- Do not try to guess the answer from your actual work experience. Use this clue: If you have to get the answer ONLY based on the scrum theory (not based on your work experience), how would you answer...

- Do not spend on online tests. You don't need question and answer practices. You need to ONLY know - what is Scrum vs what is not Scrum. For that - reading good material is the only requirement.

Myths:

- You can get through only when you have working experience. Not true. It only requires to have good understanding of Scrum (AKA The Scrum Guide).

- You can prepare for this in two days - 4 hours - kind of advice. Not necessarily true for all cases. We really don't know. The time for preparation will be known only after you attend Scrum Open and Michael's quiz. Less than 50% in first attempt means - solid time needed (in terms of many weeks). Around 70% - At least few weeks involving daily preparation. More than 80% in first attempt - Few days of prep.

- The test is very tough. Not true. 80% of questions can be correctly answered immediately if you have spent good time to understand Scrum. 15% questions require some cross thinking and elimination of bad choices one by one. Only 5% of questions (that is 4) are ambiguous, since we are not able to guess the assumptions made by question setter (Scrum.org seriously need to look at this). Due to forum restrictions I cannot provide a sample of what I mean. But if scrum.org wants me to share with them separately, I will be glad.

All the best
A Sathyaraj