Back to Forum

Passed PSM 1 - Advice for preparation

Last post 04:38 pm October 30, 2015 by Anonymous
No replies yet
Cihan Tek
04:38 pm October 30, 2015

Hey all,

I've passed the PSM 1 exam in my first attempt with a score of 97.5. Here's my two cents about the subject:

First of all, reading through the forums and seeing some people failing the exam even in the 3rd attempt had made me think that the exam will be difficult, but it's really not. In fact, I've found the exam very easy and completed all 80 questions about 15 minutes. I don't think that it was much harder than the open assessments. If I'd known this before the exam, I would have spent less time preparing for it (I spent several hours).

I had little knowledge about scrum before this exam, and in order to prepare for it, I followed the steps below:

- I read the scrum guide 3-4 times. Do not make the mistake of reading 4 times consecutively. Read once, do one of other things I've listed below, and then read once again, focusing on different parts of it, and then repeat :)

- I watched the training videos here: http://scrumtrainingseries.com/
But I don't recommend anyone watching them because you won't be learning anything you haven't already learned from other sources. This one is redundant :)

- I completed all open assessments but the Developer Open (Scrum, Nexus, Product Owner) until I was sure that I have seen all the questions in them. I did complete the developer Open once too but it didn't seem much relevant to the exam and I could answer all questions correctly already (because I'm a developer). Therefore I didn't bother with it again.

- I tried to understand the reasoning behind the correct and incorrect answers for every single question in the open assessments by reading the relevant parts of the scrum guide again and the relevant topics in this forum.

- I browsed through the threads about PSM 1 in this forum. Especially the ones that involve people posting sample exam questions and then the helpful members of the forum responding with detailed explanations. The most important thing I got by reading threads in this forum is the mindset that allowed me to think "the scrum way" when I'm posed with a question.

- I completed the PSM 1 and scaled scrum quizzes prepared by Mikhail Lapshin. Both are great resources but I especially liked the PSM 1 quiz, which saved me a lot of time by answering some questions I was planning to search for answers to. Here's the link to the quiz : http://mlapshin.com/index.php/psm-quiz/

- I did skim through the management plaza's scrum guide and the pocket guide but eventually ignored them because they did nothing but confusing me by introducing information that sometimes conflicted with the information in the scrum guide. I don't recommend reading either one of them. At least not for PSM 1 preperation. You really don't need to read any book other than the scrum guide to pass the exam.

Hope this was helpful

By posting on our forums you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.

Please note that the first and last name from your Scrum.org member profile will be displayed next to any topic or comment you post on the forums. For privacy concerns, we cannot allow you to post email addresses. All user-submitted content on our Forums may be subject to deletion if it is found to be in violation of our Terms of Use. Scrum.org does not endorse user-submitted content or the content of links to any third-party websites.

Terms of Use

Scrum.org may, at its discretion, remove any post that it deems unsuitable for these forums. Unsuitable post content includes, but is not limited to, Scrum.org Professional-level assessment questions and answers, profanity, insults, racism or sexually explicit content. Using our forum as a platform for the marketing and solicitation of products or services is also prohibited. Forum members who post content deemed unsuitable by Scrum.org may have their access revoked at any time, without warning. Scrum.org may, but is not obliged to, monitor submissions.