Preparing for the Professional Scrum Master™ I Certification

Rooted in methods that can be used in new product development, Scrum is designed to help teams self-organize and create and sustain complex software products in turbulent environments. Although Scrum stems from Agile principles, it is not a methodology like Agile—it is, in fact, a system.

Scrum applies an empirical approach to better cope with the complexity and unpredictability of software development. It replaces the traditional industrial, plan-driven paradigm with well-considered, opportunistic experimentation.

During my learning process, I came across something worth sharing. I’ll illustrate it by translating a passage from Gunther Verheyen's book:

"The Scrum House is a place where people from different backgrounds, roles, skills, capabilities, and personalities work, learn, and grow together.

The Scrum House is inclusive, warm, open, and built on collaborative relationships.

The Scrum House doesn’t acknowledge the concept of 'us vs. them.' Barriers are not maintained or created—they are removed.

In the Scrum House, there’s no business vs. IT, team vs. the world, Product Owner vs. Development Team, support vs. coding, testers vs. programmers, my team vs. your team, or organization vs. Scrum Master.

The Scrum House promotes an open mindset toward the world.

The Scrum House discourages rigid behavior. Its residents show flexibility to better deal with uncertainty, internal tensions, and external pressures in the ecosystems they operate."

After reading this, I noticed how much the Scrum philosophy resembles Anarchism. Although it's hard to fully describe anarchism briefly, I’d say it's something like "coordination without coercion". I doubt anyone would strongly disagree with this definition—though many additions could certainly be made. I’m not the only one who’s noticed this perspective. If you're curious, check out this article.

Looks like I got a bit sidetracked. I actually started this article to share my personal experience preparing for the PSM I certification. :)

Back when 1 USD equaled 2 Turkish Lira, the exam fee on Scrum.org was $150. The price is still the same (although they’ve announced that an increase is coming). Today, that amounts to about 4200 TRY per exam. So a solid preparation plan is essential to avoid paying this fee more than once.

As someone who has taken and passed the exam, here are my suggestions:

- First and foremost, the best resource is Scrum.org itself. I highly recommend reading and revisiting the Scrum Guide thoroughly and repeatedly.

- Also, make sure to take this practice assessment on Scrum.org until you score 100%. It’s very useful. However, one important note: don’t use it as proof that you’re ready. The actual exam is more difficult than this practice test.

- To see different question patterns and test yourself further, you can also use this resource. Again, aim for 100% here too before considering yourself ready.

- Another learning resource I recommend is the Scrum.org forums. You’ll find answers to many questions and a variety of practice scenarios there.

- This site is also helpful for browsing questions and community responses. I encountered some of the questions from this site in the actual exam. However, I can't vouch for the accuracy of all answers—some answers were clearly incorrect despite being marked as correct in the comments.

- For those who enjoy reading, I recommend these two books:

• Scrum – A Pocket Guide - 2nd Edition: A Smart Travel Companion
• Scrum Narrative and PSM Exam Guide: All-in-One Guide for Professional Scrum Master (PSM I) Certificate Assessment Preparation

About the exam: it’s in English, with 80 questions to be answered in 60 minutes. Questions are a mix of single and multiple choice. You can take the exam from anywhere, and it’s essentially an “open book” test. Technically, there are no restrictions, and you can look things up online—but this can be a trap. You can easily find most answers online, but the real issue is: 80 questions in 60 minutes. That’s why I don’t recommend relying on searching. Instead, create a personal notebook with critical notes—it’ll be much more helpful. Time can be a real challenge, so don’t forget that.

Side note: ChatGPT can also be a helpful teacher and a source for clarifying your questions during the process.

In conclusion, the PSM I exam and the learning process are not overly difficult. With short but consistent study sessions and proper reinforcement, you can pass comfortably. As long as you remember that the actual exam questions are relatively harder than the practice ones, you’ll be just fine.