Professional Scrum Master Certification

Hello Mohit. PMBOK is the guide to project management. There is PRINCE2, IPMA, AIPM, and others. PMBOK is just more well known. Similarly, Scrum has different guides. Two of the co-developers of Scrum were Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. They eventually founded their own organizations: Scum Alliance (Ken along with Mike Cohn), Scrum Inc (Jeff) and Scrum.org (Ken). Each of these have their own certifications. SBOK may sound great, but it is produced by ScrumStudy, and as far as I know, none of the heavyweights in the Scrum world started that organization or wrote the guide. CSM and PSM are now the leading Scrum certifications. CSM is older and more recognized. PSM is gaining a better reputation, and I believe has surpassed the CSM in quality and rigor.

Thanks Sante. I was just wondering why there was no single guide for Scrum. Guess we might see it evolve & merged into a comprehesive guide eventually.

-- Mohit

Here's a question I stumbled upon while doing some practice tests on scrum.

How does Scrum define & track initial per-requisite tasks (such as Infrastructure setup, access for development team, environment readiness etc.) that are not really user stories?

Some blogs state the common practice is to define a "Sprint 0" but the Scrum guide doesn't recognize it. While others state it should be part of Product Backlog - the backlog is not specific to user requirements & contain all the work required for the project. Which is the best practice & right answer from exam point of view? Is there an Inception phase in Scrum?

My assumption is the architects & technical consultants are also part of the development team (composition can change as we move from Sprint1 to Sprint N), they help provide estimates for the initial setup & the tasks....

--- Mohit

Thanks Kiron.

I know (based on what I have read so far + Scrum guide) that Scrum is one of the frameworks for Agile development. I may not have read it fully yet & there are still pieces that are confusing, but it would be interesting to know how does project management work with Scrum? Does it even exist? Does each Sprint goes through the project management lifecycle from Initiation to closing?

The Scrum guide does cover all the fundamentals around it but also leave you craving to dig more.....

Also, to your question, "can initiation-type activities be completed in 1-4 weeks", I would think yes. Maybe I am wrong but I don't see a reason why they can't be. Of course the result will not be an "Increment" to fit into Scrum framework. So my question is - should there be a "Sprint 0" for such activities or they should go as top items into the Product Backlog?...Or there is no single practice followed?

Thanks,
Mohit

Mohit,

I just passed the PSM I yesterday, and the PSPO I today. I passed the PMI-ACP on Saturday, so I wanted to see if my studying for the PMI exam helped prepare me for the Scrum.org certifications while everything was still fresh in my mind.

I used the Scrum Open and Product Open assessment from Scrum.org for the PSM. I saw a couple of questions I didn't expect on the PSM exam, so for the PSPO I also took the Nexus Open. I made sure I could quickly pass the open assessments with 90% or higher.

I also saw a lot of recommendations for Mikhail Lapshin's practice tests (mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes). I took both the PSM and PSPO practice tests until I could get over 90%. Both Scrum Master and Product Owner roles are covered in the Scrum Guide, so it is good to take both practice exams even if you are just doing PSM to round out your readiness.

For the PSPO I also ran through some of the Scrum.org learning paths, mostly the text-based ones like the blog posts, but also a few of the videos.

Other than that, I just read the Scrum Guide a few times through. On one of the passes I wrote out the Scrum Guide by hand to help me absorb the material.

All in all, I think I might have over-prepared, but I think that was better than under-preparing. I was pretty satisfied with my scores. It is difficult to really "know" you are ready. Ultimately I just decided to dive in because that was the best way I knew to find out.

Thanks Jared for sharing your experience & study plan in preparation of the scrum certifications. Most the feedback I read have also pointed out speed to be a significant factor for PSM I exam. They stated one should be able to finish the open assessment (30 questions) under 4 minutes with a 100% score constantly (a target to assess your readiness). That sounds challenging :)...I am not sure how much of it really affects your performance in the real exam though. Right now I am under 10 minutes mark (around 7 minutes).

-- Mohit