Introducing PSM assessments

Professional Scrum Master (PSM) assessments are available to anyone who wishes to validate their depth of knowledge of the Scrum framework and its application. Those who pass the assessment will receive the industry-recognized PSM certification to demonstrate their level of Scrum mastery. To better understand how these assessments came about, let's take a look at how Scrum was organized and evolved.

Scrum organizations and their history

Back in the What is Scrum? section, we mentioned how Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland created Scrum back in the 1990s. To better support Scrum and encourage its adoption, Schwaber, Sutherland, and others created the Scrum Alliance in 2002 (https://www.scrumalliance.org/). In 2009, Schwaber decided to go his own way and created Scrum.org. These two still remain the only valid and authentic Scrum organizations. They both offer Scrum-related certifications. Scrum.org offers PSM certification at two levels: I and II for a fundamental and advanced understanding of Scrum, respectively.

To ensure that both Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org are aligned, that the Scrum content doesn't digress, and that Scrum remains independent of any organization, Schwaber and Sutherland created a public document called The Scrum Guide (Further reading). The Scrum Guide contains the definition of Scrum and its components and all the rules and responsibilities prescribed by the Scrum framework.

They occasionally revise this document, with the current version being November 2017. This book is based on and uses this version of the Scrum Guide. The Scrum Guide is essential reading for anyone wanting to take the PSM assessments, or indeed anyone practicing Scrum.

Now that we know how the PSM assessments came to be, let's get better acquainted with the PSM I assessment, which is what we'll be focusing on in this book.

The PSM I assessment

Unlike its Scrum Alliance counterpart, the PSM assessment requires passing an online exam. Here are some details on this:

• The exam consists of 80 multiple-choice questions and must be completed within 60 minutes.
• The pass mark is 85%.
• The exam is only offered in the English language.
• Some questions have only one correct answer. Some questions have multiple correct answers. Some questions have only a True/False answer. It is clearly indicated during the exam how many answers are correct for each question
• Not every question has the same weight, so don't think that you need to answer 68 (that is, 85%) questions correctly in order to pass the exam; it could be fewer or more, we just don't know how the questions are weighed.
• The exam costs 150 US dollars, which are payable online by credit card.

There are no official pre-requisites for taking the exam. In other words, Scrum.org does not require you to attend any of their courses, read any of their books, or even have real-life Scrum experience before sitting it. Having said that, allow me to offer you some tips:

• As with any knowledge domain, real-life experience makes a difference when taking an assessment. I know PSM I holders who passed the exam without having worked with Scrum before. However, any experience you have working in an actual Scrum-based organization will increase your odds of passing.
• Books by the Scrum creators, such as Software in 30 Days: How Agile Managers Beat the Odds, Delight Their Customers, and Leave Competitors in the Dust in the Further reading section, provide some valuable insights that can often prove useful during the exam.
• The Scrum Open Assessment (https://www.scrum.org/open-assessments/scrum-open) is an extremely valuable tool to prepare you for the exam. Some of the questions in it often appear during the actual exam. I strongly recommend taking the Open Assessment before taking the actual exam.

We will be covering the PSM I assessment in great detail in Chapter 9, Preparing for the PSM I Assessment.