How to prepare yourself for the Pro Scrum Master Certification (PSM 1)

Introduction

The PSM I certification is available to anyone who wishes to validate his or her depth of knowledge of the Scrum framework and its application. Those who pass the assessment will receive the industry recognized PSM I Certification to demonstrate their fundamental level of Scrum mastery.

Preparation for this assessment/certification can be very easy, if you know what to focus on.
Therefore I will try to give an overview of the resources I used during my preparation to pass the PSM I final assessment successfully

Scrum Guide

The first and most important step in your preparation is the Scrum Guide.
Don't just read this document once, read it over and over again, untill you fully digested and understand the contents of the Scrum Guide. Understanding the roles and responsibilities in Scrum, the events and artifacts included and how the support empericism will be the core knowledge required for passing the assessement.

Nexus Guide

The next step in your preparation can be reading and understanding The Nexus Guide. The Nexus Guide is focused on the implementation of Scaled Scrum (multiple Scrum Teams working on the same product) and how to adapt/extend the Scrum framework to scale efficiently. Although the information on Scrum.org doesn't mention The Nexus Guide as a requirement for the PSM I assessement, there can be questions in the final assessement related to Scaled Scrum implementation.

Scrum Glossary

The Scrum Glossary will provide you with an overview of all Scrum-related terms. Some of them you will know, some of them can be new. Reading and understanding the glossary list is not required, but can be very useful in understanding the questions that will be asked during the final assessement.

Scrum open assessments

On Scrum.org, there are several open assesments available where you can test your knowledge and evaluate your current progress towards the final assessement. For the Scrum Open assessment you will get 30 questions that are relatively similar to some of the questions you can get in the final assessement.
I would advise to reach 100% on the Scrum Open assessement a few times, before giving mock assessements or the final assessment a try.
Also, don't hesitate the try the other open assessements provided like the Nexus Open, Product Owner Open or the Developer Open assessment. Some of the questions you will get will be irrelevant, others can return in the PSM I final assessement.

Mock Assessments

Similar to the open assessements on Scrum.org, there are some really good (free) mock assessements available

The most useful mock assessements to me were:

• PSM Preparation Quiz
• Mplaza

I retried these mock assessements multiple times till I could achieve 100%.
Try not to focus on how much questions you answered wrong, but why did you get them wrong. Try to find out which part of the Scrum Guide the question relates to, and try to understand why the answer you provided is not correct, or why other answers fit better according to the Scrum Guide
This way you will get a better and deeper understanding of the Scrum framework

The final assessement

Once you are ready to take the final assessement, here are some tips that can make a difference during the exam

• Keep your eye on the clock, don't waste time
• Rely on your knowledge, there is not a lot of time to go looking for answers on the internet
• Read the questions thoroughly, there can be trick questions where one word in the question can make the difference
• Read all the answers before picking the one you think is right. If you are unsure about the answer, try to eliminate the ones you know are certainly wrong

Summary

I hope this gives a clear summary on the available resources to prepare for the PSM I assessment/certification, or at least give you some direction/helps to focus on what to study.
This is (of course) only a small grasp of the available resources related to the PSM I assessment, but they are the ones I felt were the most useful to me, and which I used the most to achieve the PSM I certification

(Reading, understanding and passing all the open and mock assessments is also no guarantee that you will pass the final assessment)