How I passed the Scrum Master Certificate PSM I

Since I started learning frontend development more than a year ago, I often read the term "agile methods". This caught my attention, and soon I started reading the Scrum Guide.

I was interested in this kind of working methods since I heard during my studies (I studied Japanese Studies at University of Vienna) that the Japanese started to develop and use Kanban board, a scheduling system, in the late 1940s to improve their productivity at Toyota.

I liked the idea behind it and soon realized that this is something that companies in Europe (and I guess all over the world) are working with nowadays as well.

When job searching, I kept reading the job title 'Scrum Master', so it must be a job itself, I thought. And not because I want to become a Scrum Master myself, but to understand how Scrum works in a company, in a team, I decided to take the Scrum Master Test.

And as luck would have it, passing the PSM I exam is also a requirement in my company anyway, which every developer has to do within the first two years (paid by the company, of course). So I was totally on the right track.

Scrum Guide

After reading the Scrum guide over and over again all the terms started to make more sense shortly after starting the job and attending our daily meetings, leading to a better understanding of what Scrum is.

But now, at Christmas time, I really sat down and studied for a few days. There's a good description on scrum.org on how to best prepare for the exam, and that's exactly what I did.

Learning Path

I followed the Scrum Master Learning Path, which includes videos, readings, and blog articles for better understanding and real-world examples.

Open Assessment

The website also provides a Assessment Test with 30 questions that you can take over and over again. Once you have scored 100% a few times, you are good to go and take the test on
Mikhails website, who has created a quiz with more than 80 questions that are very close to the real questions. If you pass this quiz several times with more than 90%, you should feel confident for the PSM I.

The PSM I Assessment

The test itself consists of 80 questions with multiple answer choices, true/false and one correct answer. You have 60 minutes to complete the test, with the option to mark and correct your answers later. About 65 questions were (almost) identical to those in the quizzes and assessment tests provided by Mikhail and scrum.org itself. About 15 questions contained real-life examples, so you are well prepared if you follow the learning path mentioned earlier. To actually pass the exam, you must score >85%.

My Results

It took me almost the whole hour to take the test and I passed with 93.8% 🥲. But still, I passed and I am super happy about the achievement.

Thanks for your reading and time. I really appreciate it!