How to pass Professional Scrum Master I(PSM I)Certification

One of the most sought certifications in the Agile industry for Scrum Masters is Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I). The certification is offered by Scrum.org — The Home of Scrum. A foundational certification in the field of Scrum Mastery.

There are three levels of Professional Scrum Master Certifications Scrum.org offers. The other two are Advanced (PSM-II) and Distinguished (PSM-III) level certifications. There is no definitive order that you have to go. One can directly appear for PSM-III if they have a deep understanding of Scrum.

As the name suggests, “Professional” — One must exhibit a high standard of understanding in Scrum to gain this certification. PSM I demand an understanding of Scrum, as mentioned in the PSM training online Guide and it tests the consistency in using Scrum.

In this blog, I am going to cover the

·       Ways to get Professional Scrum Master Certified

·       Assessment areas

·       Learning references

·       Tips to crack the exam

Ways to get Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I) Certified

Scrum org offers two paths to PSM I Certification — Training with exam & Exam (Direct).

Training

Training for PSM I are offered

·       By Professional Scrum Trainers accredited by Scrum dot org after a rigorous assessment of depth in Scrum knowledge and Scrum Mastery experience.

·       By Professional Training Networks (PTN) — Recognised training partners of Scrum dot org in collaboration with Professional Scrum Trainers.

As part of the training, a candidate gets two attempts at PSM I exam.

Note: Beware of the bait that few people in the industry claim to take Scrum workshops to help get PSM. Go with Authenticity.

Direct Exam

One can directly buy a password from the Scrum dot org store by paying $150. The password is valid for only one attempt.

PSM I Assessment Areas

The foundational level, Professional Scrum Master (PSM I), assess a candidate’s basic understanding of the below areas.

Scrum Framework Understanding & its Application

·       Empiricism

·       Scrum Values

·       Scrum Team

·       Events

·       Artifacts

·       Done

Enabling Teams

·       Self-managed teams

·       Facilitation

·       Coaching & Mentoring

Agility in Product using Scrum

·       Product Value

·       Product Backlog Management

·       Stakeholders & Customers

·       Forecasting & Release Planning

Learning References

In my humble opinion, attending a Professional Scrum Master Workshop gives one well-rounded knowledge in all the above areas.

Apart from the class, use the below references.

·       Reading & the Scrum Guide is of utmost importance. Do not stop just by reading it. Use your learning preference to annotate it or digest it.

·       Finish the learning path for Scrum Master in the Scrum dot org

·       Reading references in Scrum dot org

·       Scrum Framework Foundational videos

·       Scrum Myths busted

·       True Leader

·       Whitepaper — Scrum Master Stages

·       Forever Scrum Master

·       Scrum Master & Product Owner — Same Person?

·       Product Goal — A commitment

·       A-Z with Scrum

Tips to crack the exam

Let us start with the Assessment,

·       The assessment is of 80 Multiple Choices questions. And the time limit is 60 minutes. One has to get 68 questions right to achieve the pass percentage, 85%.

·       Bookmark questions to revisit. One may run out of time if more time is spent on a single question.

·       Utilise the Scrum Open Assessment to get yourself confident with the format of the main exam. The open assessments are free. Take it as many times as possible to get familiarised. The open assessments provide feedback for every question at the end.

·       Take the assessment in a calm place where one can have the utmost focus.

·       Be sure to have a good internet connection as well. Do not close the browser at any cost; the attempt will be lost.

·       For technical glitches, reach out to Scrum dot org support.

Learning Tips

·       Practice the usage of Scrum terminologies as in Scrum Guide. Maybe through forming peer groups or self-recordings to reflect. Like, Daily Standup →Daily Scrum; Backlog Grooming → Product Backlog Refinement.

·       Scrum demands Empiricism, Self-management and Product thinking. Understand the why’s behind Scrum carefully and be mindful to choose answers adhering to it.

·       Watch out for universal statements in the exam. It may trap you to choose the wrong answer. Learn to differentiate the mandatory and non-mandatory elements in Scrum.

·       If you are unsure of the answers, try to avoid bad answers to nail the correct answer.

·       Move away from the traditional phase gated approaches. Learn to differentiate Scrum from traditional thinking and practices.

·       The Exam demands the information by the books. Go by the books and authentic information. Try not to bring one’s experience with Scrum, as in practice, one may not follow Scrum by the books.

Special Note: Do not refer to any mock-ups or practice tests as those are not endorsed by Scrum dot org and may not be authentic.

Resource: https://www.tryscrum.com/blogs/how-to-pass-professional-scrum-master-i-psm-i-certification/

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Biotech and Scrum: Rethinking How Biotech Innovates in the 21st Century

Scrum is commonplace in the software industry, but its ideas and principles can be applied to other domains and contexts. Can the ideas of Scrum help Biotech firms deliver more value, whilst navigating the complexities of innovation? Can Scrum work in an environment where experiments take time, failure is likely, partnerships are proliferating, and roles are highly specialized?

And will scientists actually accept this new way of working?

In this webinar Dave West CEO of Scrum.org talks to Tyson Bertmaring, MBA, Head of Partner Success at Dyno Therapeutics, and Matt Abbinanti, Ph.D., Senior Program Manager at CRISPR Therapeutics on how Scrum master course in Chennai works in Biotech.

About Our Speakers

Matt Abbinanti, Ph.D., Senior Program Manager at CRISPR Therapeutics

After a postdoc studying the electrophysiological changes in spinal neurons after spinal cord injury, Matt entered the biotech industry as a scientist for BioAxone Biosciences. Later, as Director of Research and Project Management at BioAxone, he was responsible for leading the preclinical development of small-molecule Rho kinase inhibitors from discovery stage through IND-enabling studies for the treatment of cavernous angioma, neurotrauma, and glaucoma. He made the transition to Program Management at CRISPR Therapeutics in early 2019, facilitating the installation of the Scrum framework for a high-performing research team and managing multiple alliances and research-stage programs.

Tyson Bertmaring, MBA, Head of Partner Success at Dyno Therapeutics

Tyson Bertmaring began his career as a United States Air Force officer leading teams across diverse environments, spanning from nuclear deterrence to R&D. Since departing active duty, Tyson has transitioned those experiences to serve R&D teams across both large and small biotech companies and alliances. He is passionate about experimenting with Scrum to realize the joy and achievement of others through fulfilling teamwork.  Tyson’s current experiment is enterprise wide at Dyno Therapeutics, a biotech startup.

Dave West, CEO, Scrum.org

Dave is the CEO at Scrum.org. He is a frequent keynote at major industry conferences and is a widely published author of articles and research reports, along with his acclaimed book: Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design, that helped define new software modeling and application development processes. He led the development of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) for IBM/Rational. After IBM/Rational, West returned to consulting and managed Ivar Jacobson Consulting for North America. Then as VP, research director Forrester research where he ran the software development and delivery practice. Prior to joining Scrum.org he was Chief Product Officer at Tasktop where he was responsible for product management, engineering and architecture.

Resource: https://www.scrum.org/resources/biotech-and-scrum-rethinking-how-biotech-innovates-21st-century

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Using Scrum Master Training in Bangalore for Improving Operations

One of the key questions I start a conversation about Scrum with is Why - Why do we need Scrum? What problems are we looking to solve with it?

Next, we typically explore Where/When - Where would it make sense to use Scrum? When would it or wouldn't it?

One thing to remember is that Scrum was designed to help people solve complex problems, not all sorts of problems. What does this mean exactly?

Let's look at a couple of examples of Complicated processes that might not need Scrum/Agile

Accounting teams run several sorts of processes - like Closing (the month, quarter, year), Reporting, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable.

Healthcare professionals treat patients. Whether it is an emergency room, an orthopedics clinic, or a covid19 testing provider.

Should we use scrum master training in Bangalore for Operational Processes?

These might be complicated processes but they aren't typically complex. Lots of steps, lots of work they need to be careful and diligent about, but it's not something they need Agile for on an ongoing basis.

Hopefully, these operational processes are stable and predictable. If they're not, we have some work to do. We need to get rid of variability and surprises.

We can use Scrum for improving operational processes

Where Scrum IS often useful is in the process of continuously improving these operational processes. We know how to run the current process predictably. But once we decide to improve it, this might be a problem we have more uncertainty about - what does better look like? What will/won't work? How do we go about implementing it?

What we find in many contexts is that people call these improvements "Projects" and its one of the areas they struggle with. Beyond the classic challenges of complex work, we see many cases of teams working on improvement projects that are based on people who also work in the operation. (for example an A/R professional working on a project to improve A/R or a physician participating in a project to implement electronic medical records software). These teams working on improvement "projects" struggle to focus. As we all know, Allocating capacity to improvement is hard. And switching contexts between the day-to-day operation and improvement work is hard as well.

Scrum helps these teams optimize the value they create through their improvement work.

Their "Product" is an improved operation that achieves better outcomes for their stakeholders while making life easier for themselves and their peers.

We want the entire company to be Agile

We're hearing that more and more aren't we?

As you can imagine based on the above, I'm of the opinion that we need to be careful and apply the right tool in the right context. Agile approaches make sense in many contexts and most companies would indeed benefit from applying them beyond software development/technology/IT.

Identifying the different "Operational" flows in the organization and the various "Development/Improvement" activities that work to improve them is a great way to drive a discussion with a company or a leader that is exploring Agile/Scrum all over the company.

In Summary - Scrum for Improving Operations, not necessarily Scrum for Operations

This distinction between the ongoing "Operations" where we don't necessarily need Scrum or Agile and "Development" or "Improvement" work that aims to improve "Operations" helps people outside of software/technology/IT relate and buy-in to Scrum or other Agile approaches.

PS You might find it interesting to read about "Operational Value Streams" and "Development Value Streams" in SAFe, which are similar concepts to what I'm describing here.

Resource: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/using-scrum-improving-operations

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Understanding the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams in Professional Scrum Master Training

It’s been so exciting to hear so much positive feedback and interest in the new Scrum.org Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams and the accompanying Professional Scrum with Kanban class. Creating the class and guide together with Daniel (Vacanti) & Steve (Porter) and then working on getting it to market in a professional way (how else?) with the Scrum.org staff has been a great experience and a major focus area for me in the last couple of months.

As you might imagine, together with the interest come some questions about some choices we made in the design of the guide and the class. Several are emerging as the frequently asked ones. I wanted to tackle a couple of those in this post.

Where are some of the core Kanban practices?

The major one we’re getting comes from people who are experienced Kanban practitioners who notice that how we describe Kanban in the Kanban guide for scrum teams in professional scrum master training is different than the definition they’re familiar with. (Including my Kanban Primer for Scrum Teams blog post for example…) This isn’t an oversight. It’s by design. When we set out to create the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams/approach we had a specific context in mind. That context is teams using Scrum according to the Scrum guide, ideally professionally.

In the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams, we focus on helping in this context. These teams already have a collaborative inspect and adapt experimentation process together with a set of explicit feedback loops they’re using. So, we set out to define the minimal simplest set of Kanban practices that these Scrum teams would need to add in order to achieve steadier, healthier, more sustainable flow (I like to say it is like moving from a sprint that looks like a swamp to one that looks like a river).

After some discussion we decided that these practices actually complement what a professional Scrum team is already doing:

 

·    Visualization of the workflow

 

·    Limiting WIP

 

·    Active management of work items in progress

 

·    Inspecting and adapting their definition of "Workflow"

 

While we agree with the importance of “Improve Collaboratively (Using models and the scientific method” and “Implement feedback loops” we think they are redundant in a professional Scrum context.

Where are some advanced Kanban concepts like Classes of Service, Cost of Delay, Flow Efficiency?

They’re not part of the guide because we don’t consider them part of the “Minimally viable set of practices” a Scrum team should focus on when trying to improve their flow. Having said that, our guide and especially the PSK class provides people with some pointers towards advanced complementary Kanban/flow practices/metrics that at least some can use to continue their learning and improvement journey.

Beyond that - Some of them might be useful in some Scrum contexts, some less so.

Is this an application of the Kanban Method or not?

In my personal view, it is pretty close, as long as you assume professional scrum is your starting point. (see a blog post I wrote back in 2012 about this context). You are starting with the way the team uses Scrum and with respecting their current Scrum process & roles. You are obviously interested in pursuing an incremental evolutionary change to improve your performance and satisfaction with your process beyond what you’re currently achieving with Scrum. There is that argument that limiting your work in process is far from being an evolutionary change but rather a disruptive revolution. My personal take on it is that yes, limiting your work in process and moving to a disciplined pull mode is far from being easy, but it’s still evolutionary compared to changing team structures, roles, process flows. And in any case, this is an argument about the Kanban Method outside of a Scrum context as well. A professional Scrum team should actually have an easier time limiting WIP than most.

Is this ScrumBan?

Depends who you ask. Some people’s definition of ScrumBan is “A way to help teams’ transition from Scrum to Kanban”. This isn’t what we’re talking about here.

Another definition (that I subscribe to) is to see ScrumBan as a way to introduce Lean/Kanban flow into a Scrum context – while keeping the core Scrum process intact. This is pretty similar to our take on the process Scrum teams will typically take to get to an effective combination of Scrum and Kanban.

Finally, a variant on this definition is to see ScrumBan as simply the Scrum+Kanban combination itself, without worrying about your starting point and journey. This, in my view, is indeed what the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams describes.

Why/When should you add Kanban to Scrum?

The last question I want to tackle is one of the first you might want to think about. Essentially the question is “Why bother? Isn’t Scrum great as is?”

Most of the teams I’ve worked with since 2010 or so find Scrum+Kanban to be the ideal mix. I’ve helped Scrum teams achieve an even healthier smoother flow by adding Kanban to their process. I’ve helped Kanban teams accelerate their pace of improvement by adding cadence/rhythm and clarity. I’ve helped teams look beyond their Sprint at the end to end flow all the way from idea to outcomes using a Kanban system. I’ve helped organizations manage the flow across several Scrum teams using a Kanban system.

When a Scrum team wants my opinion on whether adding Kanban would be a good idea I typically ask them to think about how hard it is for them to Sprint and whether they feel like they have good flow during the Sprint. (And like I mentioned above - do they feel like their process is a swamp or a river). It’s as simple as that. I find most Scrum teams struggle to achieve good sustainable healthy flow and Kanban tends to help them with that.

When is Kanban with Scrum a bad idea?

Some Professional Scrum Trainers asked “When would it be a bad idea to introduce Kanban to your Scrum? What are some indicators that you should stop using Kanban as part of your Scrum?” I can’t think of any team where I thought they should stop using Kanban. If they understand Kanban and do it well, there’s really little that can go wrong. The problems start when they don’t understand Kanban or use it as an escape from the challenges of Scrum. Yes, Kanban can help you make your Scrum more sustainable and healthier, but please don’t add Kanban if you’re looking for an escape from the difficulties. Kanban done well adds discipline to your Scrum. Another bad time to introduce Kanban is when the team isn’t looking to improve. If things are working well or more importantly if the team perceives things as working well, they won’t have the energy needed to successfully add Kanban to their process. So make sure you agree on pains/motivations before you move forward to implementing something like Kanban.

Kanban - A way back to Scrum!

To finish with scenarios where introducing Kanban IS a great idea – It pains me every time I see a team/company using Scrum as a new variant of “project management command and control” focusing more on tasks, story points, velocity and burndown than on empiricism leveraging Done Increments of potentially releasable product.

What I’ve noticed is that introducing Kanban ideas helps these teams/companies finally understand what Scrum really is about and shed a lot of the unnecessary and even harmful baggage and instead refocus on the transparency, inspection, and adaptation brought to life by the core Scrum events, roles, and artifacts. Pretty amazing isn’t it?

Interested to learn more about how Kanban and Scrum make each other better together? Join a public Professional Scrum with Kanban class or request a private training for your team.

Resource: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/understanding-kanban-guide-scrum-teams 

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Why a Person Should Join tryScrum (Professional Agile Leadership Training)?

Some may confuse the word “Foundation” in the name of the Professional Scrum Foundation course to mean simple or basic. But in truth this means it is a course for everybody to build a solid base of knowledge, understanding and practical application of Professional Scrum.  

• Everyone in your Scrum team and the managers/leaders who interacting with your team should be able to answer
• What is complexity? How does professional agile leadership training framework help us develop and sustainable deliver complex products?
• What is empiricism? How do the Scrum Roles, Events, Artifacts enable and ensure this empirical process works?
• What is self-organisation? How does the Scrum framework help an organisation and its reams become self-organising?

Who should attend?

• Are you curious about what Scrum can bring to your products and organisation?
• Are you supporting Scrum Teams in a leadership role, stakeholder, or other capacity and want to understand how Scrum works and how to collaborate together?
• Are you interested in a career change and have no experience in Scrum?
• Are you doing Scrum in name only and nothing has changed? No mindset, culture, or increased agility change?
• Are you NOT delivering a “Done” Releasable Increment at least once per sprint, therefore enabling transparency, trust, and greater business agility?
• Are you NOT gaining better customer outcomes and business benefits?
• Is Scrum NOT helping you manage risk and complexity?

The Scrum Master Course Chennai is the perfect introduction, reboot or refresher to Scrum. This course is for organisations, teams or anyone wanting to experience the Scrum way of working. PSF provides the base knowledge needed for anyone interested in taking role-focused trainings.

How?

Over the 2 days, students experience Professional Scrum with the practical application of Scrum. Students work together as a team in a series of Sprints to build a product, thereby facing real-life problems. The rules, roles, and principles of Scrum are leveraged during the exercises. From its emphasis on the practical application of Scrum, the course exposes common missteps and misunderstandings, so students grow a higher awareness of the associated symptoms. The course provides prescriptive guidance to avoid going off track and keep Scrum healthy.

What previous students have said?

We ran a small experiment with students who attended a PSM course and had little or no knowledge or experience of Scrum beforehand. We offer them to attend a PSF the following week, if they could gives us feedback on - "Which would you recommend to someone, PSF or PSM, who has the current experience & knowledge you had before taking either course?"

"I enjoyed both courses honestly but if I had the opportunity to choose which to take first I would take the PSF first. My reason is that the PSF is broad and covers all areas of scrum, and obviously has a lot of fun exercises. It's fun to work as a Scrum Team in Sprints to deliver a product & the exercises to learn Scrum. The PSF is also more laid back on the second day which relaxes everyone. The PSM on the other hand is more specific and detailed compared to the PSF. It would greatly benefit someone who has some knowledge on what scrum is.  My recommendation is the PSF first." Fortunate Ngwang - Changing career.

"As with the PSM course, the PSF was fantastic! I will be suggesting that people take this one before they decide to take on either PSM or PSPO. Despite being a virtual class, the level of interaction was amazing, and your teaching style speaks volumes in terms of the number of people, including myself, who crack the not-so-easy assessments with flying colours. Thank you! " Abhijeet Basu - Project Manager.

What you get for taking the course

• Facilitation and coaching from highly experienced Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainers.
• Debunk myths, dispel misconceptions, and gain a true understanding of Scrum.
• Gives students the knowledge and direction to start using Scrum and cutting practices immediately after the class.
• Create a transformation plan for the adoption of Scrum within your organization/team in the class with the support of the trainers’ transformation experience
• 2 attempts at the Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master I certification and a 40% discount from Professional Scrum Master II certification.

Resource: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/why-should-i-attend-scrumorg-professional-scrum-foundation-course

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