Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I) certification exam preparation and experience
By: Ankita Bhatnagar
Tags: Psm 1, Scrum Master, Agile, Scrum, Professional Scrum Master

I cleared the PSM I certification on 7-June-2020 with 95%. I would like to share my journey so that everyone can benefit from it.

As a student myself I had so many questions and felt ‘unprepared’ till the last minute.

Preparation:

1. I started working on PSM I certification 3 weeks ago. I looked for online resources and found about this course on Udemy https://www.udemy.com/course/scrum-master-certification-preparation-mock-exam-questions-psm-i/. Based on the reviews and positive feedback, I registered for it and started viewing the lectures.

2. The Scrum Guide was extremely dry for me, I am a person who doesn’t like to read much. I am much into technology, coding, etc. Reading does not excite me.

3. I read the Scrum Guide in pieces, created handmade notes.

4. I went through this course 2 times, 1st time without attempting any mock tests and the second time to brush up on all the topics after writing multiple mock tests.

5. I wrote all the mock tests that are part of this course multiple times until I started scoring 95% and up consistently.

6. The mock tests include:

- Practice test 1 (learning mode): This is a great start because you get immediate feedback on the answer you select.

- Practice test 2 (real mode)

- Practice test 3 (real mode)

- Scrum Open assessment — Keep repeating it until you start getting 100% within 20–25 minutes. Writing multiple times also exhausts the entire pool of questions.

- Product Owner Open assessment — I wrote it 3 times, scored in the range of 90–95%. As Valentin had advised, this is just to get familiarized more with the PO role.

- Mikhail Lapshin assessment in both real and learning mode

7. If you score 98% and in the next attempt, you score 95%, don’t worry! Your knowledge is still intact. Just make sure you write that exam one more time to make sure you haven’t forgotten any concept. Go back to Scrum Guide and read that particular piece where you lost points. We are all humans and our memories are volatile.

8. I also took screenshots of all the questions that I started getting wrong in the last 3 days to go through them the night before. I focused on the questions from the last 3 days because these incorrect answers indicated that some of my concepts are still not clear.

9. Finally, when the course instructor advised that I was ready for this test, I bought the exam online and received the password.

Day of Exam and Exam experience

1. Questions are tricky, wordy and you need to read them with 100% focus. When I say tricky, they are not difficult. These are questions that are reworded from one of the mock questions.

2. Do not attempt the exam if you don’t start scoring 100% on Scrum Open Assessment back to back. I keep repeating it because most of the questions were either as-is from the pool or reworded. So, you should spend time only on reading the questions carefully.

3. As everyone mentions, your internet connection should be good, keep a glass of water with you, and make sure there are no distractions or disruptions.

4. Right before writing the exam, I went through my screenshots of a few difficult questions to set up the brain that it is going to see more questions of this sort in the next 1 hour.

5. 60 minutes was enough for me, I had marked questions for review that I wasn’t confident in the first attempt and I could go back to all of them at the end. But I did not get time to review the complete set at the end. And I was prepared for it. I made sure that I kept only a handful of questions for review, which means I needed to get the questions correctly the first time as I wouldn’t come back to review them later.

6. My personal suggestion — Do not drink water right before or during the exam, this is a kind of distraction and you might want to use the restroom in between. Trust me, every minute counts in this exam.

Final note:

I wish everyone good luck, we can all do it with good preparation and consistent practice.

Most important tip:

If you have made up your mind about PSM I, do not delay it. Prepare and write within 3–3.5 weeks. The content is volatile and there is no way you can attempt the questions based on your gut feeling or prior Scrum experience. Scrum Guide is the bible!