I recently completed a Professional Scrum Master course, and passed the exam. Here are my thoughts and tips if you want to give it a go.

Why

As a lead developer and as a software developer, why would I want to take a Professional Scrum Master Course?

Whether your team employs agile or scrum or even waterfall, knowledge is always valuable. All methodologies have elements to learn from and important perspectives.

Even if you consider yourself well-versed in scrum - I have been doing agile since early 2010s, part of a process of adoption at a number of companies, with a brief break to go back to waterfall (not out of choice) at an agency - and I found being presented the core material again and engaging with it through discussions in the course rewarding and gave me a lot of moments of reflection and points to bring to the team to discuss as improvements to our own practice.

Discussions with peers and the instructor were a great camaraderie-building exercise, considering elements of the scrum guide from angles I hadn’t considered before. Patterns, anti-patterns, personal biases, they all came out. It was a great experience.

How

How did I pass the exam?

The exam itself is not necessary difficult, but it is written in a way that expects you to understand the Scrum Guide in the spirit in which is was written, and you must remember certain things in the precise way in which they were written, such as one month rather than four weeks.

Pedantic, sure.

If you understand this is how the exam is structured, you’ll be fine.

Read the Scrum Guide

This is your bible: https://www.scrum.org/resources/scrum-guide

Read it. Read it again. Then read it again. And again. Think about what is being said, and consider it from the perspective of The Agile Manifesto. Consider it carefully from the perspective that Scrum is a framework, not a prescriptive process.

Take a Course

If your company will front it, take a course with your peers. You’ll have a great opportunity to discuss things together from the perspective of your unique challenges and culture, and it’s wonderful for team building.

The course we took was presented by xxxx, and he was an excellent teacher and facilitator.

If that isn’t possible, another good resource that I found was the Pluralsight Learning Path, Introduction to Professional Scrum.

This is a laser-focused set of courses that will prepare you for the exam. Consider structuring your own internal discussions around each session with team members.

Take the Scrum Open Assessments

Take the Scrum Open Assessments, over and over again, until you score 100% and are answering questions by muscle memory. A portion of these questions will appear on the exam, and thinking about the reasoning behind the correct answers will see you prepared.

You Got This

You don’t need anything other than the Scrum Guide, study, and a clear mind.

You got this.

Post-Exam Reflections

I’m glad I did the course and the exam. I think it’s strengthened me as a team lead, as a developer, as a team member, and it’s given me lots to think about and discuss, even now, weeks after.

If you’re interested, give it a go!