Level 1: The PSPO I Assessment and What Scrum Is

Trademark notice: Professional Scrum Product Owner and PSPO are trademarks of Advanced Development Methods, Inc., d/b/a Scrum.org. This course is not affiliated with or endorsed by Scrum.org. No course can promise you a pass, and this one does not.

Step 1: Learn the Assessment Facts

Before you study any Scrum content, learn how the test works. These facts shape how you practise.

What to do now:

1. Work out your margin: 85% of 80 is 68, so you need at least 68 correct answers.
2. Practise pacing. With 45 seconds a question you cannot look things up, even though the test is unproctored. You have to know the material.
3. Read multiple-answer questions carefully. The question tells you how many options to pick, and you must pick every correct one to get the mark.

Step 2: Plan Your Practice with the Free Open Assessments

Scrum.org offers two free practice tests. They give no certification, and you can take them as many times as you like.

• Scrum Open: covers the Scrum framework as a whole.
• Product Owner Open: covers Product Backlog management and maximising product value.

Suggested routine:

1. Read the Scrum Guide once from start to finish.
2. Take each Open assessment once to set a baseline.
3. As you finish the levels of this course, retake both until you score 100% every time and can explain why each answer is right.
4. For every question you miss, find the sentence in the Guide that settles it.

Step 3: Know Your Reference Document

The assessment rests on the November 2020 Scrum Guide by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. It is still the current official version. Unofficial community add-ons exist, but they are not the Scrum Guide, so do not answer from them. The assessment also draws on wider product-ownership practice, such as value, vision and stakeholders, and later levels cover that. Where a question touches the Scrum framework itself, the Guide's wording decides the answer.

The Guide explains its own purpose plainly:

"The Scrum Guide contains the definition of Scrum." (Scrum Guide 2020, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, CC BY-SA 4.0)

It also warns against changing it:

"Changing the core design or ideas of Scrum, leaving out elements, or not following the rules of Scrum, covers up problems and limits the benefits of Scrum, potentially even rendering it useless." (Scrum Guide 2020, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Step 4: Understand the Definition of Scrum

Learn this definition word for word:

"Scrum is a lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organizations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems." (Scrum Guide 2020, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Break it into parts:

• Lightweight: only a few rules.
• Framework: a structure you fill in, not a full method.
• Value: the aim is value, not activity.
• Complex problems: Scrum suits work where more is unknown than known.

Step 5: Understand Why Scrum Is Purposefully Incomplete

This is the central idea of this level:

"The Scrum framework is purposefully incomplete, only defining the parts required to implement Scrum theory." (Scrum Guide 2020, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, CC BY-SA 4.0)

"Rather than provide people with detailed instructions, the rules of Scrum guide their relationships and interactions." (Scrum Guide 2020, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, CC BY-SA 4.0)

"Scrum wraps around existing practices or renders them unnecessary." (Scrum Guide 2020, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, CC BY-SA 4.0)

An example: think of Scrum as the rules of football. The rules fix the pitch, the number of players and how a goal counts. They say nothing about formations or training drills, which each team picks for itself. In the same way:

• User stories, story points, burn-down charts and Kanban boards are optional practices. Teams may use them inside Scrum. The Guide does not require any of them.
• An existing practice either works inside Scrum (Scrum wraps around it), or Scrum shows that it adds nothing, and the team can drop it (Scrum renders it unnecessary).
• Scrum also shows how well current management, environment and work techniques are working, so they can be improved.

The framework itself still cannot be cut down. The End Note says:

"The Scrum framework, as outlined herein, is immutable. While implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum." (Scrum Guide 2020, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, CC BY-SA 4.0)

So: the core is fixed and complete. The practices around it are open.

Step 6: Spot Answers That Add Rules

Many wrong options in the assessment sound sensible but add a rule the Guide does not contain. Run this check on each option:

1. Does the option say a team must use a specific technique, such as user stories, story points or a particular estimation method? If so, it is probably wrong.
2. Does it require a document, sign-off or approval step that the Guide never mentions? Be suspicious of it.
3. Does it bring in a role, meeting or artifact that is not in the Guide? Reject it.
4. Does it use words like may, can, or the team decides about a practice? That usually fits a purposefully incomplete framework.

Example: Scrum requires the Product Backlog to be written as user stories. This is false. User stories are a common practice, but the Guide does not require them.

What the Exam Asks About This

• The definition of Scrum: lightweight, a framework, value, complex problems.
• Whether a named technique is required by Scrum. Usually it is not.
• Whether Scrum can be partly implemented and still called Scrum. It cannot.
• How Scrum relates to existing practices: it wraps around them or renders them unnecessary.

Key Takeaways

• PSPO I has 80 questions, a 60-minute limit, an 85% pass mark and a $200 fee per attempt. Questions are multiple choice, multiple answer or true/false, and no course is required.
• Practise with the free Scrum Open and Product Owner Open tests until you score 100% every time.
• The November 2020 Scrum Guide is the reference for the framework.
• Scrum is purposefully incomplete. It defines only what Scrum theory needs and leaves practices to the team.
• The core is immutable. Implementing only parts of Scrum is not Scrum.
• Reject answer options that add rules the Guide does not contain.

Quotations from the Scrum Guide 2020 by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.