Level 1: The PSM™ I Assessment and What Scrum Is

Notice: Professional Scrum Master and PSM are trademarks of Advanced Development Methods, Inc., d/b/a Scrum.org. This course is not affiliated with or endorsed by Scrum.org. It is an independent course, and it promises no pass.

Step 1: Know the Assessment You Are Preparing For

The Professional Scrum Master™ I (PSM™ I) assessment is an online test run by Scrum.org. Learn these figures first:

• 80 questions. You will see multiple-choice, multiple-answer and true/false questions.
• 60 minutes. That is about 45 seconds a question.
• 85% to pass. You need at least 68 of the 80 questions right.
• $200 an attempt. Every retake costs the full fee again.
• No course required. You can buy an attempt and sit it without attending any class. Training is optional.
• Free practice. Scrum.org offers a free practice assessment called Scrum Open. Its questions are written in the same style as the real ones.

What to DO now: write the four numbers on a card: 80, 60, 85%, $200. Then plan to take Scrum Open several times as you work through this course.

Step 2: Accept One Source of Truth

The assessment marks your answers against one document: The Scrum Guide, November 2020 edition, written by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. It does not use blog posts, your company's process, earlier editions of the Guide, or tool vendors' documentation.

This matters because many workplaces say they "do Scrum" but have added their own habits. If your office holds a "Sprint 0", the answer the exam wants is still the one the Guide supports.

Practical rules:

1. When an exam answer feels "normal at work" but you cannot find it in the Guide, treat it with suspicion.
2. Use the Guide's exact terms. The 2020 Guide talks about accountabilities, not roles, and about one Scrum Team. You will learn these terms properly in later levels.
3. Read the Guide itself. It is short, about 13 pages, and free to download.

What to DO now: download the 2020 Scrum Guide and read its opening section, the Scrum Definition.

Step 3: Understand What Scrum Is

The Guide opens with this definition:

"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)

Three words in it carry the meaning:

• Lightweight: it has few rules, only the ones it needs.
• Framework: it gives a structure, not a complete method.
• Complex problems: it is designed for work where you cannot predict everything in advance.

Analogy: compare a building's steel frame with a finished house. The frame fixes where the load-bearing beams go. You choose the walls, the paint and the furniture. A full method would be the finished house, with every room already decided.

The Guide says so directly:

"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)

"Various processes, techniques and methods can be employed within the framework." (Scrum Guide 2020, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Step 4: Tell the Framework Apart from Add-On Practices

Teams often add practices to Scrum. Many of them are useful, but none of them is part of Scrum itself, and the exam expects you to know which is which.

Common add-ons that are NOT required by Scrum:

• User stories and story points
• Velocity
• Burn-down or burn-up charts
• Planning Poker
• Task boards in a particular tool

Myths that cost marks:

• "Sprint 0" for setting up before the "real" Sprints start. The Guide defines no such thing.
• "Hardening Sprints" to stabilise or test work that was not finished. The Guide has no such Sprint.

If an answer says Scrum requires any of these, it is almost certainly wrong.

The framework itself is fixed. Near its end, the Guide 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 you may add practices inside Scrum. If you remove parts of Scrum, what is left is no longer Scrum.

What to DO now: list three practices your team (or a team you have heard about) uses. Next to each one, write "Scrum" or "add-on".

Step 5: Use This Preparation Plan

1. Read the 2020 Scrum Guide once, all the way through.
2. Work through this course level by level.
3. Take Scrum Open, and look up every question you got wrong in the Guide.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you score well above 85% every time.
5. Buy and sit the PSM™ I assessment.

What the Exam Asks About This

• Questions that test whether you can separate the Scrum framework from popular add-ons such as velocity, burn-downs or story points.
• Scenarios with a "Sprint 0" or a "hardening Sprint". The expected answer does not treat these as part of Scrum.
• Wording such as "lightweight", "framework" and "purposefully incomplete". Recognise these as the Guide's own description of Scrum.

Key Takeaways

• PSM™ I: 80 questions, 60 minutes, 85% to pass, $200 an attempt, no course required. Scrum Open is free practice.
• The November 2020 Scrum Guide is the only standard the assessment marks against.
• Scrum is a lightweight framework and is purposefully incomplete. It is not a full method.
• Practices such as velocity, burn-down charts and story points can be used within Scrum but are not part of it.
• Sprint 0 and hardening Sprints are not Scrum.
• The framework is immutable. Implementing only parts of it is not Scrum.