Professional Scrum Master I

An exam based credential for Scrum Masters, assessed against the 2020 Scrum Guide and Scrum.org's published Professional Scrum Competencies.

What it covers. The exam tests whether a candidate can apply the Scrum framework as written, from the position of a Scrum Master. Most questions describe a situation on a Scrum Team and ask what should happen next, so the candidate has to hold the three accountabilities, the five events with their timeboxes and the three artifacts with their commitments precisely.

The weight sits on the framework itself. A Scrum Master is asked to recognise what the Guide actually says against what teams commonly do instead, which is why the practice set here carries a page on anti patterns and a page separating the Definition of Done from acceptance criteria.

Developing people and teams is the competency that separates this assessment from the Product Owner ones. Facilitation, coaching and the handling of conflict are named in Scrum.org's competencies and are the part of the role the Scrum Guide describes least, so they need reading beyond the Guide.

Sixty minutes for eighty questions is roughly 45 seconds each, so pace matters as much as knowledge. Timed practice is the part of preparation people most often skip.

Much of this material is shared with the Product Owner assessments, because both test the same framework. The Scrum Master specific reading is the second module.

Scrum.org’s own domains. Each opens its own page listing the concepts beneath it, and each concept has a page of its own.