How to prepare quickly and easily for the Scrum Master certification exam? It is not possible to learn the Scrum Guide and take your exam. You will fail. Each candidate for the Certified Scrum Master title must learn many exemplary situations that are part of the certification exams.

We present you with a lot of sample exam topics, questions, and their correct answers.

Scrum and Development Team

One of the senior programmers of the teams told everyone that since the team is large and he has a lot of experience, he will officially accept the role of Team Lead. He adds that he will choose technologies, offer a way to work to each member of the team, and monitor the progress of tasks.

I would like to talk to him and the whole team, re-acquainting each of them in detail with the roles in Scrum and how the teams are managed. I would advise the colleague to help everyone in need of the team and to rely comfortably on their experience. But decisions are made as a team and not as individuals. Reference: “Preparation for the Scrum Master certification exam (PSM, CSM, BVOSM) with sample questions“, https://www.libraryofmu.org/preparation-for-scrum-master-certification-exam/

A new employee in your organization, recently hired, tells you that because he is a novice specialist and still on probation, he prefers not to interfere in team decisions and does not want to take responsibility for working on the product.

I would talk to my colleague and explain to him the basic values ​​of Scrum.
I will make sure that the colleague will be supported by everyone to express their opinion and ask for help.
In Scrum, everyone expresses their ideas and doubts. They take responsibility as a team. Reference: “Certified Scrum Master exam preparation: CSM, PSM, BVOSM sample questions“, https://scrumtime.org/certified-scrum-master-exam-preparation-questions/

You understand that most of your team members have already talked to your HR manager and received permission to work outside the office.

Given the situation, this is normal and not a cause for concern.
I will organize the work and the daily scum through all the technologies called. Sprint time does not change.

A member of the Development team introduces you with joy and enthusiasm that outside of working hours, he has written a large collection of program code that he can easily add to the product and through it speed up many of his tasks and some of those of the rest of the team.

I would gladly praise the colleague.
I will advise him to present his work to colleagues and, by common consent, to use it in his work. Reference: “Sample Exam (Mock) Questions for the BVOP™ Scrum Master Certification Test“, https://bvop.org/posts/scrumexamtestquestions/

The development team offers you the idea that you set an estimated time to complete the tasks, and that they focus on their work and devote their time to the tasks. They shared this with the Product Owner role, and he was quite pleased.

I would enjoy the vote of confidence and responsibility.
In Scrum, sprint interval decisions are made between DevTeam and Product Owner
The scrum master role does not determine the time for which the team must complete a task or user story. Reference: “Preparation for CMS and PSM Certified Scrum Master exam with sample questions“, https://phron.org/preparation-for-cms-and-psm-certified-scrum-master-exam-with-sample-questions/

The teams of the three parallel products being developed by your organization have decided to reorganize. Their desire is to be divided into teams according to their profession and qualifications. One team will be programmers, the second will be designers, and the third will be quality control. You have been nominated as an activity coordinator.

It would be useful here and I would accept to be a link.
The main role of the Scrum Master is to remove obstacles in the performance of work in DevTeam.
I would also coordinate it with the Product Owner. If the positive side is faster delivery and quality of increment and performance of Sprint, I would be OK. Reference: “Certified Scrum Master exam preparation with sample questions“, https://customessaysonline.net/certified-scrum-master-exam-preparation-with-sample-questions/

Scrum and the director

The director of your organization wants to start developing three new products and informs you that for the largest product in terms of volume, he wants a team of 10 people. The available specialists for all new products are a total of 15 people.

I would ask for more details if he wants to run them at the same time. But for the experiment, I would recommend splitting the teams

7 for the largest project and 4 for the smaller ones with an explicit warning that after the start of the large project the smaller teams will be distributed. Reference: “Preparation for Scrum Master certification exam on Sprint event“, https://medfd.org/preparation-for-scrum-master-certification-exam-on-sprint-event/

Until then, 2 in the small teams will combine 2 roles.
I explicitly warn that there are too few people.

The director thinks that lower priority products do not need to have a Product Owner role.
I would like to remind you that Scrum’s backbone is precisely the clearly and precisely defined roles.
Scrum would not be 100% useful and would not be scrum without this role.

The director insists that because he has many years of experience in people management, he wants to be the general manager of the largest team, set tasks daily, and request reports from each member of the team.

This is great! Each of the team members would feel significant and would enjoy personal contact. I would like to offer my help, as I want to make your job easier. Daily, the Product Owner will collect, synthesize and send you a report on the work done. For my part, I will provide this information to him. Reference: “Preparation for Scrum Master certification and tips for Scrum professionals”, https://www.kievpress.info/preparation-for-scrum-master-certification/

The director tells you that for each product, the client has appointed a project manager, who in case of urgent requests, will assign to each member of the team, a priority task for the day.

This is good news. I would like to suggest that I go through the Product Owner colleague. Thus, the communication between all units will follow our model of work and rules.

The development team shares the view that User Story contains too little information and wants more details.
I inform the Product Owner about the situation and ask him to take a stand. Read more: “Preparation with sample questions for Scrum Master certification exam CSM & PSMI”, https://wikipedia-lab.org/preparation-sample-questions-scrummaster-certification-exam/

The Product Owner has asked one of the team members not to temporarily report problems and defects on the product publicly in your defect recording system, but to fix them yourself.

This is beyond Scrum’s rules, and I’d like an answer from the Product Owner as to why he did it and what caused it.

Your colleague, a beginner Scrum Master, asks you a question. He asks you if, for their 3-week sprints, they can accept the Sprint Review event lasting 2 and a half hours.

It is normal. Provided that a 2-week sprint ends with a sprint review within 2 hours. Reference: “Free preparation for the Scrum Master certification exam (CSM, PSMI, PSMII, BVOP)”, https://brightonbot.com/preparation-scrum-master-certification-exam/

Sprint Review event

You gather at the usual place for your Sprint Review event. Attendees include You as the Scrum Master, the Development Team without a new budding colleague, the Client Project Manager, their Product Manager, Business Analyst, and a hired external usability consultant.

Our Product owner should also be present at the meeting, inviting all interested parties. If these are the above and they need to understand more information about the work done is perfectly normal.

A project manager from your organization came to your Sprint Review event. He listens carefully and watches. He is pleased that the work is going well. Finally, he turns to you and asks you when you expect as a guide to releasing the latest finished developments to the real product in the living environment.

It all depends on the Development team and the speed with which it does its job and how much sprint is left. After all the sprints are over, we should have a finished product. Read more: “Free training to prepare for the Scrum Master Certification exam”, https://www.islandjournal.net/scrum-master-certification-exam/

The Sprint Review event begins. Shortly after greeting each other, the customer’s product manager opens a topic about the project budget. He is not sure if his organization’s resources will be enough to continue working on the product for another 6 months. Ask your Product Owner for comments and advice on their Roadmap.

The product owner should agree with the development team whether it will be possible to implement the project in 6 months according to the set User Stories and Product Backlog Items. In case the development team can handle it, the client has nothing to worry about. However, if it fails, all possible situations and what could be completed within the budget will have to be reconsidered. However, it will be good if this happens at another meeting, so as not to lose the focus of the sprint show. Read more: “Best Scrum Master Certifications for 2022 and 2023“, https://eduwiki.me/best-scrum-master-certifications-for-2021-and-2022/

At the Sprint Review event, business people and all representatives outside your Scrum team review what has been achieved and inform you that they have no questions or any other comments or suggestions, and prepare to leave the meeting.

During the review, all representatives may show instantaneous and spontaneous reactions, impressions, and comments that the team has noticed or captured exactly what they think about an issue concerning reactions, body language, exclamations, and silent comments. Another possible option is for the product owner to receive additional information, comments remarks, or questions after the event from the attending representatives.

Your client’s Account Manager contacts you and asks if you can demonstrate your product one day before the end of your sprint because he needs to prepare presentations.

I will politely decline his request and inform him that our development team will be ready to present a demo during the Sprint Review meeting and if possible he will make his presentation after it. It will be better for him as well because during the review he can learn useful information for his presentation to include.

Your client’s product manager disapproves of Definitions of Done for one of your User Stories and refuses to accept work on it. Everyone is staring at you, including your product owner.

It is quite possible that something will not be accepted, but feedback is welcome. I will ask the product manager to provide information on what he thinks needs to change, after the discussion, the development team will correct, and will again make a demo of the finished part in front of him. Of course, this will delay the completion of the sprint, but it will meet the needs of the client.

The day before your Sprint Review event, your client’s Account Manager will contact you and explain that they are working with their Marketing Department to prepare new plans. He asks you to send him the items that your team will complete during the sprint.

Since I have the items, I will send them, but I will explain that there is no way to add a new plan for the product without sharing it with the product owner and development team. And whatever change is needed, a meeting will have to be held to clarify the current situation and details.

You have already presented your increment at the Sprint Review meeting. Product Backlog items have been officially announced as completed. There is no work left unfinished. Everyone seems happy.

Business people offer, as everything is fine, to discuss possible promotions of team members who have performed well, and then want to take you for a drink.
It’s perfectly acceptable, why not? Uniting the team always leads to greater motivation of its members.

Shortly before the Sprint Review event, a team member told you that User Story covers all definitions of completion, but the finished work visually differs from the sketches included in the Product Backlog item.

I will ask him, when it comes to presenting the work on this User Story, to share this information with everyone and to argue for the change. The important thing is that the definition of completeness is ready and that once the development team has decided to do it his way, it is perfectly acceptable, as long as it is argued and proven effective.

While browsing the Product Backlog items, the customer’s project manager interrupts the conversation and asks a question to your Product Owner. He asks him why two very similar items are rated Story Points 3 and 13. Your product is looking at you.

I will intervene and ask the development team to explain to the project manager why there is a difference in similar items. The people who gave these points can best explain why and how difficult it is to do the work of the respective items.

Qualities of the teams that would add business value to the project

Teams that do not tolerate making mistakes in front of the customer’s eyes (for example, software bugs), taking care to implement automated processes and tools for testing, verifying and validating new developments, and facilitating the process of providing new ones. value in front of the client’s eyes (for example, by minimizing the number of steps and eliminating manual steps to avoid the possibility of human error).

Teams that are constantly improving their knowledge and technological skills. This pays off in the long run as business value as it allows better products to be delivered faster.
Teams that know how to make the most of the collection of tools and services provided to them (ie they are “resourceful”) to reduce budget costs, enabling this budget to be reallocated to more substantial and more valuable endeavors (e.g., marketing, sales, etc).

Actions of all management roles that would add business value to the project

Demand more transparency about the quality of the products generated by the team, to avoid problems visible to the customer and loss of customers.
Providing personal expertise and seniority to all team members, without egocentrism and arrogance, to improve the collective knowledge of the team.
Looking at the product from the point of view of the end-user, ie. “Getting into his shoes” to adapt the requirements, the pace of development, texts, graphics, and overall UI to the ideal representation of this user.

Events or practices that the organization can organize to add business value to the project

Implementing regular coaching sessions (eg 1 on 1 or setting aside a budget for an external consultant), to increase the knowledge of the teams so that the latter can develop better and more valuable for clients, things.

Introduction of automation processes and automated testing of projects to catch mistakes before reaching the eyes of customers.
Introduction of SCRUM or other Agile methodologies in the work processes, so that there can be faster feedback from customers and to provide them with small parts of the product – faster.

Lean thinking

For an organization to move to lean thinking and introduce lean methodologies, it needs to change its corporate culture.

For any change in an organization to be implemented everywhere, this must be done with the clear cooperation and readiness of senior management. However, innovations should not feel like they were just lowered from above. Each team, together with its manager, must be involved in the implementation of the methodologies.

As there are many different lean methodologies, it is important to have a clear idea of ​​which one we will apply and which one will be important for which teams.

One of the first things that can be done is to introduce retrospectives not only in the IT teams, but also, if possible, in the operational teams. In this way, it is possible to monitor very easily which practices give the required result and which do not. For IT teams, they can be held after each sprint, and in other teams – once a month. This way we would have a better idea of ​​team productivity than just monitoring KPIs.

Again, it is important for IT teams to stick to a relatively small backlog. If this is not the case, the Just-in-time principle can be introduced. This lean methodology originates from the Toyota Production System (TPS) and aims to minimize the production that is “waiting in stock”. In other words, the backlog should be neat and not

Lean in HR – introduction of Kanban dashboard to be able to switch from “push” to “pull” approach. The aim is to limit the work “in progress” and to minimize the possibility of overloading HR experts.

A problem that I think may arise when trying to implement Lean methodologies is the refusal of team members not to take it seriously. That is why it is very important to have a clear idea of ​​themselves and to offer such an activity that would arouse their interest. Another problem that may arise is that the team managers themselves do not monitor the long-term implementation of these methodologies over time. These practices must become part of the team, even company culture, and are implemented in a month or two. A way to deal with this could be to consider what the effect of a particular Lean procedure was and whether it yielded the desired results. If the manager feels the need, he can replace it with one that is more suitable for the team and himself, so that it can be performed for a longer period.