Scrum Master Certification Preparation For Beginners

Who is a Scrum Master?

A scrum master is a professional who uses Agile project management to lead his team. He ensures that the Scrum framework is followed while working on the project. Scrum masters are responsible for exchanging information among the team members ensuring that everyone lives and practices agile values. For more information about agile project management Click Here

Role Of A Certified Scrum Master

A certified scrum master has to manage his team, ensuring that everyone acquires the agile way of working to improve the performance of the team. The responsibilities of a scrum master are:

• Teach agile values and practices to the scrum team and make sure that each one has understood them and are applying these values while working on the project.
• Implementation of the scrum framework.
• Observe the reactions of the scrum team towards the changes so that they can adapt the scrum elements accordingly.
• Support the team members in trouble and hard times so that the members do not lose confidence.
• Help team members tackle unexpected situations arising while working on the project. 
• Assist Product Owners in managing the product backlog to serve the best to the customers.
• Act as a servant leader.

How To Become A Verified Scrum Master?

One can expand his career opportunities by becoming Scrum Master. To become a Scrum Master, the person has to earn a Scrum Master Certification that will act as proof for his Scrum knowledge. The first thing an aspirant has to do is to attend the certified scrum master course. The course will help them in preparing for the scrum master exam. After clearing the exam, they have to accept the Licence Agreement.

To get the Scrum Master Certification, a candidate must focus on clearing the CSM exam. 

Below are some preparation tips that will guide the candidates to prepare well for the Certified Scrum Master Exam.

Preparation Tips For Clearing CSM Exam

• Go through the study material provided by the Scrum

The aspirants must give priority to the Scrum guide provided by the Scrum Alliance, as most of the questions in the CSM exam are based on this guide. This official guide contains all the topics that are asked in the exam. The guidebook will enable them to comprehend each topic. There are many course materials available on the internet, but the aspirants must study from the Scrum Guide, and then they can move to other reference books. Also, they should not rely on the Scrum Guide and use other sourcebooks for the preparation.

• Self-evaluation

After understanding the concepts, the candidates must assess how much they have understood. They can give various mock tests to do self-evaluation. They can find these mock tests everywhere on the internet. By giving mock tests, they can find their weak topic so that they can work on them.

• Get in-depth knowledge of the Scrum events

It is important to understand all the Scrum events while preparing for the CSM exam. These events are Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Planning, and Sprint Retrospective. Most of the questions in the exam are asked from these concepts. All these events are discussed in the Scrum guide. Therefore, candidates must go through these Scrum events to answer the questions in the exam.

• Be thorough with the roles and rules in Scrum

The candidates must study roles and rules in Scrum to clear the Certified Scrum Master exam. The roles in Scrum are product owner, development team member and scrum master. Beneath are some Scrum rules:

1. The duration of the sprint is four weeks.
2. The sprints are break free.
3. All sprints are of the same length.
4. Each sprint consists of sprint planning.
5. The duration of the sprint planning is 2 hours per week. 
6. The sprint aims to potentially shippable software.

The aspirants must read and understand these roles and rules to attempt the questions in the exam. They can make notes of these concepts to remember them till the examination.

• Read the agile manifesto

It consists of four foundational values, and each value has 12 supporting principles. These principles give rise to the agile approach for developing software. The candidates will get to know about the type of questions asked in the exam by understanding the agile manifesto. They can easily clear the CSM exam if they are well-versed with this manifesto. With the help of this manifesto, they can clearly understand the CSM concepts. 

• Join CSM Boot Camps and discussion groups

The aspirants should try to come in contact with those people who are preparing for the CSM exam. They can share and discuss their doubts in these groups and boot camps. Through these groups, they will get all the necessary information regarding the CSM exam. The experienced teachers will help them by discussing and sharing their knowledge. These groups will help a candidate in learning a lot who is appearing for the first time in the exam.

• Prepare notes and mind maps

This technique of making mind maps and handy notes will help the learner to remember all the important concepts of the CSM guide. They can be able to relate the real-life objects with the CSM objectives. They can even use the mind maps built in the Scrum guidebook. This methodology will enhance the learner’s ability to retain the information for a longer duration. 

• Give importance to significant topics

Some important topics that need to be focused on before appearing for the Scrum Master Certification exam are as follows:

1. Practice content of Scrum test that includes topics like Scrum Values, Scrum Team, Scrum Theory, Scrum Artifacts, and Scrum Events.
2. Revise all the learning objectives of the CSM to score well in the CSM exam. All these objectives are mentioned in the guide. 
3. Carry the Scrum pocket guide as it contains all the basic concepts of the CSM. 

• Be the part of the new product development game

It is a document that covers all the significant concepts of CSM. By studying this document, they will get to know about product development. They will learn the execution process through this document. It contains six characteristics: self-organizing project teams, built-in stability, overlapping development phases, subtle control, multi learning, and organizational transfer of learning that are needed to understand the details of the CSM exam.