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Case Study: Cross-functionality is behavior

Cross-functionality is a deep and challenging concept that many people have problem sensing it. So here, we used a case study to explain it.

A few months ago, Scrum School team decided to create a motion graphic to show and explain Scrum effectively. At that time, none of us had the experience of producing motion graphics. To resolve the problem we had three options. First, hiring a new member who had the required skills for creating motion graphics. Second, using a third company to produce it for us. Third, having a volunteer in our team to learn the required skills. Because our need was a case and we did not need it forever, we selected the last option.

After a lot of searches, we found out Camtasia software which was a light and great tool for producing professional motion graphics. Honestly, it was almost easy. So, after watching a few free training videos on YouTube, we started writing the scenario. We used a true story from our real lives. Then we read and recorded the sound. Finally, we assembled all widgets, sounds, and background music together and rendered them.

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The result was awesome. You can watch the motion graphic on our website home page. Its title is “Very Simple, What is Scrum?

After that experience, our team had a new skill for creating motion graphics. It is a great sample of cross-functionality behavior.

As you can see, cross-functionality is not “as is” state, indeed it is “to be” state within which the team constantly expands its skills throughout the project based on the new learnings and requirements.

To sum up, cross-functionality is a deep concept and behavior that mature Scrum teams play and show well.

If you are a candidate for PSM II or PSM III exams you should learn the above-mentioned concept deeply. Because you will certainly have a few questions about cross-functionality in these exams.

 

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Preparation guide for the PSM II exam

PSM II exam is a bit expensive, so we have provided a guide for the candidates to prepare, practice and pass it according to our experience.

Professional Scrum Master II

Scrum.org exams and in this case PSM II exam are challenging and a little bit expensive. So people want to know how they can pass these exams with more confidence. Therefore, we have decided to prepare a series of preparation guides for the Scrum.org exams.
Each guide contains minimum mandatory actions that should be done for passing the exam in a suitable timeframe. When we compare PSM II with PSM I, we should say level II is exponentially harder than level I. So, don’t take the exam before complete preparation.
In this post, we will introduce the PSM II exam (Professional Scrum Master II) step by step preparation guide as follows:

Books and Articles

  1. Read “The Scrum Guide” carefully word by word
  2. Read “The Nexus Guide” carefully
  3. Coaching Agile Teams” book by Lyssa Adkins
  4. Agile Retrospectives” book by Esther Derby
  5. Scrum Mastery” book by Geoff Watts
  6. Agile Estimating and Planning” book by Mike Cohn
  7. User Stories Applied” book by Mike Cohn
  8. Read all posts about PSM II in Scrum.org forum
  9. The Scrum Values” blog post by Gunther Verheyen
  10. There’s Value in the Scrum Values” blog post by Gunther Verheyen
  11. 5 Metaphors to Explore the Value of Scrum Values” blog post by Naghesh Sharma
  12. 4 Ways to Coach with the Scrum Values” blog post by Stephanie Ockerman
  13. 4 Key Flow Metrics and How to Use them in Scrum’s Events” blog post by Yuval Yeret
  14. Definition of Done” blog post by Gunther Verheyen

Complementary Materials

  1. Do all scrum open tests (scrum, product owner, developer, Nexus)
  2. Do 8 PSM II sample questions of theScrumMaster.co.uk by Simon Kneafsey
  3. Manage the time carefully and be in your highest energy state when you want to take the exam
  4. We highly recommend reading ScrumSchool.team PSM I exam tips and tricks training manual. It provides high-quality, deep, and tricky content that could be used as a reliable learning source that will help you for passing the PSM II exam.

Also, there are a lot of complementary resources that you can find in this link for the PSM II exam.

Related posts:

1- Preparation guide for the PSM I exam (Professional Scrum Master)

2- Preparation guide for the PSD I exam (Professional Scrum Developer)

3- Preparation guide for the PSPO I exam (Professional Scrum Product Owner)

4- Preparation guide for the PSM III exam (Professional Scrum Master III)

5- Preparation guide for the PAL I exam (Professional Agile Leadership I)

6- Preparation guide for the PSK I exam (Professional Scrum with Kanban I)