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Scrum School Introduction

In Scrum School, we help people to learn Scrum effectively and empower them to pass the Scrum.org exams with more confidence.

Scrum Definition

Scrum is a lightweight framework for developing and delivering complex products. It is the most famous and popular implementation of Agile mindset.
Although understanding it seems simple, being a master of it might need people’s lifetime.
Generally, when you read Scrum Guide for the first time, you see a pretty simple abstract guide and may wonder how it works. Indeed, knowing Scrum is different from using Scrum. It means, if you know Scrum, it does not mean you can use it effectively. However, being a master of Scrum needs to be good at both sides.
Using Scrum effectively needs to have good knowledge plus long experience in the field. Like a soccer player, you will not be a super player unless you practice hard for a long time in pitches.
Being a great Scrum player in the field needs a great understanding of Scrum. It can happen through high-quality training and empowerment materials.

Why Scrum School?

Based on this fundamental need, Scrum School has been founded. Its mission is empowering Scrum practitioners. We follow Scrum.org institute, which is the pioneer organization in sustaining and promoting Scrum all over the world. Scrum.org has great high-quality training courses and really well-designed exams, which help people to evaluate their Scrum knowledge. All people who pass those exams will receive the industry recognized Scrum.org certifications.

Scrum.org exams

We believe those exams are comprehensive and can evaluate all aspects of one’s Scrum knowledge perfectly. However, Scrum.org does not introduce special and focused references and resources to people who want to get ready for the exams and actually leaves it to them.
To fill this gap, Scrum School is continuously creating and delivering empowerment materials to exams’ candidates. Our experience shows not only these materials are effective to get ready for Scrum.org exams, but they also help people to understand Scrum’s underneath fundamental concepts that can help them to make and boost their Agile and Scrum mindset.
This mindset can also help them to use Scrum effectively in the fields.

Final word

To sum up, our mission is this:
We help people to learn Scrum effectively and empower them to pass the Scrum.org exams with more confidence.
So, right now, join us for discovering Scrum beautiful world.
We are here: https://www.scrumschool.org

It is recommended to watch this video blog:

What is Scrum?

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What is Scrum?

Recently, we have decided to use media for explaining Scrum in a simple way. Indeed, we used a true story based on our experience for this purpose. Also, we used motion graphic media for transferring the concept, because videos have the most impact. So here the result; the motion graphic and also its transcript:

A few years ago

We were three colleagues with many big dreams. A few years ago, a manager from the oil and gas industry had told us if we developed special software, most oil companies would be our customer and we would earn a huge amount of money.
Since we were really energetic, we just started to develop that software. We rented an office and went into a cave for two years. Even we hired a few developers to produce high quality and perfect software with all required features.
Month after month was coming and we had to pay the expenses. I remember, in a case for having a great and perfect user access management, we used two months.

Came out of the cave

Finally, after two years, we came out of the cave and showed our perfect product to the first customer.
Unbelievably, they said they didn’t need that product. We thought and supposed they didn’t understand our work. So, we went to the second customer and unfortunately their answer was also no. The third, the fourth, the fifth, and so to the end.
It was horrible and like the end of the world. We had wasted a lot of money and even we had to release our developers.
Not only we lost too much money, we missed a lot of opportunities and also two years of our lives.
Nothing is worse than producing a perfect product that nobody wants.

What was the problem?

There are many similar cases in the software industry. We asked ourselves what happened and thought about it deeply.
The fact was that all things that we had thought were certain were only our thoughts not the facts of the customers. Indeed, there were a lot of things in our project which we already didn’t know. So, how could we resolve and handle them?
When we thought, we found out that we should have collaborated with our customers from the beginning of the project. We should have produced the most valuable features first, delivered to them, and got feedback. With this policy, we could have corrected our way.

We found out Scrum

While we were checking and reviewing our mistakes, we found out a new way of working for developing software products, which was called Scrum.
Amazingly, in that new approach, there were answers for almost all issues that we had already faced through our project.
In this method, projects with a lot of uncertainties, that some of their aspects are not known upfront are called complex projects.
Then it says complex projects can fail because of many reasons. So, it is designed in a way that can reveal problems as soon as possible within which the team is able to realize the problems and consequently adapts itself with new learnings.
You may ask how? Ok, let’s look at this new way of working.

The essence of Scrum

The essence of Scrum is producing a small chunk of the product and delivering it to customers in order to get feedback.
This feedback helps the team to correct and adapt its way. This approach is repeated as many times as required until all valid chunks of the product be produced and delivered to customers.
Scrum has some red lines. For example, regardless of the product and context, each iteration should not last more than one calendar month. In Scrum, each iteration is called Sprint.

If you want to take the PSM I exam (Professional Scrum Master I), you can use our various empowering products like this:

Scrum-Master-Training-Manual

Deal with requirements and features

In this framework, all requirements and features are collected in a list, which is called Product Backlog. Then, they are ordered by their value by someone whose role is Product Owner. At the beginning of each Sprint, the Development Team selects some features from the top of the Product Backlog to develop during the Sprint. At the end of the Sprint, those features should be shippable and releasable. Why?
Because they should be delivered to customers for getting feedback. This is the core concept of the story.
When you have to get feedback from the customers, if you made mistakes, you would find them out within a month at most, not two years.
Well, the result is obvious. Correcting the way and escaping from those mistakes and failures before they can destroy your whole business.

The Scrum Master

Scrum has really few elements, while like a chess game, being a master of it is fundamentally difficult. For this reason, another role has added to Scrum, which is called the Scrum Master.
This person is responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum process implementation. He or she continuously helps and teaches the team to work professionally in the Scrum framework.
All three mentioned roles, namely the Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and the Development Team together create the Scrum Team.

Today’s world super-fast changes

By limiting each Sprint’s duration to one month, a powerful mechanism has been created to deal with today’s world super-fast changes.
These changes contain requirements changes, customer desire, technology, and business changes.
Each change based on our response can be an opportunity or a threat for us. Fortunately, if we use Scrum properly most changes potentially can be opportunities.
Creativity has a special position in Scrum. Because it’s the tool to deal with unknowns. Who knows what the next year Apple smartphones look like?
If Apple always produces its previous version of smartphones, can it survive in smartphones’ competitive market? All of us saw how Nokia Company went bankrupt.

Conclusion

Finally, I should admit, if we knew Scrum at that time in our project, we may have realized our wrong way within two months at most.
Now based on our real heavy failure, we deeply know how Scrum is valuable, which we believe is a fundamental tool for all companies that produce complex products and services and they should not miss it at all.
If the story is familiar to you, do not postpone Scrum learning to tomorrow.

Welcome to Scrum world
Scrum School

Scrum.org is the home of Scrum. You can find a huge amount of knowledge there.

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Preparation guide for the PSK I exam

PSK I 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 with Kanban

Scrum.org exams and in this case PSK I 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.

Scrum.org has introduced PSK I (Professional Scrum with Kanban I) certificate for all people who want to combine strength of both frameworks. Indeed, each framework i.e. Scrum or Kanban can strengthen each other. For us, as Scrum practitioners, there are a lot of practices in Kanban that can improve our value delivery process dramatically.
In this post, we will introduce the PSK I exam (Professional Scrum with Kanban I) step by step preparation guide as follows:

Books and Articles

  1. Read “The Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams” carefully word by word
  2. Read “The Scrum Guide” carefully word by word
  3. “Scrum Insights for Practitioners: The Scrum Guide Companion” book by Hiren Doshi
  4. Read all blog posts mentioned here
  5. If you can, attend a PSK (Professional Scrum with Kanban) course
  6. Do Scrum with Kanban open assessment many times
  7. Practice PSK I sample questions of theScrumMaster.co.uk by Simon Kneafsey
  8. Do all scrum open tests (scrum, product owner, developer, Nexus)

Complementary Materials

  1. “Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability” book by Daniel Vacanti
  2. “Kanban in Action” book by Marcus Hammarberg and Joakim Sunden 
  3. Manage the time carefully and be in your highest energy state when you want to take the exam

Also, there are a lot of complementary resources that you can find in this link for the PAL I 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 II exam (Professional Scrum Master II)

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

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

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Preparation guide for the PAL I exam

PAL I 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 Agile Leadership

Scrum.org exams and in this case PAL I 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.

Scrum.org has introduced PAL I (Professional Agile Leadership I) certificate for all people who have a management position. Indeed, it helps people to transform their mindset from the management world to the leadership world. I believe PAL I exam is tough and for passing it, you should be really prepared before the exam.
In this post, we will introduce the PAL I exam (Professional Agile Leadership I) step by step preparation guide as follows:

Books and Articles

  1. Read “The Scrum Guide” carefully word by word
  2. Read ” Evidence-Based Management (EBM)”
  3. “Scrum Insights for Practitioners: The Scrum Guide Companion” book by Hiren Doshi
  4. “Agile Leadership Toolkit” book by Peter Koning
  5. The Scrum Values” blog post by Gunther Verheyen
  6. If you can, attend a PAL-E (Professional Agile Leadership – Essentials) course
  7. Do Agile Leadership open assessment many times
  8. Do Agile Measurement open assessment many times
  9. Practice PAL I sample questions of theScrumMaster.co.uk by Simon Kneafsey
  10. Do all scrum open tests (scrum, product owner, developer, Nexus)

Complementary Materials

  1. “The Heart of Leadership” book by Mark Miller
  2. “Reinventing Organizations” book by Frederic Laloux 
  3. “Creativity, Inc” book by Ed Catmull
  4. “Managing for Happiness” book by Jurgen Appelo
  5. Manage the time carefully and be in your highest energy state when you want to take the exam

Also, there are a lot of complementary resources that you can find in this link for the PAL I 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 II exam (Professional Scrum Master II)

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

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

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Preparation guide for the PSM III exam

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

Professional Scrum Master III

Scrum.org exams and in this case PSM III exam are challenging and 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 time. The PSM III exam is an essay-based exam and the most difficult one in the Scrum world. So, don’t take the exam before complete preparation.
In this post, we will introduce the PSM III exam (Professional Scrum Master III) step by step preparation guide as follows:

Main Materials

  1. Read “The Scrum Guide” carefully word by word
  2. “Mastering Professional Scrum” book by Stephanie Ockerman and Simon Reindl
  3. “Fixing Your Scrum” book by Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller
  4. “Scrum A Pocket Guide” book by Gunther Verheyen
  5. “Scrum Insights for Practitioners: The Scrum Guide Companion” book by Hiren Doshi
  6. Coaching Agile Teams” book by Lyssa Adkins
  7. “The Professional Product Owner: Leveraging Scrum as a Competitive Advantage” book by Don McGreal and Ralph Jocham
  8. The Scrum Values” blog post by Gunther Verheyen

Books and Articles

  1. Read “The Nexus Guide” carefully
  2. Read all materials of the Scrum Master Learning Path
  3. “Software in 30 days” book by Ken Schwaber
  4. “The five dysfunctions of a team” book by Patrick Lencioni
  5. “Extreme Ownership” book by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
  6. The Scrum Glossary
  7. There’s Value in the Scrum Values” blog post by Gunther Verheyen
  8. 4 Ways to Coach with the Scrum Values” blog post by Stephanie Ockerman
  9. Definition of Done” blog post by Gunther Verheyen
  10. Read the ” Evidence-Based Management (EBM)”

Complementary Materials

  1. Check your knowledge by Professional Scrum Master III (PSM III) practice assessment on theScrumMaster.co.uk website by Simon Kneafsey
  2. It is recommended to participate in a two-day PSM I course
  3. Do all scrum open tests (scrum, product owner, developer, Nexus)
  4. Time management is one of the most important things that you should practice a lot.
  5. Be in your highest energy state when you want to take the exam
  6. Read ScrumSchool.team Scrum Master tips and tricks training manual
  7. The PSM III exam format is a combination of multiple-choice and essay questions and most of them are essay questions, so read Scrum open questions and write answers for them on a paper and practice it a lot. Because of the time limit, you should not write a lot, instead, try to answer just to the point with a few sentences.

Good Lock!

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 II exam (Professional Scrum Master II)

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)

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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)

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Preparation guide for the PSPO I exam

PSPO I exam is a little bit expensive, so we have provided a guide for the candidates to prepare, practice and pass it with more confidence.

Professional Scrum Product Owner I

Scrum.org exams and in this case PSPO I 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.

In this post, we will introduce the PSPO I exam (Professional Scrum Product Owner) step by step preparation guide as follows:

Books and Materials

Assessments and Practices

Also, there are a lot of complementary books that you can find in this link for the PSPO I 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 PSM II exam (Professional Scrum Master II)

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)

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Preparation guide for the PSD I exam

PSD I exam is a little bit expensive, so we have provided a guide for the candidates to prepare, practice and pass it with more confidence.

Professional Scrum Developer I

Scrum.org exams and in this case PSD I 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.
In this post, we will introduce the PSD I exam (Professional Scrum Developer) step by step preparation guide as follows:

Books and Articles

Complementary Materials

Also, there are a lot of complementary books that you can find in this link for the PSD I exam.

Related posts:

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

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

3-Preparation guide for the PSM II exam (Professional Scrum Master II)

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)

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Preparation guide for the PSM I exam

PSM I exam is a little bit expensive, so we have provided a guide for the candidates to prepare, practice and pass it with more confidence.

Professional Scrum Master I

Scrum.org exams and in this case PSM I 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.

In this post, we will introduce the PSM I exam (Professional Scrum Master I) step by step preparation guide as follows:

Books and Articles

Complementary Materials

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

Related posts:

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

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

3-Preparation guide for the PSM II exam (Professional Scrum Master II)

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)