Professional Scrum Master certification questions and exam summary helps you to get focused on the exam. This guide also helps you to be on PSM II exam track to get certified with good score in the final exam.
Professional Scrum Master (PSM II) Certification Summary
● Exam Name: Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master II
● Exam Code: PSM II
● Exam Fee: USD $250
● Exam Duration: 90 Minutes
● Number of Questions: 30
● Passing Score: 85%
● Format: Multiple Choice Questions
● Books / Trainings:
Professional Scrum Master (PSM II) Certification Exam Syllabus
Understanding and Applying the Scrum Framework
Empiricism
A cornerstone to Scrum and Agile. A practitioner will be able to apply the concepts of the empirical process to the problems they encounter. That means they can describe problems in terms of learning, break problems down into the smallest increments that will generate valuable evidence, and execute in an empirical way. By learning and practicing the skills in this Focus Area, a practitioner will become an expert in the application of scientific methods to complex problems, understanding why and how to apply an empirical process.
Scrum Values
For agility to thrive, the culture of the organization must support the fundamental concepts of agility. A practitioner will understand both the Scrum Values - Focus, Respect, Openness, Commitment, and Courage - and demonstrate that they can apply them in the reality of organizations whose values do not match those of Scrum. By living the Scrum Values and helping others to apply them, learners will create an environment where empirical process, self- organization, and continual improvement will be more successful.
Scrum Team
The Scrum Team consists of one Product Owner, one Scrum Master, and Developers. The skilled practitioner will understand how accountability is shared amongst team members and how they take on work in the context of their Product Goal.
Events
The Scrum framework describes 5 events: The Sprint, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and the Sprint Retrospective. All events are time-boxed and enable progress through adaptation and transparency. The practitioner will understand the events and be able to practice each event, but more importantly be able to apply these events in complex situations and at scale. The events are used to uphold empirical process control, through the three pillars of Scrum: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
Artifacts
The Scrum framework describes 3 artifacts. The Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, and Increment. These artifacts provide the team with a minimal set of materials to plan, execute, and review the Sprint. The Practitioner will understand these artifacts and how to implement them in complex, real-world situations. They will also understand the relationship of these artifacts relative to other practices and techniques and how to integrate them into an organization's own process.
Done
The objective of each Sprint is to deliver an Increment. The Definition of Done (DoD) provides a way for the team to make what done means transparent. In this Focus Area, the practitioner will be able to describe what a DoD is, apply it to their particular context, and understand how the DoD enables the benefits of agile. They will also be able to describe the implications of the necessary trade-offs and compromises required to deliver Increments within their organization.
Scaling
Scrum is designed to work at the team, product, and organization level. The practitioner will be able to apply Scrum in increasing levels of complexity and scale. They will be able to demonstrate when to scale and when not to scale and appreciate scaling practices and complementary frameworks that help organizations scale Scrum. The ultimate level of proficiency within this Focus Area is the ability to know what, and what not, to compromise in pursuit of a scaling approach by understanding the trade-offs and benefits of particular concepts and practices. Ultimately, the practitioner will demonstrate that they can scale Scrum and still keep its essential qualities of empiricism, self-organization, and continuous improvement. The practitioner should also be able to demonstrate the results of good scaling practices from both an organization and business perspective.
Developing People and Teams
Self-Managing Teams
A fundamental foundational element to Scrum; cross-functional, self-managing and empowered teams are the engine to delivering value. Practitioners need to understand what self-management is and how to apply it to their context. They should also understand how to incrementally introduce self-management, the practices that can help it thrive, and the measures that help one determine if a team is able to be empowered to self-manage.
Facilitation
Making decisions, sharing ideas, and being transparent is easy to agree to, but in reality, it is hard to do. Facilitation is a set of practices that help support the collaboration, communication, and creativity of teams and individuals. The practitioner should understand the value of facilitation, and have a collection of techniques they can apply. They should also have experience applying them in different situations with varying levels of complexity.
Leadership Styles
There are many different leadership styles ranging from traditional ‘command and control’ to more collaborative or even Machiavellian. Understanding the right style to use at a given time and how different styles can influence - in a positive or negative way - the agile agenda of empiricism, empowerment, and improvement is a key Focus Area. Practitioners should understand the concepts of leadership styles and be able to apply a particular style when the situation calls for it. They should also be able to demonstrate their ability to decide on the right style and understand its impact on the organization.
Coaching and Mentoring
A key aspect of servant leadership is the ability to coach and mentor the organization, the team, and the business. The objective of coaching and mentoring is to help people get better at their work, deliver more value, or resolve a conflict or problem. The practitioner should be able to coach as well as mentor. They should understand different formal techniques and be able to apply those techniques in different complex situations.
Teaching
The ability to inspire others to learn and share information in an effective, repeatable, and efficient manner is a key aspect to any agile practitioners' skills. The practitioner should understand the value of teaching and appreciate the means of measuring the success of their teaching. They should understand different learning approaches and understand when to apply different techniques in different contexts.
Managing Products with Agility
Forecasting and Release Planning
Complex problems and the application of an empirical process requires a specific way of planning, estimating, and forecasting. Practitioners should be able to apply agile forecasting and release planning techniques, and understand the value of different approaches. They should understand which approaches work better in different situations. They should also understand how releases should be planned while dealing with complexity, dependencies, and value creation.
Product Vision
The product vision defines the purpose that the product aspires to fulfill. It is defined by the value that the product strives to deliver. Practitioners should be able to describe what a product vision is and what techniques should be employed to both build a vision and make it transparent. They should also understand how to use a product vision to drive strategy and execution, and how to build a vision that motivates, communicates, and provides constraints for delivery.
Product Value
The ultimate goal is to deliver value to the customer and stakeholders. But value is complex, made up of long-term and short-term impact, internal and external value, and indirect and direct value. The practitioner should be able to understand how to define value for context, and apply it to the work they and the team do. They should be able to manage others' understanding of value and apply different techniques and practices for defining, communicating and measuring value. They should understand the connection between value and empirical process, and how value should be the driving factor of the Product Goal.
Product Backlog Management
The Product Backlog is a key artifact within Scrum. It is an ordered list that describes what is needed in the product. The Product Backlog provides transparency into what is happening to the product for the team, organization, and stakeholders. The practitioner should be able to describe what a Product Backlog is and apply a variety of techniques for managing the backlog. They should also understand how to make the Product Backlog transparent and how to manage stakeholder expectations associated with the backlog.
Business Strategy
A product lives within the context of a business strategy. That strategy describes how the Product Vision will be executed in a broader context. A practitioner will understand techniques for exposing business strategy and show how it drives the product. They will understand approaches, such as Lean Startup and Design Thinking, and how those affect the flow of ideas from strategy to execution. They will understand how an empirical process affects the execution and feedback of a strategy.
Stakeholders and Customers
Effectively working with stakeholders and customers is a key skill for everyone on the Scrum Team. Scrum changes the nature of the interactions, encouraging more frequent collaboration and more open dialogue. The practitioner will understand the implication moving to an Agile approach will have to their stakeholders and customers and also become familiar with practices and stances that will help them work and collaborate in a more agile way.
Developing and Delivering Products Professionally
Emergent Software Development
In solving complex problems, the idea of a detailed up-front design has been replaced with an approach that encourages design to emerge and change within the boundaries of an architecture. In this Focus Area, practitioners will be able to describe what emergent architecture is and how it translates into incremental development and delivery. They will be able to describe practices that “realize” the architecture incrementally into a working, agile system. Practitioners will understand the trade-offs between value, flexibility, and quality, and will also be able to apply techniques that make the emergent approach transparent to the team, organization, and stakeholders.
Managing Technical Risk
All products have an inherent set of risks to manage. These risks range from the ability to deliver to technical risks associated with performance and security. This Focus Area describes how technical risks are managed within an Agile approach. Practitioners should understand what technical risks are and how to effectively manage them in an empirical process. They should also understand how to apply practices to make risks transparent.
Continuous Quality
Working in an agile way does not change the importance of product quality. It does, however, change when and where quality is addressed. This Focus Area describes what quality is and how the ideas of Agility and Scrum change a product's quality approach. The practitioner will understand what continuous quality is, how to apply it, and the appropriate practices for delivering quality in a continuous way. They will understand important concepts like technical debt, Test Left, and the ideas of user-driven testing.
Continuous Integration (CI) / Continuous Delivery (CD)
Frequent learning is a fundamental concept for Scrum. Continuous Delivery and Continuous Integration are a key collection of practices that enable frequent observation of working features. This Focus Area describes the value of the core idea that code should always be deployable and an understanding of the techniques that can be employed for delivering software that solves complex problems. The practitioner will understand what CI and CD are, how to apply these ideas, and what it means for an empirical process and the Scrum framework.
Optimizing Flow
The Sprint is a time-box with clear flows within it. For large, complex work, the Sprint is just a small part of a broader flow for the product, business, or even market. This Focus Area concentrates on making flow transparent and ensuring that waste is reduced or removed. Automation and measurement are key elements to ensuring flow efficiency, coupled with a series of rules that have evolved in response to improving flow. The practitioner will be able to look to flow approaches such as Kanban and integrate these ideas with Scrum, frequently delivering valuable products and learning.
Evolving the Agile Organization
Organizational Design and Culture
Traditional organizations are often structured around Taylorism and mass production concepts in response to simple problems. Complex problems require a different way of organizing. This Focus Area describes the fundamental differences of an agile organization; namely its structure, culture, and design. A practitioner will understand what an agile enterprise looks like and approaches for implementing the agile enterprise in a traditional organization. They will understand how to balance the needs for agility with the existing reality of traditional organizational structures.
Portfolio Planning
For many large organizations, work is being undertaken in the context of a broader portfolio. That portfolio could be a product, system, value stream, supply chain, or even a program. This Focus Area describes what agile portfolio planning looks like; its characteristics, principles, and associated practices. The Practitioner will understand why agile portfolio planning must be different than traditional portfolio planning in order to deal with complex products and systems. They will also understand how to apply these ideas to their portfolio. Practitioners will understand the challenges of managing complex dependencies and the choices that need to be made, while ensuring that team agility is not broken, to serve the needs of the larger organization.
Evidence-Based Management
A fundamental element of Scrum is empirical process; the idea that complex problems require real experience to effectively plan and deliver value. Evidence-Based Management (EBM) is a set of ideas and practices that describe broad measurement areas used to provide an effective, empirical, and value-based approach to any product. This Focus Area describes what EBM is and how to apply it to any product. The practitioner will understand what EBM is, as well as the practices that comprise it, and how to use EBM to enable a business-driven, value-based empirical process.
Professional Scrum Master (PSM II) Certification Questions
01. What is management's role in Scrum?
a) To provide the necessary environment and support needed as defined by the Scrum Guide by providing insights and resources that help the Scrum Teams continue moving forward.
b) Identifying and removing people that are performing poorly.
c) Monitoring skill levels of the Development Team.
d) Monitoring the Development Team's velocity.
02. Steven is a Scrum Master asked to assist in creating five new Scrum Teams that will be working to build a highly anticipated product.
He talks with them about the importance of being able to integrate their Increments by the end of their Sprints. This includes the first Sprints. The product is very important to both the end users and the organization.
Of the choices raised by future team members, what would Steven encourage?
a) Each Scrum Team delivers Increments in its own code branch. After UAT is performed at the Sprint Review, the code branch is isolated until enough Increments are considered acceptable. All code branches will then be merged during the release phase.
b) Each Scrum Team delivers functionality at the end of each Sprint. New Product Backlog items will then be added to the next Sprint Backlog to integrate their functionality with the other teams to create a unified Increment.
c) All Scrum Teams agree on a mutual understanding of 'done' that defines all work necessary to deliver a potentially shippable Increment that includes all previous Increments delivered for the product.
d) Wait until enough of the infrastructure and architecture is in place before starting the first Sprints. This will increase the success of delivering integrated Increments in Sprint 1.
03. Your company has notified the stakeholders that they will be delivering the first release of a new product within ten Sprints. On the seventh Sprint, the Scrum Team discovers that they will not be able to include all of the expected features within the first release.
The Product Owner believes if they remove some items from the Definition of Done they will be able to accelerate the development process. The Development Team objects to this idea as it will lead to technical debt.
As a Scrum Master, what would be the best two ways to explain to the Product Owner the impact of technical debt?
(Choose two.)
a) As long as there is still technical debt in the current release, feature development for the next release cannot be started. The Product Owner must first agree to this impact before allowing changes to the Definition of Done.
b) Reducing the Definition of Done will introduce unknown errors as development progresses and functionality is added. The system can become more difficult to stabilize as work progresses. Development for the actual release as well as future releases will be slowed down in unpredictable ways.
c) Releasing the version upon a reduced Definition of Done creates false assumptions about the actual state of the system. This will create many interruptions during the development of the next release as fixes will need to be done to the previous release caused from a reduction of quality.
d) The amount of technical debt will need to be analyzed in order to understand the impact on subsequent releases in order to allocate additional Sprints at the end of the project.
04. By the end of the Sprint, a Product Backlog item in the Sprint Backlog does not meet the team's Definition of Done. What two things should happen with the item?
(Choose two.)
a) It will be inspected at the Sprint Review and if it is acceptable by the stakeholders then include it in the Increment.
b) Do not include the item in the Increment for the Sprint.
c) Split the item and add the estimation of the completed work to the current Sprint so not to impact the velocity and add the "undone" work to the next Sprint
d) Estimate the remaining work needed to make it "done" and add it to the Product Backlog for the Product Owner to decide what to do with it.
05. What would likely happen if management only changed the organization's current terminology to fit Scrum without the proper understanding and support of Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide?
a) Very little change will happen as the vocabulary in Scrum is specifically defined for implementing Scrum.
b) The organization may not realize the real benefits of Scrum as there would be no real change on the way the teams work.
c) Organizations may feel less stressed as the behaviors would remain familiar to management.
d) All answers apply.
06. Steven, a Scrum Master, has been hired by an organization that is new to Scrum. He has been invited to meet the IT and product management team to kick-off the project.
During the meeting the Product Owner asks how many Sprints will be needed to address the entire architecture and infrastructure before working on the features for the new product.
What are the two best responses for Steven to explain how such work is handled in Scrum?
(Choose two.)
a) You explain that product management should not worry about technical solutions. You inform them that the developers will work with the IT department when needed and keep the Product Owner updated on additional time required for each Sprint. The additional effort will be added to the top of the Sprint Backlog before Sprint Planning.
b) You explain that it is more effective when architecture and infrastructure emerge alongside the development of business functionality. The additional advantage is that business value is created more quickly and earlier.
c) You confirm that architecture and infrastructure is needed before starting on business functionality but the estimated budget will be difficult to estimate. You suggest that the first Sprint will be dedicated towards building the technical foundation in order to get an accurate estimation for any additional budget and time required.
d) You coach the Product Owner and Development Team to add this work to Product Backlog to ensure transparency, have the Development Team estimate the work and do this in early Sprints while also creating some business functionality in the early Sprints.
07. A new Product Owner has joined an existing Scrum Team that has been working together for eight Sprints.
The Development Team has grown to have a good understanding of the functionality and business for the product they have been building. The Product Owner, being new to the company, is unsure about his responsibilities.
As a Scrum Master explain what two acceptable ways of helping the Product Owner would be.
(Choose two.)
a) You advise the Product Owner to start building a good relationship with the stakeholders of the product. Ongoing interaction with them is important to regularly align with changing organizational or market expectations. The Product Owner is also expected to invite the right stakeholders to the Sprint Review meeting.
b) You inform the Product Owner that, in today's highly competitive markets, it is important that the Development Team is updated on changing business priorities on a daily basis. The Daily Scrum allows the Development Team to adapt to the changes in scope without delay.
c) You tell the Product Owner to make sure that there are no ambiguities or possible misunderstandings in the items on the Product Backlog when they are handed over to the Development Team. This is best done by capturing the functional requirements during an analysis phase, resulting in documents that are considered as the working product of such analysis Sprints.
d) You advise the Product Owner to rely on the Development Team and the stakeholders to formulate the Product Backlog, as they are the ones most knowledgeable. By asking questions and working with them the Product Owner will quickly be up to speed.
08. Peter, a Project Manager, has raised concerns about your Scrum Team's productivity and progress towards the objectives. Which is the best way to respond to Peter's concerns?
a) Share the Product Backlog, the projections towards the release dates and ensure that Peter has access.
b) Show the Profit & Loss (P&L) report.
c) Share the current impediments.
d) Share the last stakeholder status report prepared by the Scrum Master.
09. A Scrum Master is not only a servant-leader to the Scrum Team and organization, it's also considered a management position.
Which three activities describe what a Scrum Master manages as reflected by the Scrum Guide?
(Choose three.)
a) Reporting on the performance of the Sprint.
b) The way Scrum is understood and enacted within the organization.
c) Managing the capacity and utilization of each Development Team member.
d) Managing the process in which Scrum is applied.
e) Managing the Product Backlog items and work in the Sprint Backlog.
f) Removing organizational impediments that limits the team's progress and productivity.
10. Part of the team's Definition of "Done" requires creating or updating technical documentation in order to maintain the product and/or features in the future. The team's technical writer will be on vacation during the Sprint.
What should you do?
a) Encourage the technical writers from other teams to form a specialized team to organize and plan the work for multiple teams. b) The Development Team members will write it as they are still responsible for creating the documentation to make the Increment done in conformance with their Definition of "Done." c) Wait until the technical writer returns before continuing with related items. d) Complete all development work first while adding technical documentation to the Product Backlog to be done in a subsequent Sprint.
Answers:
Question: 01: Answer: a
Question: 02: Answer: c
Question: 03: Answer: b, c
Question: 04: Answer: b, d
Question: 05: Answer: d
Question: 06: Answer: b, d
Question: 07: Answer: a, d
Question: 08: Answer: a
Question: 09: Answer: b, d, f
Question: 10: Answer: b
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