How to pass Professional Scrum Product Owner certification (PSPO I)

Yipee! I cleared PSPO I exam in the first attempt. It feels great to be a certified Product Owner!. This blog is dedicated to my preparation for this certification. 

To be honest, I believe that PSPO I requires a lot of preparation and is not easy to pass (That's how I feel atleast :-)). 

The rules of the exam are the same as PSM I: 80 questions, 60 minutes and minimum 85% to clear the exam. The suggested reading material for this exam is given on this link, https://www.scrum.org/resources/suggested-reading-professional-scrum-product-owner

I think that the right way to prepare for PSPO I is to first prepare & clear PSM I. Not only will this approach help to cover the same topics (Scrum guide) but it will also increase the confidence. I cleared PSM I on 29 May after a preparation period of 2 weeks and cleared PSPO I on 20 June. Below is the list of study material that I used for the exam -

1. Scrum guide: This guide is extremely important for the preparation. It needs to be read (and re-read) and understood. The questions that will come in PSPO I will not be straight forward. The questions are manipulated and so are the answers (options) and that is why it is very important to get the gist of scrum guide. One single choice question that I remember was about roles in a scrum team, the options had two sentences. First sentence was same for three options (out of four) but the second sentence created confusion as to which of these three option was the correct answer.
2. You will need to cover a lot more reading material than PSM I. I read the scrum guide (https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html), nexus guide (https://www.scrum.org/resources/online-nexus-guide), scrum glossary (https://www.scrum.org/resources/scrum-glossary), EBM guide (https://www.scrum.org/resources/evidence-based-management-guide), a book - The Professional Scrum Product Owner: Guide to Pass PSPO 1 Certification by Mohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1521476047) and blog from scrumcrazy (https://scrumcrazy.wordpress.com/2018/09/22/the-new-new-product-owner/).  
3. Take the scrum open, product owner open and nexus open (https://www.scrum.org/open-assessments) exams until you score 100% in all these repeatedly. Take the PSPO I open assessment (learning and exam mode) from Mikhail Lapshin's website (https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/po-learning-mode/) for practise.

Additional tips -

• There are around 1000 questions on quizlet about PSPO I exam. Link, https://quizlet.com/de/481288138/pspo-1-pspo-2-flash-cards/. These questions are really good and close to the format of the questions that you will encounter in the exam. But they are too many to go through and remember. I did not finish all of them.
• Do not rely on googling. The time is so limited for this exam that searching google for answers is not a viable option. The questions are selected from a bank of questions which are not available on web that easily. The answers are also manipulated so it's difficult to find the exact match.
• It will help if you have experience working as a product owner. I had to use my practical experience of working as a PO for some questions.
• You will receive the assessment result that can be used to identify the focus areas that can be improved. This is a good way of finding the topics that requires more efforts. Few topics that I plan to work with are Empiricism, Product backlog management, Forecasting & release planning.
• There are also some classroom trainings available (as per scrum.org) so do take them if you have the time & budget. I did not take any.
• One challenge with PSPO I exam was that there was no set of standard reading material (as is also clear from the link on top about suggested reading). There is a lot to cover. So, how do you know if you are ready to take the exam? For me, it was the gut feeling based on experience of PSM I.

As always, please let me know below if this blog helped you in your preparation or if you have any feedback about the blog.

Thank you and good luck!

  

How to clear Professional Scrum Master 1 (PSM 1) exam (First attempt)

I cleared Professional Scrum Master 1 (PSM 1) exam recently. I scored 96.3% (77 correct out of 80) in the first attempt. It is a great feeling. It was long overdue for me since I got the Scrum Master training in Q1, 2017 and have been working with Scrum ever since - first as a developer (Team member), followed by Scrum Master and then as a Product Owner. Overall, It took me 2 weeks to prepare for this exam.

So, how did I do this? Below is the step by step guide -

1. Read SCRUM guide (Read again!) from scrum.org. Here is the link, https://www.scrumguides.org/index.html. I read the guide 5-6 times to understand the concepts thoroughly. I made one mistake in the beginning, I did not download the latest version. As I mentioned above that I did my training in 2017 (Q1) and I had the Scrum guide since then (hard copy) but revised Scrum guide was released in Nov. 2017. I did not realised it until I saw some questions on Scrum values. So, please download the latest guide.
2. Take the scrum open assessment exam repeatedly. Here is the link, https://www.scrum.org/open-assessments/scrum-open. This assessment helped me in understanding the format of the questions. Take it until you can complete the exam within 5-10 mins with 100% score. It will give you lot of confidence. Best part is that its free! I also tried Product Owner Open and Scrum Developer Open to verify my knowledge about PO and Developer role within Scrum. I found PO open assessment particularly interesting. 
3. Another great help was Mikhail Lapshin's website. I highly recommend that you take the Scrum Master quiz - both as learning and exam mode. Here is the link, https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/sm-learning-mode/ . Also read this, https://mlapshin.com/index.php/blog/scrum-questions/.
4. I also tried some 'trial' exams & questions online but I do not think that they added any additional value for me.

About the exam -

• Exam is 60 mins and 80 questions. I felt that the time was enough. I used it all since I had doubts over some questions (around 10). I had 8 mins remaining to go through them.  
• There were direct & indirect questions from Scrum guide and if you read it thoroughly then you will be able to answer direct questions within seconds which will save you 'precious' time for other questions. 
• At the end of the exam it is not shown which questions were answered incorrectly. Although, they do send the 'Results by focus area' like Scrum values, Roles etc which can be used to relate with different topics. 

Did it help to be working with Scrum since 2017?

Yes, I think so but I believe that there is a difference between giving theoretical exam and practically implementing and experiencing Scrum. As the Scrum guide says, Scrum is easy to understand but difficult to master :-). I have also learnt few things that I would really like to look into, for example, improving sprint review meeting within our project. I will definitely discuss this with team.  

Next, I am preparing for PSPO 1. Will keep you posted. 

Please let me know if this blog helped you in your preparation for the exam. Feedback about this blog is also welcome. Thank you & good luck!