How I achieved my PSM I Certification

I'm writing this post not only to express my joy but also to share the techniques that I employed in order to prepare myself to pass the Professional Scrum Master™ (PSM) I test. I'm extremely delighted to have this certification. But don't get me wrong, employing the knowledge gained, in daily practice is more important than earning a certification!

Just to give you some background, I'm a DevOps specialist and work with different agile teams (using Scrum framework), as part of my daily job. I attended a Agile boot camp just last week, which also gave me a lot of insight on how to use Scrum framework in the real world.

In terms of preparation, I spent around 5 days including 3 days of boot camp. Below is the list of resources, I used to acquire the mastery of PSM I.

1. Scrum Guide - in my humble opinion, this is the most important source of information. It is short but written very concisely and to the point. I read it just once top to bottom, but spent about four hours reviewing and taking notes (imaging I spent 4 hours and it (the 2017 version) only has 19 pages). I did spend another 15 minutes or so to review it again just before taking my real test. You can download this guide free from www.scrumguides.org
2. Took free Open Assessments provided by scrum.org. Even though, I was targeting for Scrum Master, I took all available Open Assessments there just to get a bigger picture from the Scrum Master, the Product Owner, the Development Team, and the Scaled Scrum perspectives. I took some of these assessments twice to get close to a 100% passing mark and also took note of individual failed quizzes and reviewed it all again just before taking my real test.
3.  Big thanks go to Mikhail Lapshin for maintaining such a wonderful site (https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/) dedicated to Scrum quizzes. In my opinion you find here sufficient (quantitatively and qualitatively) quizzes. Mikhail also maintains very good Scrum Questions page where he provides detail insight.  
4. I also reviewed materials from www.volkerdon.com and did their quizzes. I must say that the site has high quality materials and quizzes. I repeated some of the quizzes here twice.
5. I also downloaded and reviewed The Scrum Master Training Manual (The-Scrum-Master-Training-Manual-Vr1.61.pdf) produced by Management Plaza (https://mplaza.pm). As name suggests, it is written as a manual with nice details. I also noticed that the manual gives too much emphasis on word "Project" (as a noun). My understanding is that Scrum is more product oriented rather than project. Scrum Guide (2017 version) has just a brief touch on project, which states "... Each Sprint may be considered a project with no more than a one-month horizon. Like projects, Sprints are used to accomplish something...". So, make sure you are not confused when reviewing the manual.
6. If you are a audio visual learner, Scrum Training Series modules from http://www.scrumtrainingseries.com/ are very good. These modules not only explain Scrum in real world like scenarios but also have good set of quizzes. I went through top five modules and did the quizzes. 
7. Along with the Scrum Guide, I also reviewed the Nexus Guide and got knowledge about the Nexus framework. Nexus is one of the Scrum Scaling frameworks.
8. I also studied some material (from the internet) to get better understanding on how to do Product Backlog Items (PBIs) ordering/prioritization, PBI work estimation etc. Evidence-Based Management Guide is a good read. I also gained some knowledge on consensus-based estimating technique using Planning Poker®, estimating using Story points etc.

In terms of giving the actual test, I chose the morning time (I heard that the site becomes slower during the day). I woke up Sunday morning around 6:00 AM, prepared myself a cup of coffee (I actually consumed two cups in two hours of time), did around 40 minutes of review before starting the actual test. Once you start the test, time management is very important. I was about to miss few, hadn't I rushed the last 30 minutes. I did mark few questions for later review (you have to manually make a note in separate notepad, as the system does not allow you to mark the question for review), but at the end, did not get enough time to go back and review again. It took me around 58 minutes to finish the test. So, instead of going back and reviewing, I just hit the finish button. I felt that I was confident in my answers, however, I was still nervous for my results.Yes, I got 96.3%.

   Hope this post is helpful to all of you - either considering to get certification or just trying to learn and use Scrum in your daily practice!