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!

Experience Sharing - TOGAF® Part I and Part II Certification in Two Weeks through Self Study

I passed the combined TOGAF® 9.1 Part I  and Part II exams on May 24^th. I did it through self study and wanted to share my experience so that it would be useful for others. Timeline wise, I spent around 2 weeks - started studying on May 11^th by purchasing official TOGAF® self-study package from the Open Group and gave exams on May 24^th here in Toronto with satisfactory results - i.e. I passed Part I with 87% and Part II with 85%.
In terms of preparation almost 60% of my time, I spent on foundation (Part I) study as I realized early that in order to really crack the Part II exam, I had to have the good knowledge of TOGAF® foundation. Having said so, however, I did not wait until the end to prepare for the Part II exam. After few days of Part I study, I kind of accommodated Part II as well, after every iteration of part I, which actually helped me to better understand the TOGAF® concept as Part II is based on knowledge, TOGAF® way of thinking, analysing and also some related experience as well. Below some details:

Registration:

I registered for TOGAF® 9 Combined Part I and II (Exam Number: OG0093; Exam details: http://certification.opengroup.org/examinations/TOGAF/TOGAF9-combined) through Prometric on May 11.
Note: the combined exam costs  495 USD. Also, note that total cost for combined exams is little bit less than giving them separately. Here is Prometric site for registration: https://www.prometric.com/en-us/clients/opengroup/Pages/landing.aspx

Preparation:

• Purchased TOGAF® 9 CERTIFICATION SELF-STUDY PACK, 3RD EDITION (SKU: B097; cost 59.90 USD) PDF version from the Open Group web site.
• Started studying with Pocket guide (G117p.pdf) included in the self-study package. It provided general understanding of TOGAF®. If you start with official TOGAF® 9.1 documentation or detailed study guide, you may easily get lost or be bored. So, my suggestion is "start light" and for that purpose pocket guide seems to be the best.
• Reviewed the Reference Cards included in the self-study package. Reference cards really helped me to understand the TOGAF® concept and methodology visually. Once I reviewed all 4 reference cards, I created my own versions of reference cards to make sure that I understood them well. Note: There are 4 reference cards N111, N112, N113, and N114 included in the self-study package.
• Once I completed the Pocket book and Reference cards, I did first iteration of Part I practice test consisting 40 questions and remembered doing fairly well. I reviewed the explanation for those questions which I answered incorrectly. That's when I also started looking into the official TOGAF® 9.1 documentation and reviewed the materials in detail related to each question.
• After doing Part I practice test and also taking notes from official TOGAF® 9.1 documentation, I tried the first 8 questions from Part II practice test. Again reviewed all answers and referred back to either official TOGAF® 9.1 documentation or study guides included in the package.
• Following YouTube tutorials also helped me to shape my TOGAF® concept:
• https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF5FCBA1AF9B8FA (10 parts tutorial). Very well explained in detail.
• https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM9BDLm3rDjf3sU_Uq_hmSltM7jj1dII0 (9 parts tutorial). Also very well explained in high level.
• Before doing the 2^nd set of 40 questions included in the self-study package for Part I test question, I did some tests from public sites. especially 3 set of 40 questions from http://theopenarch.com/81-tests/72-TOGAF®-9-exam-tests.html . I found, these questions relatively harder than the questions included in the official self-study package. I remembered doing not very well, so I had to refer back to official document, and study guide and go deep and detail and take notes.
• On/Around the 6^th day, I felt somehow comfortable with the overall TOGAF® document structure, and had clear high level TOGAF® concept so I decided to proceed with the Part I and Part II  preparations kind of in parallel, i.e. at any point in time I could be doing Part I or Part II tests and referring back to TOGAF® 9.1 documentation for detail.
•  Self-Study package contains bonus questions for both Part I and Part II exams. I also did tests from the following sites:

• http://theopenarch.com/81-tests/72-TOGAF®-9-exam-tests.html (has both Part I and Part II test questions)
• https://setandbma.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/TOGAF-preparation-aid-for-part-2/ helpful questions to understand the TOGAF® artifacts and viewpoints.
• http://wenku.baidu.com/view/c9d8c7b0f524ccbff12184d2.html for Part II test questions.

• I did two iterations of practice tests and reviewed the answers. I did detail study from official TOGAF® 9.1 document for any questions that I answered wrong during each iteration. I did 3^rd iteration only to those questions that were marked wrong in the 2^nd iteration.
• My study style:
• Each day I started with the review of previous day's learning and any important notes.
• On the last day before the test, I reviewed all my personal notes.

In summary (based on my experience),  Part I exam, requires well versed TOGAF® knowledge, so, make sure you know all the TOGAF® terminologies, and methodologies. TOGAF® Part II, however in addition to TOGAF® knowledge, also requires very TOGAF® way of thinking and analysing each scenario.By the way, scenarios in the Part II exams are fairly long and it is easy to loose the track, so, make sure to note (in memory or on provided pad) what' the ask and concerns are. Most of the choices for each scenario  are equally long and pretty close to each other (in terms of meaning), so try to think in TOGAF® way to select the right one and avoid the distractor. Even though, Part II is an open book exam, avoid using attached reference document in the beginning. If you are not confident with your selection, mark it and move forward. Once you answer all your questions, then you can go back to marked questions and open the PDF document provided as reference to fine tune your answer. This way, you'll save time and also won't leave behind any question unanswered because of lack of time. 

That's it. All the best if any one of you are taking TOGAF® exam any time soon!