PSM II prep
For practising Scrum Masters who want to prove they can apply Scrum, coaching and facilitation in messy real-world situations, not just recall the Scrum Guide.
The real exam
| Questions | 30 |
|---|---|
| Time | 90 minutes |
| Pass mark | 85% |
| Fee | $250 per attempt |
| Question types | Single answer, multiple answer (some with partial credit), true/false |
| Difficulty | Advanced, long scenario questions |
| Format | Online, unproctored, paper references only |
| Based on | Scrum Guide 2020 plus Scrum.org advanced material |
| Prerequisite | None, PSM I recommended |
| Validity | Lifetime, no renewal fee |
What you get
Mocks follow the real rules: 30 questions in 90 minutes, flag and review.
Syllabus
Empiricism, Scrum Values, accountabilities, events, artifacts and Done applied to dysfunctional, real-world scenarios, plus scaling with Nexus.
When to step in and when to let a team learn, impediment patterns, conflict, cross-functionality, team size and team development.
Facilitator neutrality, diverge and converge, Liberating Structures, decision rules and remote or large-group sessions.
Leading by serving, situational and enabling leadership, and how managers support self-managing teams.
Scrum Master stances, powerful questions, active listening, coaching agreements, confidentiality, mentoring and teaching.
Serving the Product Owner, refinement, ordering, stakeholder collaboration, empirical forecasting and flow metrics.
Evolving the Definition of Done, technical debt, continuous integration and delivery, test automation and emergent architecture.
Organisational impediments, feature teams, incentives, change management, scaling decisions and Evidence-Based Management.
Course outline
- Scrum at depth · 4 lessons
- Scrum Master stances · 4 lessons
- Coaching and mentoring · 3 lessons
- Facilitation · 3 lessons
- Teams and leadership · 4 lessons
- Product, stakeholders and technical risk · 4 lessons
- Organisation, scaling and metrics · 4 lessons
Try a question
A Scrum Team has been working on a payments platform for five Sprints. Every Sprint Review consists of the Product Owner presenting slides that show each Product Backlog item as a percentage complete. Stakeholders leave reassured, yet nothing has been released and the Developers privately admit that most items still need integration and testing. The sponsor now asks the Scrum Master for a more detailed status report. What should the Scrum Master do first?A. Agree to the sponsor's request and design a richer weekly status report showing percentages, risks, owners and a traffic-light summary for every item in progressB. Propose a dedicated integration Sprint so that all partially finished items can be completed before the stakeholders inspect anything furtherC. Ask the Developers to estimate the remaining hours on each item every day so the percentages shown to the stakeholders become more preciseD. Help the Scrum Team and the sponsor see that only a Done Increment gives a reliable basis for inspection, and bring working product to the next Sprint ReviewShow answer
During a Sprint Retrospective a Developer says quietly that she found a serious data issue two weeks ago but did not mention it because the team lead from the old structure would have blamed her. The rest of the team looks uncomfortable and the conversation moves on. Nobody has left the team and the issue is now fixed. The Scrum Master notices that this is the third similar story this quarter. Which Scrum Value is most clearly under strain, and what is the most useful focus for the Scrum Master?A. Commitment; the Scrum Master should remind the Developers that they committed to the Sprint Goal and must report every riskB. Openness and courage; the Scrum Master should help the team build an environment where raising problems early is safeC. Focus; the Scrum Master should reduce the number of items in the Sprint so that Developers have time to report problemsD. Respect; the Scrum Master should ask the former team lead to apologise to the Developer in front of the whole teamShow answer
Passwell is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Scrum.org. PSM and Professional Scrum Master are trademarks of Scrum.org. All questions and lessons are original Passwell content. Concepts from the Scrum Guide 2020 by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland are explained in our own words, with short quotes attributed, under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0). Liberating Structures, Nexus, the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams and Evidence-Based Management are referred to by name and summarised in our own words. Facts checked 2026-11-14.