PSM III prep
For experienced Scrum Masters who want to prove they can apply Scrum with depth across complex, real organisational situations, in written answers graded by experts.
The real exam
| Questions | 24 essay questions |
|---|---|
| Time | 150 minutes (about 6 minutes each) |
| Result | Pass or Did Not Pass, graded by a team of experts |
| Results arrive | By email in about 4 weeks, with written feedback |
| Fee | $500 per attempt |
| Answers | Typed in English; translation tools allowed for drafting |
| Rules | No AI tools, no prepared or copied answers, paper references only |
| Recommended first | PSM I and PSM II, ideally with 90% or more |
| Based on | Scrum Guide 2020 |
| Validity | Lifetime, no renewal fee |
What you get
Mocks follow the real rules: 24 questions in 150 minutes, flag and review.
Syllabus
Transparency, inspection and adaptation applied to teams, products and whole organisations.
Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect and Courage as lived behaviour under pressure.
Accountabilities, team design, multiple teams on one product and how the Scrum Master serves everyone.
Ownership, decision making, conflict, impediments and the role of management.
Making each event serve its purpose and fixing events that have turned into rituals.
Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog and Increment, and their commitments, kept transparent.
The Definition of Done, quality, undone work and technical debt across one or many teams.
Facilitating events, hard conversations and group decisions, in person and remote.
Choosing stances, growing Product Owners and Scrum Masters, and leading organisational change.
Forecasting under uncertainty, fixed-date pressure and the misuse of velocity.
Outcomes over output, Evidence-Based Management and real stakeholder and customer collaboration.
Course outline
- How PSM III works and is graded · 3 lessons
- Writing strong answers · 3 lessons
- Worked example answers · 4 lessons
- Coaching, facilitation, mentoring and teaching · 3 lessons
- Organisational agility and leadership · 4 lessons
- Value, metrics and forecasting · 3 lessons
- Worked scenarios · 5 lessons
- Exam day · 1 lessons
Passwell is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Scrum.org. PSM and Professional Scrum Master are trademarks of Scrum.org. All questions, model answers and lessons are original Passwell content, and our rubrics are our own, not the grading guide Scrum.org uses. 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). Facts checked 2026-11-14.