Certified ScrumMaster®

• Qualification for ScrumMaster Certification (passing the exam is a required follow-on step for certification).
• Payment of your first two year dues for the Scrum Alliance
• 14 PDUs from PMI (Project Management Institute)
• Membership in the CollabNet Agile Community

Learn the basic rules of Scrum. What is the primary role of the Product Owner? What is the ScrumMaster’s job, and how does that differ from a project manager? What is the role of management in Scrum? Who are the stakeholders and how do they interact with the team? Why is self-organization important?

Run an effective Scrum cycle. How do you decide what you commit to in a Sprint? What do you do if something comes up and the team can’t make its commitments? How do you make sure that the customer is being properly represented? What do you do to improve team processes? How should the entire Scrum team keep track of all the work items?

Determine what you are your building. What is a user story and how is it different from a traditional “requirement”? What is an epic? What makes a good user story? How do you decompose epics into stories? How do you make sure you get the right list of requirements? How can you deal with frequently changing requirements?

Build a product backlog and learn how to manage it. What goes on the backlog? Who decides on the backlog priority? Who decides the order that the team does its tasks? What’s a t-shirt size? Why is relative estimation important? What is velocity? How should ROI be calculated? What should the team do if the Product Owner says that “we need to get everything done”?

Produce a potentially shippable product. Why is the concept of “done” important and how is it different from traditional software development? Who decides if something is done? What are the components of a good definition of done? How do you divide large stories that are too big into stories that can be completed in a single Sprint? What are the consequences of a weak definition of done?

Prevent the creation of unmaintainable systems. What is technical debt? How is it related to the definition of done? How does it accumulate? How do you prevent it from mounting up? How do you get rid of it when you have it? What can you do when pressured to cut corners to make a deadline?

Build a great working team. How can everyone be a facilitator? How do you form good working agreements? What can you do if you don’t like members of your team? Who’s responsible for assigning tasks? What should happen if the team can’t agree? How can you work with someone who doesn’t believe that Agile is a good approach?

Extend the strengths of Scrum with the resources of large organizations. What’s the best way to expand from one Scrum team to several? What is a Scrum of Scrums? When should they be used and when should they be avoided? What other techniques can be used to coordinate work on large projects and in large organizations? How can you work with a long planning cycle?

Deal with the realities of the current situation. How can you optimize your work with distributed teams? What happens if members of your team are constantly being pulled into other projects? How can you increase management support? Are there good ways to share effective techniques and lessons learned? What’s the best way of encouraging a learning organization?

Pass the certification examination. What is the Scrum Alliance Certification? What content is covered on the exam? What are the questions like? How should you prepare? What are the mechanics of the test? Are there good ways to increase your chances of passing? Can you take the test more than once?

• Scrum Reference Card
• Web Based Training modules