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Organizations all over the world are looking to hire external assistance to manage their project development in a sagacious manner. The demand for Certified ScrumMasters has thus seen an increase off-late. As a ScrumMaster your responsibilities would include facilitating meetings, coaching team members, encouraging the use of Agile practices, reviewing the team’s work, communicating the requirements of the product owner to the team, guarding the team against external distractions, and maintaining harmony in the tea.
Who is the Scrum Master?
In one of our previous blog posts, Rumesh Wijetunge shared some relevant insights on the role of Scrum Master. Wearing different hats, coach, enabler, facilitator, team leader, problem-solver, s/he is in charge of giving right directions to team members so that they reach objectives. First promoter of Agile mindset, values and principles, the Scrum Master uses the Scrum framework to help a team in understanding, working on, and achieving a common goal.
Read more on Scrum Master Certification Guide!
Responsibilities of the Certified Scrum Master
It is expected from the Certified Scrum Master to promote an Agile way of working and to lead Scrum implementation in order to improve the team's overall performance. It implies these activities:
Getting some basic knowledge about the Scrum framework is a nice-to-have prerequisite. However, the first mandatory step is to attend a two-day CSM course conducted by a Certified Scrum Trainer® (CST®). This course will prepare you well for the CSM exam by delivering insights about how to organize and support a Scrum Team. The final step is easy: you need to accept the License Agreement and update your Scrum Alliance membership profile.
Ideally, anybody looking to help develop and maintain an efficient team in their organization can apply for a ScrumMaster certification. The candidates who are most likely to benefit from this certification are:
a. Professionals - With a ScrumMaster certification, you can add more value to your résumé and expand career prospects. More importantly, you can enhance the success of your team and make significant contributions to the project.
b. Trainers - Make a career by training aspirants in this up-and-coming field, while building a concrete knowledge about the subject.
c. Coaches - Project management teams need to be tutored with latest updates of Scrum and Agile. With a ScrumMaster certification you can coach the team and also ensure they implement these practices in the advancement of the projects.
d. REPs - With a ScrumMaster Certification, you can be a part of one of the several REPs—Registered Education Providers—and offer Agile training to aspiring students.
A true belief and strong interest in Agile philosophy will help for sure to get knowledge, to practice efficiently and to stand out among Agile practitioners. Nonetheless, passing the Scrum Alliance certification for Scrum Master lies mainly in learning Scrum fundamentals and attending to the two-day training (see above paragraph c.)
a. Why CSM over PSM: Best Scrum Master certification
1. Scrum.org courses- Price, Renewal, Pros, and Cons
2. Difference between the Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org courses
The main difference lies in the fact that Scrum.org provides standard curriculum and course content, while training conducted to become CSM depends on individual trainers experience, opinion and knowledge.
CSM Certification Training
Syllabus of Scrum Master certification
Scrum Alliance provides a list of selected resources to learn the Scrum framework. People who want to become Certified Scrum Master are invited to read articles from experts like Mike Cohn or Steve Denning, or from other members. One specific advantage with Scrum Alliance lies in their elearning series: a dozen short videos introduce Scrum Theory and Values, Scrum Roles, Scrum Events and Scrum Artifacts.
Besides, it is strongly recommended to read those references:
Not mandatory but relevant to go further, Scrum: A Pocket Guide by Gunther Verheyen and Software in 30 days by Ken Schwaber.
Exam and Certification Information
Besides, attendees to the CSM course will be granted with 14 PDUs credits: 10 PDUs in Technical Project Management and 4 PDUs in Leadership.
What can be considered as a drawback is that there is no standard content course. Course materials are made by individual trainers, which implies it can be limited by their experience and opinion.
There is no specific cost for the Certification: the fee is included into the CSM two-day course.
The structure of the exam
The exam is composed of 35 multiple-choice and true/false questions. At least 24 correct answers are required to pass the exam, and there is no time limit to answer those questions.
Topics covered in the CSM exam
As this exam requires to demonstrate an understanding of the key Scrum elements, it covers general Scrum knowledge, Scrum roles, Scrum meetings and Scrum artifacts.
To earn the ScrumMaster Certification, you need to enroll yourself to a CSM course with a Scrum Alliance Authorised Trainer. It is an added benefit if you are already familiar with Scrum.
You’ll have to attend a 16-hour CSM course, following which you can take up the CSM test.
The test is comprised of 35 questions multiple-choice questions. To qualify as a Certified ScrumMaster, you’ll need to get at least 24 of these right. If you do not clear the test, the questions that you missed will be shown to you. The answers however are not displayed.
You can opt for a second attempt to better your score for free. You’ll charged a small amount of fee for any consequent attempts.
There is no hard-and-fast rule that you have to finish the test in one shot. You can stop and restart the test as many times as you want. If you are uncertain about an answer, you can always skip it and bookmark it for a later review. If you plan on completing the test, try to spend at least an hour answering the questions.
Changing times and technology require a constant updation and adaptability to newer techniques and methods. You can learn a lot through the real-time experiences throughout your career. You can also opt to keep up with the changing standards and values of Scrum and get a boost in knowledge in conventional ways.
Scrum Alliance gatherings are a great way to meet like-minded people and learn as well as share experiences. Participate in CSM LinkedIn forums. You can pursue further qualifications to enhance your knowledge, which in turn adds value to your résumé. With the right amount of experience and expertise, you can choose to become a Certified Scrum Professional.
Choose from the various reputed institutions that offer the online course to become a Certified ScrumMaster. With commitment to constant improvement, patience, and persistence you can promote an enhanced production and management of your team’s project
Top Cities where Knowledgehut Conduct CSM Certification Training Course Online
Answer: Processes over people
Answer: Team members should self-select tasks appropriate to their skills
A) End-Product has to be fully anticipated beforehand
B) Some requirements are implemented as defined in the beginning of the project, and yet they are not really needed by the customer
C) Each phase is strictly separated
- A
- A, B
- C, B
- A, B, C
Answer: A, B, C
- Product Owner
- Project Manager
- Lead Developer
- Business Analyst
Answer: Product Owner
- Complete software packages
- Customer projects
- Sub-systems, components or parts of bigger systems
- All kinds of software development projects
- None of the given answers
Answer: All kinds of software development projects
Salary of the Certified Scrum Master
| Salary per year | Junior | Senior |
|---|---|---|
| US | $82,000 - 105,000 | $105,000 - 120,000 |
| Europe | 38,000 - 55,000 € | 55,000 - 75,000 € |
| Dubai | AED 25,000 | AED 35,000 |
| India | Rs. 731,983 | Rs. 1,424,186 |
How To Become A Certified Scrum Master: Refer to our getting started guide
Becoming a Certified Scrum Master is one way to expand your career opportunities. Indeed, Agile is spreading everywhere in organisations, in all industries. Strongly correlated, software and digitalization are eating the world, so the need for Scrum Masters in software development is increasing. It is also the beginning of a long journey: it enables you to engage with other Scrum practitioners all over the world, to share best practices, to solve common issues and to promote Agile values and continuous improvement.
Besides, this certification offers you to learn foundation of Scrum and scope of the role of Scrum Master. And because it is delivered by Scrum Alliance , this is a very valid proof of your Scrum knowledge. Some of the benefits of being a certified ScrumMaster are:
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