The PSM I passing score is set at 85%, one of the highest bars in the certification world, and gives you just 60 minutes for 80 questions. That's roughly 45 seconds per question, which sounds manageable until you hit a multiple-answer question buried in Scrum Guide phrasing that reads almost, but not quite, like the text. The exam is open book, so plenty of candidates assume they can look everything up. Most of them run out of time trying.
PSM I is built entirely around the 2020 Scrum Guide, not around any particular company's flavor of Scrum or a training vendor's slide deck. That means questions probe:
Scrum Theory and Empiricism — transparency, inspection, and adaptation as the three pillars, and why Scrum is built on empirical process control rather than predictive planning. Expect questions that test whether you understand why an event exists, not just that it exists.
Scrum Values — commitment, focus, openness, respect, and courage. These show up less as definitions and more as scenario questions: "The team is doing X, which value is being violated?"
The Scrum Team — the shift in the 2020 Guide to a single Scrum Team with no sub-teams, the Developers' accountability for the Sprint Backlog, and the Product Owner's accountability for the Product Backlog and value maximization. PSM I candidates frequently miss questions about accountabilities versus roles because the 2020 Guide deliberately dropped "roles" language.
Scrum Events — Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, and the Sprint itself as the container event. Time-boxes are fair game as exact figures (a two-week Sprint gets an 8-hour Sprint Planning cap, a 4-hour Sprint Review, and so on), and the exam expects you to know them cold rather than estimate.
Scrum Artifacts and Commitments — Product Backlog with its Product Goal, Sprint Backlog with its Sprint Goal, and the Increment with its Definition of Done. The 2020 Guide added a formal commitment to each artifact, and PSM I loves testing whether you can name the right commitment for the right artifact.
Scaling and self-management — lighter coverage, but expect a handful of questions on how Scrum applies across multiple teams working on one product.
PSM I draws a wider crowd than a typical IT certification. Developers pursuing a Scrum Master path sit it alongside project managers pivoting from Waterfall, product owners who want to understand what their Scrum Master actually does, and business analysts whose companies are mid-transformation to Agile delivery. A meaningful chunk of candidates have already taken a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) course through Scrum Alliance and are adding PSM I because it doesn't require a paid class first, only the willingness to pass a hard exam.
The question mix is what catches people off guard. You'll see true/false, single-select multiple choice, and multiple-answer questions where you must select every correct option to get credit; partial answers score zero. The exam interface tells you how many options to select on multiple-answer items, which is a small mercy, but candidates still lose points rushing past that instruction under time pressure.
Because it's open book, the exam expects you to already know the material and use the Scrum Guide only to confirm precise wording, not to look up concepts from scratch. If you're tabbing to the PDF on every question, the clock will beat you. Practicing without the Guide open, then checking only the questions you're unsure of, mirrors exam behavior far better than open-book practice from the start.
The official PSM I Exam a full 80-question set in one 60-minute sitting before you check the Scrum Guide even once. Your raw, no-lookup score tells you whether your Scrum knowledge is exam-ready or whether you're relying on assumptions from your day job that don't match the Guide's actual language. Then go back through every missed question and find the exact sentence in the 2020 Scrum Guide that contradicts your answer. PSM I punishes people who know Scrum "in practice" but haven't read the source document closely, since teams often drift from the Guide's precise wording over time.
The single biggest mistake is confusing what a Scrum Master does with what a project manager does. PSM I questions are written to catch people who default to command-and-control instincts, testing answers like "the Scrum Master assigns tasks to Developers," which is wrong under the Guide's self-management principle. A second common trap is Sprint Backlog ownership questions, where candidates still answer as if the Product Owner controls it, a holdover from pre-2020 Guide thinking. Third, candidates consistently misjudge event time-boxes, especially confusing the Sprint Review time-box with the Sprint Retrospective time-box, or assuming time-boxes scale with Sprint length when only some do.
Read the 2020 Scrum Guide itself, in full, more than once. It's under 15 pages, and PSM I questions are frequently near-verbatim rephrasings of specific sentences in it, so familiarity with the actual document matters more than any third-party study guide. Pay close attention to language changes from the 2017 Guide if you learned Scrum a few years ago: "Development Team" is gone, replaced by "Developers" as an accountability, and several role-based sentences were rewritten around accountabilities instead. Use the free Scrum Open Assessment as a companion, not a substitute, since it draws from a smaller question pool than the exam and can create false confidence if you rely on it alone.
Once you're consistently scoring 90%+ on cold, no-lookup practice runs, book the assessment; there's no waiting period, no proctor scheduling hassle, and results are shown immediately after submission.Try a Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing practice exam for free.
Last updated on Oct, 9 2026
