Professional Scrum Master I (PSM)

IT teams adopting Scrum often run it inconsistently: daily scrums turn into status meetings, retrospectives drift into blame, and teams say they are “doing Agile” without a shared model of who owns the backlog or what “done” means. This course gives your organization one common reference point: the Scrum Guide as written, not each team’s local habits.

Role fit: Assign it to Team Leads, project managers, and IT Practitioners moving into Scrum Master or delivery-lead roles. It is rated Beginner, so no prior Scrum certification is assumed. Developers and future Product Owners also benefit from the modules on roles, events, artifacts, and business alignment.

Time investment: Plan for about 8.4 hours of video per learner across 10 skills. That fits within two to three weeks of part-time study.

Change-management note: CBT Nuggets instructor Bob Mahler warns that experienced staff are often the most at risk on the PSM I exam because they answer from habit rather than from the Scrum Guide. Expect veterans to unlearn some practices. That shift is exactly what standardizes how your teams run sprints, refine backlogs, and coach self-management.

How CBT Nuggets supports the outcome: Two dedicated skills cover the exam directly. One walks through common PSM I exam traps and pitfalls, and the other is a final exam-prep checklist. Learners are also directed to open practice assessments so they can track readiness before scheduling the 80-question, one-hour exam. Team Reporting lets Training Managers see progress across the cohort, and Playlists let you pair this course with the PSPO I or PSM II courses as a role-based path.

IT teams use this training to run Scrum the way the Scrum Guide intends, not the way it drifted on past projects. The instructor shows how habits from earlier projects can lead Scrum Masters astray, both on the PSM I exam and in day-to-day delivery. Teams learn to use transparency, inspection, and adaptation to find and fix problems sprint by sprint.

• Retrospectives that find root causes: Team Leads learn to keep retrospectives focused on systems instead of blaming people, so improvement sessions don't turn into arguments and the real issue gets fixed.
• Realistic sprint forecasting: Practitioners learn to separate capacity (historical velocity, such as a team holding steady at 25 story points) from capability (skill and effectiveness). This helps teams commit to work they can actually deliver.
• Better backlog focus: Scrum Masters learn how product vision and business strategy connect to backlog decisions. Teams can then use sprint reviews and other feedback loops to adjust course and reduce effort on work that no longer supports the product goal.
• Stronger self-managing teams: Leaders practice choosing between teaching, coaching, mentoring, and facilitating based on what the team needs, which builds confidence without command-and-control oversight.

For IT Directors, the result is a shared Scrum vocabulary across the team. The course also includes a full skill on common PSM I exam pitfalls, including Scrum Guide-aligned answers versus familiar real-world habits, time-box rules, and who-does-what questions, plus repeated practice assessments to support first-attempt certification readiness.

Knowledge

• Scrum empiricism (transparency, inspection, and adaptation) and how each Scrum event creates a feedback loop for inspecting the product, the people, and the process
• The accountabilities of the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Developers, and how to answer “who does what” questions the way the Scrum Guide intends
• The five Scrum events and their time-boxes, plus common retrospective pitfalls such as blaming people instead of systems
• The three artifact-and-commitment pairs: Product Backlog and Product Goal, Sprint Backlog and Sprint Goal, and the Increment and Definition of Done
• How product vision and business strategy connect team-level work to organizational goals, which helps teams avoid building unused features
• Common PSM I exam challenges, including tricky wording, time-box questions, self-management, forecasting, and separating Scrum Guide answers from real-world habits

Ability

• Classify real team practices as transparency, inspection, or adaptation, and use them to guide continuous improvement each Sprint
• Choose the right stance for the situation: teaching, coaching, mentoring, or facilitating
• Tell a team capacity problem (historical velocity) apart from a capability issue (skill and effectiveness) before committing to Sprint work
• Run retrospectives that focus on root causes in systems rather than personal blame
• Answer scenario questions using the Scrum Guide rather than habits from past projects, eliminate wrong answers, and pace through 80 questions in one hour
• Use Scrum.org resources, mock exam questions, and the Scrum Guide to track readiness and close knowledge gaps before attempting the exam