How to pass the Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) certification assessment?

Phase 1 — Decide

Making a decision is the hardest part of everything.

First of all, we need to understand why we want to get the PSPO certification? To dive deep into the Product Owner role, start a career, or push ourselves to learn? It is OK to have other reasons, but we do need a reason to start.

Secondly, will this certification help us to find a Product Owner job? Well, it depends. I believe the company won’t hire us only because that we have this certification. However, suppose that you and another candidate has similar professional skills, soft skills, and all other capabilities are pretty much the same. If you have this certification, then you will probably have more chances to win this opportunity.

No matter what reason we have, once we decide, let’s focus on gaining the knowledge itself instead of only passing the assessment

Phase 2 — Plan

Now it is time to plan your learnings.

We should think about our learning process as a product. The goal is to pass the assessment and get the certification. With this goal in our mind, we should make up a delivery plan to give us a rough idea of how long it will take, how much effort it takes, and the detailed tasks we need to do.

The plan I made for myself for you to refer to,

1. Read the learning path first to get a rough idea and to find my gap.

• Product Owner Learning Path

2. One month for reading the book “The Professional Product Owner: Leveraging Scrum as a Competitive Advantage”

I did not read every chapter. I find that part 3 Tactics are pretty helpful, and it can guide our daily work, take the Product Backlog management chapter 7, for example. It does help me with my daily work. If you want to renew your scrum knowledge, the first two parts are also good to read.

3. Take the mock test to assess your knowledge.

• Open Assessment from Scrum.org

Recommend you take both for Scrum open and Product Owner Open

• Free mock test https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/po-learning-mode/

Also, if you search PSPO in Udemy, you can find lots of mock tests, but it is not free.

4. Book the Assessment

• PROFESSIONAL SCRUM PRODUCT OWNER™ I

5. Take more mock tests and then take the assessment

Phase 3 — Prepare

While we are learning, make sure you do the following,

1. Take notes while you are reading the book
2. Record all the wrong questions for each of the mock test

Before you take the exam, make sure that

1. Review the notes and the incorrect questions
2. Feel confident

Phase 4 — Take the assessment

Some tips about the exam,

1. Don’t spend too much time on one particular question
2. You can mark the ones you are not sure
3. Before submitting, you can review the marked ones and correct the answers
4. Submit your answers

Although I marked some of the questions that I’m not sure about, I failed to review them at last cause I accidentally clicked submit. Lucky I passed. If you have plenty of time, don’t forget to check the marked ones.

Phase 5 — After you pass the assessment

Congratulations to yourself. Don’t forget to add the certification to your Linkedin Profile and share the joy with your friends.