by This is a real time journey to my PSK1 certification. It’s raw and caters my process of learning in general and collection of information specific to PSK1 certification.
After all, a lot of the blockbuster blogs originated from what started from scratching their own itch. So, here we go, with mine
Background: Office is offering Agile certifications and I would love to avail one. But going in for the CSM or PSM would be an overkill for me. After all, I am already an ACP certified professional and a SAFE Agilist.
Although it has been a while since those certifications. 2-3 years.
So, in order to challenge myself, I browsed through what all certifications are they offering us, and settled for PSK1, which is Professional Scrum Master with Kanban.
I was all geared and looking forward to it still feeling that it would be an easy nut to crack for me. Well, until I started taking one of the few Open tests of which I couldn’t confidently answer a single question – that despite all of those questions being True/ False questions. I gave up the test after four questions to research and study some more.
I searched for “How difficult it is to pass the PSK1” and got the following result, which looks scarier than what I could every imagine. And this comment is on Scrum.org that is from the people who offer it.
https://www.scrum.org/forum/scrum-forum/16608/psk-i-difficulty
One advice they have here is to thoroughly digest the book “Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability: An Introduction” by Daniel Vacanti.
Vacanti has apparently been heavily involved in the development of PSK certification.
In an exploratory way, I am trying to determine the study areas, and here are some I identified so far:
- Kanban Practices and Scrum Framework
- Agile Metrics
Some articles to read:
- https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/4-key-flow-metrics-and-how-use-them-scrums-events
- https://www.agilesparks.com/blog/limiting-work-in-progress-wip-some-anecdotes-worth-thinking-about-when-using-kanban-with-scrum/
- http://www.actionableagile.com/analytics-demo/
- Limiting Work in Progress (WIP) in Scrum with Kanban – What? When? Who? How?
- Kanban Service Level Expectations and how to use them in Scrum
- https://www.scrum.org/resources/suggested-reading-professional-scrum-kanban
Some concepts that should be noted and clear:
- Flow and Flow metrics
- Workflow in Scrum context
- Throughput runs
- CFDs and Scatterplots
- How Scrum accommodates and can be improved by Kanban
- Understanding below matrices and elements will help in exam:
- Cycle time
- WIP
- Throughput
- WIP limit
- Work Item Age
- Little’s Law
- Objective of Service level Expectation (SLE) and how to apply SLE
- CFDs and Cycle Time Scatterplots
Youtube Videos:
- Kanban Metrics in Practice – Mattia Battiston
- Cycle Time and Little’s Law – Jim Brisson
- How to reduce WIP using Little’s Law – rtdknowledge.
To make this easily accessible, I have searched and created a Public Youtube Playlist where you can find all these and other useful videos for PSK preparation. Here’s the link.
Other resources:
- The Scrum Guide and the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams
- BLOGS written by Daniel S. Vacanti and Yuval Yeret
- Actionable Agile-Metrics-for-Predictability by Daniel S. Vacanti
- Little’s law and predictability – Daniel Vacanti
- “When will it be done” by Dan Vacanti.
- Yuval Yeret’s blogs, especially this one reinforce the understanding of concepts.
- Daniel S Vacanti’s book ‘Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability’, especially chapters in Part One, Two and Three help to study Flow Metrics, Little Law, CFD and Cycle Time Scatterplots.
So, with all this basic research, I am now in a position to create my study plan for my certification journey. Will share that in the next post and will continue the PSK1 certification journey ahead.
See you in a bit. Ciao.