8.4 Last-Minute Checklist

Read This List Alone Right Before The Exam

This checklist is written to stand by itself. If you only have fifteen minutes, scan every bullet and confirm you can explain it from memory. Anything you stumble on, re-read its one line in the Scrum Guide — not the whole document. The goal of a last-minute scan is not to learn anything new; it is to make the highest-frequency facts instantly retrievable so that easy questions cost you ten seconds, leaving your full 45-second budget for the scenario items that actually require thought.

The four densest fact-clusters on PSM I, in rough order of how often they are tested, are: (1) the five events and their timeboxes; (2) the three artifacts mapped to their three commitments; (3) the three accountabilities and their exact, non-overlapping scope; and (4) the single-authority and "no estimation mandate" facts. If those four clusters are automatic, you have covered the bulk of the recall-style questions and can spend your remaining energy reading scenario stems carefully. Review them in that order below.

Timeboxes (one-month Sprint — scale down for shorter Sprints)

Accountabilities — Exact Scope

Artifact ↔ Commitment & Authority Facts

Artifact → Commitment (memorize the triple)

• Product Backlog → Product Goal
• Sprint Backlog → Sprint Goal
• Increment → Definition of Done

Single-Authority Facts (no ambiguity on the exam)

• Only the Product Owner can cancel a Sprint.
• The Product Owner is one person, not a committee (delegation is allowed; accountability is not).
• The Product Owner orders the Product Backlog and develops/communicates the Product Goal.
• The Developers decide how much to pull into the Sprint and how the work gets done.
• The Scrum Team creates the Definition of Done if no organizational standard exists.

High-Frequency Truths

• Scrum mandates no estimation technique (story points are optional).
• A new Sprint starts immediately after the previous one concludes — no gap, no hardening Sprint.
• The Daily Scrum is for the Developers, not a status report; held same time and place daily.
• The Sprint Review is never a release gate; an Increment can ship earlier and multiple Increments can occur per Sprint.
• Product Backlog refinement is an ongoing activity, not one of the five events.
• Three accountabilities, not roles; one Scrum Team, no sub-teams or hierarchies, typically 10 or fewer people.
• Five values: commitment, focus, openness, respect, courage.
• Three pillars: transparency, inspection, adaptation.
• The Sprint Goal is the only commitment that cannot change mid-Sprint; scope may be renegotiated with the Product Owner as more is learned.

Final Mindset & Common Slips

• Map titles to accountabilities. "Project manager," "team lead," "director" are noise — translate to Product Owner / Scrum Master / Developers before answering.
• Self-managing means the team decides who, what, when, how — not unmanaged, and not externally assigned.
• Cross-functional is collective, not every individual being a generalist.
• "Done" is binary. If it does not meet the Definition of Done, it is not part of the Increment — no "almost done."
• One Sprint Goal, created at Sprint Planning, added to the Sprint Backlog.
• Empiricism over prediction. Forecast and adapt; the Guide never promises fixed scope-and-date commitments.
• Coach, don't command. When a team struggles, the Scrum Master makes the problem transparent and helps them inspect and adapt — not take over or escalate.
• Breathe and pace. 80 questions, 60 minutes, 68/80 (85%) to pass; flag, move, and finish a full pass before deep-diving.

Go / No-Go Readiness Checklist

Treat the boxes below as a gate. If you cannot honestly tick all of them, do another Scrum Open round before booking.

• I score 100% on Scrum Open repeatedly, inside the 30-minute limit.
• I can recite the five events with timeboxes without looking.
• I can map all three artifacts to their commitments instantly.
• I can state each accountability's exact scope and what it is not.
• I know the single-authority facts (Sprint cancellation, PO is one person).
• I can list the three pillars and five values from memory.
• I have a pacing plan (~45s/question, flag-and-move) and a quiet, stable setup for the 60 minutes.

Finally, remember what PSM I is not testing. It does not test your real-world agile experience, your tooling, your company's flavor of Scrum, or scaling frameworks like Nexus or SAFe — those are out of scope. It tests one thing: whether you know the 2020 Scrum Guide as written. Where your workplace and the Guide disagree, the Guide wins every time on this exam. Answer as a purist: keep decisions with the accountable party, protect the timeboxes, treat "Done" as binary, and let the team self-manage.

Walk in calm, trust your Scrum Open scores, and work the clock — 68 correct out of 80 is a comfortable margin once the recall facts above are automatic and you have stopped donating wrong answers to manager-vocabulary distractors.