8.3 Question Tactics & Time Management

The Format You Are Solving Against

PSM I is 80 multiple-choice / multiple-select / true-false questions in 60 minutes, taken online with no live proctor, requiring an 85% passing score (68 of 80 correct). That averages about 45 seconds per question. The single biggest cause of failure is not lack of knowledge — it is spending three minutes on a hard question and running out of time for twenty easy ones. With a margin of only 12 wrong answers, every careless miss matters, so you cannot afford to leave a block of easy questions unanswered because slow ones ate the clock.

Open-Book Reality (Use It Wisely)

The assessment is technically open-book — nothing stops you opening the Scrum Guide in another tab — but the 60-minute clock makes look-ups expensive. At 45 seconds per question, you can afford to verify perhaps a handful of facts, not browse. Treat the Guide as a tie-breaker for the two or three questions you genuinely cannot resolve, never as a crutch. Candidates who try to look up every answer run out of time. org — a free, unlimited 30-minute / 30-question drill drawn from the same item pool. Score 100% on Scrum Open repeatedly, under time, before booking PSM I.

Pacing Plan

Never leave a question blank — there is no penalty for guessing, so an eliminated-then-guessed answer always beats an empty one.

Reading the Question Stem

Absolutes

Words like always, never, only, must, all, every, none make an option fragile — a single counterexample kills it. Eliminate them unless they restate an exact Guide rule. Legitimate absolutes from the 2020 Scrum Guide include:

• Only the Product Owner can cancel a Sprint.
• The Product Owner is one person, not a committee.
• Work is not part of an Increment unless it meets the Definition of Done.
• A new Sprint starts immediately after the previous one concludes.
• The Daily Scrum is always 15 minutes for the Developers, regardless of Sprint length.

"Best" and "Most" Questions

When a stem asks for the best or most appropriate action, several options may be technically true. Choose the one that upholds Scrum's purpose: transparency, self-management, empiricism, and the team's accountabilities. Discard options that are true but solve the wrong problem (e.g., escalating to a manager when the team can self-manage). The pattern to internalise: a correct fact is not the same as the best action — the exam rewards the choice that keeps the decision with the right accountability and preserves inspect-and-adapt.

Negative Stems

Watch for NOT / EXCEPT / LEAST. Underline them mentally; the correct answer is the one that is false or off-framework, which inverts your usual instinct. A classic miss is reading "Which is NOT a Scrum event?" too fast and selecting an event. Slow down on negatives — they are deliberately placed to catch skimmers.

A Worked Elimination

Consider: "During the Sprint, scope is renegotiated between the Product Owner and the Developers. " Walk it: (a) "The Scrum Master signs off" — manager vocabulary, no such authority, eliminate. (b) "A change-control board approves" — invents a body the Guide never names, eliminate. (c) "No external approval is needed; the Product Owner and Developers renegotiate scope as more is learned" — matches the Guide's self-management and the statement that scope may be clarified and renegotiated with the Product Owner, keep. (d) "Scope can never change mid-Sprint" — false absolute; only the Sprint Goal is fixed, not scope, eliminate.

Two of four options fell to vocabulary and invented entities, one to a false absolute — exactly the three failure modes you are hunting. Train yourself to label each distractor with its failure mode as you read; that habit alone lifts most candidates over the 85% line.

Scenario Questions & the "Scrum Team Decides" Pattern

Scenario stems describe a workplace situation and ask what should happen. Work the stem in four moves:

• Identify the accountability in scope — a Product Owner value call, a Developer "how" decision, or a Scrum Master effectiveness concern.
• Strip the noise — titles like "manager," "director," or "team lead" are usually distractors; map every person to a Scrum accountability before answering.
• Default to empowerment — if the Guide prescribes no specific practice (estimation method, Daily Scrum format, who picks tasks, board layout), the answer is almost always "the Scrum Team decides" or the relevant accountability decides.
• Reject rescue-by-authority — options where a manager assigns work, approves the plan, or overrides the team contradict self-management and are almost always wrong.

A second high-frequency pattern is "coach, don't solve." When a team has a dysfunction, the Scrum Master's best move is usually to make the problem transparent and coach the team to inspect and adapt (often at the Retrospective) — not to fix it personally or escalate it. Answers that have the Scrum Master taking over a Developer or Product Owner decision violate the accountability boundaries.

Multi-Select Handling

For "select all that apply" there is no partial credit — the whole question is right or wrong. Evaluate each option in isolation against the Guide and ask: "Is this independently true?" Do not assume a fixed number is correct unless the stem states one, and do not let one obviously-right option lure you into accepting a borderline one beside it.