Advanced Certified ScrumMaster®

Additional Exam Information

There is no formal exam associated with this training. Delegates attain A-CSM certification by:

• Attending a certified A-CSM educational offering to gain techniques and skills that go beyond the basics and mechanics of Scrum, expanding into interaction, facilitation, coaching, and team dynamics.

• Successfully completing all educator-designed components of an approved educational offering. This may include pre- or post-course work as deemed necessary by your approved educator to complete the learning objectives.

• Accepting the A-CSM License Agreement and complete your Scrum Alliance membership profile.

• Validating at least 12 months of work experience specific to the role of Scrum Master (within the past five years)

Lean, Agile, and Scrum

• Demonstrate how Scrum is aligned with the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto for Agile Software Development.
• Outline the historical development of Scrum and Agile.
• Describe at least two other Lean/Agile development approaches outside of Scrum and explain their value.
• Demonstrate how you resolved or addressed a violation of Agile principles.
• Debate at least five personality traits of an excellent Scrum Master.
• Evaluate three situations when transparency, inspection, and adaptation are not working effectively.

ScrumMaster Core Competencies

• Identify at least three indicators when a group engaged in divergent thinking and at least three indicators when a group is engaged in convergent thinking.
• Identify at least three challenges of integrating multiple frames of reference.
• Apply at least two facilitative listening techniques for effective meetings
• Demonstrate at least two alternatives to open discussion.
• Describe two examples when the Scrum Master should not act as the facilitator for the Scrum Team.
• Practise creating an agenda for and facilitating at least two collaborative events.
• Analyse at least three obstacles to clear communication and their impacts on both the sender and the receiver.
• Create at least three working agreements to foster clear communication for a meeting.
• Describe at least three elements of a coaching stance.
• Apply an appropriate coaching technique for two interventions.
• Analyse an intervention to identify at least two improvements.
• Explain Scrum and its benefits to a business stakeholder.

Service to the Development Team

• Describe how a self-organising team approaches at least three challenges.
• Apply a countermeasure to reduce the impact of at least one challenge facing a self-organising team.
• Explain the difference between a working group and a team.
• Discuss at least three attributes of effective teams.
• Apply at least two methods for improving team performance.
• Describe at least one multi-stage model for team formation and development.
• Organise and facilitate the creation or improvement of a strong definition of “Done.”
• Describe how a Definition of “Done” could be formulated for a non-software product.
• Explain at least two ways development practices may impact the Development Team’s ability to deliver an increment each Sprint.
• Describe how development practices are highly beneficial in a multiple team environment.

Service to the Product Owner

• Practise creating or refining the product vision with the Product Owner and Development Team.
• Explain at least two techniques for moving from a product vision to a Product Backlog.
• Practise refining the Product Backlog with stakeholders and/or team members.

Service to the Organisation

• Analyse at least one impediment and identify a root cause and/or underlying issue.
• Practise resolving an organisational impediment.
• Recognise at least two approaches to scaling Scrum.
• Describe at least two reasons why an organisation might decide not to scale.
• Identify at least two techniques for visualising, managing, or reducing dependencies.
• Describe at least three benefits and drawbacks of feature teams and component teams.
• Describe the nature of complex systems.
• Describe at least two frameworks for catalysing organisational change.

Scrum Mastery

• Analyse your fulfilment of the Scrum values and how you could improve.
• Analyse your own fundamental driving factors.
• Recognise when a constructive interaction moves to destructive conflict.
• Compare your default pattern for responding to conflict with at least two alternatives
• Express at least three attributes of an effective servant-leader.
• Demonstrate one or more attributes of a servant-leader.

Those wishing to enhance their Scrum mastery further in order to better serve their organisations.