Item Writing Meeting

Our previous blog post went into detail about the Test Specifications meeting for the Certified ScrumMaster (CSM^®) and Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO^®) exams. We suggest you read that post before continuing as it will create an informative background for this post.
 
After the Test Specifications meeting concluded, a total of 12 individuals from the United States, India, Germany, and Canada met over the course of three days for the Item Writing Meeting. A picture of the group on the first day is below – look how happy they all were! Even after long days of extremely hard work, they still had smiles on their faces by the end of the third day!
 
 
 
Kate, our representative from Prometric, started the first day by going over the Item Writing Webinar presentation that her coworker gave last month. This webinar may be viewed on our Get Involved page. This set the stage for the item writers to write valid and reliable exam questions.
 
After Kate’s refresher, we planned out our day as a mini Sprint. We decided that after writing questions for about two hours, we would have a review to ensure that we had high quality items. After reviewing the items and editing them, the SMEs went back to work to write more items! At the end of the day, we held a retrospective going over what went well, what didn’t go well, things to start/continue, and things to stop. Below is a picture from one of our retrospectives.
 
 
 
Ultimately, at the end of the three days, the 12 SMEs had written over 480 questions for the CSM and CSPO exams! Scrum Alliance and Prometric were impressed each day with the work ethic of the SMEs – they were work horses who were courteous and kind to each other through the three full days of interactions. They continuously looked for ways to improve the process and we couldn’t be happier with the result!
 
But wait, don’t YOU want to write some questions!? Of course you do! Head on over to our Get Involved page where you’ll be able to submit questions you’d like to be on the CSM or CSPO exam. You’ll need to review the webinar and exam blueprint before you’re able to write a question, but feel free to submit as many exam questions via the form by the deadline of July 31, 2018.
 
Many thanks again to our hard-working SME team! The team members were: Charuhasa Venkataraman, Christine Murray, Donna Carlson, Donna Patterson, Elena Aminova, Gokul Vasudev, Luke Walter, Niharika Goyal, Robert Briese, Robert Weidner, Tara Bluford, and Vivek Jayaraman.