Professional Scrum Master (PSM 2)

Developing People and Teams

Facilitation:

It’s easy to agree that we should make decisions, share ideas and work together to find new solutions. In reality, these are hard to do. Facilitation is a set of practices that help support the collaboration, communication, and creativity of teams and individuals. The practitioner should understand the value of facilitation, and have a collection of techniques they can apply. They should also have experience applying them in different situations.

Leadership Styles:

There are many different leadership styles ranging from traditional “command and control” to more collaborative approaches. Understanding the right style to use at a given time and how different styles can influence – in a positive or negative way – the agile agenda of empiricism, empowerment, and improvement is a key Focus Area. Practitioners should understand the concepts of leadership styles and be able to apply a particular style when the situation calls for it. They should also be able to demonstrate their ability to decide on the right style and understand its impact on the organization.

Coaching and Mentoring:

The ability to unlock new ways of thinking is important for any agile practitioner who aims to enable sustaining change and transformation within teams and organizations. Coaching is a non-directive way of meeting a person where they are, helping them connect with their existing talent and wisdom and leading them to find within themselves what it takes to try new things. Agile practitioners should understand the range of skills and capabilities needed to create value  when coaching and be able to discern when a coaching stance is the best way to support people and teams. 

Managing Products with Agility

Product Backlog Management:

The Product Backlog is a key artifact within Scrum. It is an ordered list that describes what is needed in the product. The Product Backlog provides transparency into what is happening to the product for the team, organization, and stakeholders. The practitioner should be able to describe what a Product Backlog is and apply a variety of techniques for managing the backlog. They should also understand how to make the Product Backlog transparent and how to manage stakeholder expectations associated with the backlog.

Stakeholders & Customers:

Effectively working with stakeholders and customers is a key skill for everyone on the Scrum Team. Scrum changes the nature of the interactions, encouraging more frequent collaboration and more open dialogue. The practitioner will understand the implication moving to an Agile approach will have to their stakeholders and customers and also become familiar with practices and stances that will help them work and collaborate in a more agile way.

Developing and Delivering Products Professionally

Managing Technical Risk:

All products have an inherent set of risks to manage. These risks range from the ability to deliver to technical risks associated with performance and security. This Focus Area describes how technical risks are managed within an Agile approach. Practitioners should understand what technical risks are and how to effectively manage them in an empirical process. They should also understand how to apply practices to make risks transparent.

Evolving the Agile Organization

Organizational Design & Culture:

Traditional organizations are often structured around Taylorism and mass production concepts in response to simple problems. Complex problems require a different way of organizing. This Focus Area describes the fundamental differences of an agile organization; namely its structure, culture, and design. A practitioner will understand what an agile enterprise looks like and approaches for implementing the agile enterprise in a traditional organization. They will understand how to balance the needs for agility with the existing reality of traditional organizational structures.