Today I took the AI-Empowered SAFe Advanced Scrum Master certification and passed with a score of 96=7%. Passing is 82%. Like the SAFe for ScrumMaster (read about my experience) and SAFe Practitioner (read about my experience), I was optimizing for passing quickly. It went well as I was familiar with the material, not distracted and a lot of the questions were “common sense.”

Why I decided to take the Advanced Scrum Master certification now

As background, I’ve been a part time SM (and rest of the time developer) for well over a decade and been on a SAFe team for a number of years.

I use AI way more in the developer part of my job than the Scrum Master part. While I’ve done somethings like help the team make retros for more fun, I want to do more. I didn’t notice it was an “Advanced” Scrum Master course until the class started. Which is fine; I have enough experience.

That turned out to be good because the class does a lot of group activities. People with experience by definition have more experiences to share.

My path to certification

• October 20-21 – took training course – 8 hours (including lunch breaks) a day for two days. I was happy with the class and my breakout group although a full day class on line is a lot.
• evening of October 21 – Took the practice exam; got a 93%. Well I’m ready. The practice exam tells you which ones you got wrong which is nice. I was pleased I did that well. After work yesterday, I went the NYC Scrum User group and got home late. So I was tired when taking it which is something that makes my attention to detail again.
• evening of October 22 – Took the real exam. Got a 97%. (The previous time I took a cert for SAFe I got the same score on the practice and real exams. I don’t know if I scored higher on the real because I wasn’t tired or luck of the draw.

I didn’t review the material, but I also didn’t have time to forget it. Also, a lot of the questions are scenario based on basic coaching or agile principles. Some were SAFe specific. And some where about AI.

What I got wrong

Given my score of 97%, I got two questions wrong on the real exam. One was on “accelerating and measuring team flow” and one was on “facilitating the problem-solving workshop”

The exam

Like past SAFe exams, all questions were single answer multiple choice with four possible answers. Many were very easy. Some had two reasonable sounding answers. I didn’t encounter many where what you would do in SAFe and what you would do in the real world differ. (On a prior SAFe exam I did).

Logistics

The exam is non proctored and you don’t have to show your environment on camera. It was nice not to have to clean up all the programming books and papers around me. The environment is exactly the same as the practice tests one. IF you fail your first two attempts you can pay for more. Then there is a proctored or unproctored option. It’s unclear to me why someone would chose the proctored option, but it exists.

After the exam

You get a score report with the % right for each category. This part looks like the report for the practice exam. Unlike the practice exam, you don’t see the questions and which ones you got wrong specifically.

Timing

This was a 90 minute exam. I finished in under half an hour. (I take exams fast and there wasn’t a lot of thinking required. Most questions it was obvious what the right answer was.)

How to Study

Granted I didn’t study. If you feel like you understood the materials from class, I recommend taking the practice test to see where you stand. Then you can read or skim (depending on how much you remember) the course PDF. For many certs I advise not to take the practice test too early because you lose the predictive value of using it to learn how you will do. But in this case, you can take the practice exam many times if you need to and get good at identifying why all the incorrect answers are wrong.