Scrum practice tests vs a simulator: how to use both

Practice tests and a simulator do different jobs. A practice test checks that you can recognise the right answer; a simulator makes you produce one and shows you what follows. The other online options are compared in six ways to practice Scrum online. Scrum exams tend to ask the same kind of question: here is a situation, what should the Scrum Master do? People who have worked on a Scrum team answer from experience. People who have only read about it answer from memory, and the questions are written to catch that. Scrumagic cannot give you an exam result. It can give you some of the experience the questions assume.

What it is, and what it is not

Scrumagic is a simulator, not a course and not an exam preparation product. We make no claim that using it will help you pass any particular exam, and we do not use any exam body's materials. Its scorecard is a scorecard, not a certificate or a grade.

What it does is put you in the role. You decide how to respond to a blocker, how much to commit a sprint to, whether to accept a story that does not quite meet the Definition of Done. Those are the judgements that situational questions describe, and making them a few times, with consequences, is different from reading about them.

Where it helps

Seeing the ideas in motion. The Sprint Goal, the Definition of Done, empirical process control and a self-managing team are all easier to hold when you have watched them work in a project. Our posts on writing a Sprint Goal and the Definition of Done cover the theory, and the simulation is where you watch the theory meet a deadline.

Knowing what each role owns. Many exam questions turn on who decides. In the simulation, the Product Owner orders the backlog and accepts the work, the developers estimate and decide how to build it, and the Scrum Master facilitates and removes impediments. The AI teammates stay in their roles, so you learn the boundaries by running into them.

Practising the awkward cases. A sponsor who wants one more feature, a request in the middle of a sprint, a blocker nobody raised. These are the situations where a rule from the Guide has to be applied, and where the wrong answer is the tempting one.

Where it does not help

• Memorising terms. The simulation will not drill definitions. Use the source documents for that.
• Exam technique. It does not teach how to read a trick question or manage your time in a test.
• Content that is specific to an exam. If your exam covers topics that are not in the simulation, such as a particular scaling framework, you need other material.
• Learning from other people. There is one human in each run.

Two sources, two vocabularies

If you are studying, find out which document your exam follows, because the two main sources use different words.

The 2020 Scrum Guide speaks of Developers, Sprint Planning, the Daily Scrum, the Sprint Review and Product Backlog refinement. The SBOK® Guide uses its own process names, such as Commit User Stories, Conduct Daily Standup, Demonstrate and Validate Sprint and Refine Prioritized Product Backlog, and uses "Scrum Team" for the group the Scrum Guide calls the Developers. Scrumagic follows the process flow of the SBOK Guide, Fifth Edition, and its decisions are framed by the Scrum Guide. Our post on the Scrum Guide and the SBOK side by side maps the terms, which is useful whichever exam you take.

Scrumagic is independent, and is not affiliated with the owners of the SBOK Guide or any exam body.

A way to combine them

One routine we would suggest is to alternate reading and doing.

1. Read a topic in your study material, say Sprint Planning or the Product Owner's accountabilities.
2. Play the matching step. Phase 2 for planning, Phase 4 for the review and retrospective.
3. Write down what surprised you. The gap between what you expected and what the simulation did is where your understanding was thinner than you thought.
4. Go back to the source and read the topic again.
5. Play another role on the next run, because the same project looks different from each role.

The first phase is free, so you can try the routine on the early topics before deciding whether to go further. Later phases need Pro, and the pricing page has the details.

Choosing the scenario

If you are studying, the first scenario is the cleanest, because it follows the lifecycle with the fewest distractions. Once the terms feel familiar, a harder scenario tests whether you can apply them under pressure. The scenario cards say what each one practises, so you can pick one that matches the topic you are weakest on.

What to write down as you play

Keep a short list while you play, because the useful things are easy to forget by the next day. Note every point where the simulation did something you did not expect, every term you had to look up and every decision where you changed your mind after hearing a teammate. The list tells you what to reread. It also shows which ideas you could explain to someone else and which you could only recognise. Recognition is enough for a multiple-choice question and not for a real team, which is a useful thing to know about yourself.

A note on expectations

A simulation is a rehearsal, and rehearsing helps. It does not replace learning the framework, and it cannot say whether you are ready for an exam. If you want that, a practice test from your exam provider will tell you more than any scorecard of ours.

Everything in the simulation is fictional.