How to Pass the CSM Exam: What to Study and What to Skip

The CSM Exam Has a 90%+ Pass Rate—But That Doesn't Mean You Can Ignore Preparation

The Certified Scrum Master exam through Scrum Alliance passes the vast majority of candidates who take it—but that number reflects a population of people who've just completed 16 hours of mandatory training, not a cross-section of unprepared test-takers. If you walk into those two training days and zone out, or if you treat the exam as an afterthought, you will find the questions harder than you expect. Here's what actually needs to be on your radar before exam day.

What the CSM Credential Actually Is (and Who Issues It)

The Certified Scrum Master is issued by Scrum Alliance—not Scrum.org, which issues a different credential called Professional Scrum Master (PSM). These are separate organizations with different philosophies, training requirements, and exam formats. Scrum Alliance is the older of the two, founded in 2001, and its CSM credential is particularly common in enterprise environments across North America.

To sit for the CSM exam, you must first complete 16 hours of in-person or live online training delivered by a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST). This is a hard prerequisite—there's no way around it, and self-study alone won't satisfy it. The CST unlocks your exam attempt; Scrum Alliance emails you a link after your trainer reports your attendance. You then have 90 days to pass the exam.

What Does the CSM Exam Actually Test?

The exam is 50 questions with a 60-minute time limit. It's open-book in the sense that you can have the Scrum Guide open—but the questions move quickly and efficiently. At 60 minutes for 50 questions, you have about 72 seconds per question. That's not a lot of time to flip through a document for every answer.

Passing requires a score of 74%, which means you need to answer at least 37 of 50 questions correctly. You have two free retake attempts included within 90 days of your initial attempt if you don't pass on the first try.

The questions test your understanding of the Scrum framework: its roles (Product Owner, Scrum Master, Developers), events (Sprint, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective), and artifacts (Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Increment) along with their associated commitments. The exam also tests empiricism—the foundational principle of Scrum—and the values of commitment, focus, openness, respect, and courage.

What trips people up is scenario-based reasoning. The exam doesn't just ask "what is the Daily Scrum?"—it presents you with a situation where a Scrum Master is making a decision or a team is struggling with something, and asks what the right action is. This requires you to actually understand how Scrum is meant to work, not just memorize definitions.

What to Study (and in What Order)

Start with the Scrum Guide. It's the authoritative source for everything on the CSM exam, and it's free at scrumguides.org. The 2020 version is relatively short—about 13 pages—and every sentence in it carries weight. Read it at least twice before your exam: once before the training course, and once after, when the concepts will land differently now that you've discussed them with a CST.

Focus first on the five Scrum events and what each one is designed to accomplish. Many candidates get these confused or conflate their purposes. The Sprint is the container—every other event happens within the Sprint. Sprint Planning produces the Sprint Goal and Sprint Backlog. The Daily Scrum is for Developers only (contrary to popular misconceptions). The Sprint Review is for inspecting the Increment with stakeholders. The Sprint Retrospective is for the team to improve their processes. Know the distinctions cold.

Next, focus on the three Scrum roles and their accountabilities. The Product Owner is accountable for the Product Backlog. The Scrum Master is accountable for Scrum being understood and enacted within the team. Developers are accountable for creating a usable Increment every Sprint. Nobody else is accountable for these things in Scrum—the exam tests this frequently by presenting scenarios with managers or stakeholders trying to take over these responsibilities.

Then work through empiricism and the Scrum pillars: Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation. The exam loves questions that connect a Scrum event or artifact to the pillar it primarily serves. The Daily Scrum creates transparency. The Sprint Review enables inspection. The Sprint Retrospective enables adaptation. Build these connections explicitly.

After the framework, study the five Scrum values: Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect, and Courage. Scenario questions often test whether a Scrum Master's action reflects these values—particularly courage (the Scrum Master challenging a manager who interrupts Sprint flow) and openness (the team sharing impediments honestly).

What You Can Skip (or Deprioritize)

Don't spend significant time studying agile methodologies outside Scrum—Kanban, SAFe, XP, and others aren't on the CSM exam. Similarly, don't memorize the entire Agile Manifesto; the four values and 12 principles are good context but the exam is specifically about Scrum, not agile broadly.

You also don't need to study program management, portfolio management, or scaling frameworks for this exam. The CSM tests team-level Scrum, not enterprise agile transformation.

Tips for Exam Day

Since it's open-book, consider printing the Scrum Guide or having it open in a second tab. But use it only for verification, not as your primary source of answers—you won't have time to search it for every question. Mark questions you're unsure about and return to them; the exam software allows flagging.

Pay close attention to questions about who is "accountable" for something versus who "may" do something. The Scrum Guide uses these words precisely. The Scrum Master is accountable for coaching the team, but any team member may facilitate a Daily Scrum.

If you want guided practice that simulates the exam's scenario-based questions, SimpuTech's Certified Scrum Master AI tutor walks you through Scrum framework questions, explains the reasoning behind each answer, and adapts to where you're getting tripped up. Try it free to build the applied understanding the CSM exam requires.

Also useful: What the Scrum Guide Says About Empiricism (And Why It Matters for the CSM Exam)—the concept that underlies everything in the framework.

Certification details verified against scrumalliance.org as of March 2026. Requirements and fees are subject to change—confirm current details at scrumalliance.org before registering.