PSM II Study Plan: From PSM I to Advanced Without a Course

Short answer: you can pass PSM II without a course, and four weeks of focused self-study is a realistic plan if you already hold PSM I and work with a Scrum Team. The assessment is 30 questions in 90 minutes with an 85% pass mark, at $250 per attempt. Scrum.org recommends its Professional Scrum Master - Advanced class but states that attendance is not a prerequisite. What makes PSM II hard is not the volume of material - it is the same Scrum Guide you studied for PSM I - but the type of question: scenarios where several answers are defensible and only one is what a Scrum Master should do. All facts below were checked at scrum.org on 26 September 2026.

PSM II at a glance

Our PSM II exam format page mirrors these numbers, and the timed mode of our simulator uses the same 30 questions and 90 minutes.

Two numbers deserve a second look. First, 85% of 30 is 25.5, so the margin is four and a half questions' worth of points across the whole assessment. Partial credit on multiple-answer items helps a little, but it also means you can lose points on a question you "mostly" got right. Second, passwords do not expire, so there is no reason to buy before you are ready.

How PSM II differs from PSM I

PSM I is a precision test on one document: 80 questions in 60 minutes, rewarding exact knowledge of what the Scrum Guide says. PSM II starts from the assumption that you know the Guide cold and asks what you would do with it.

A typical PSM II item describes a team with a problem - a Product Owner who stopped attending the Sprint Review, a manager assigning work to Developers, a Daily Scrum that has become a status meeting - and offers four or five responses that all sound like something a reasonable Scrum Master might try. The right answer is the one most consistent with empiricism, self-management and the Scrum Master's accountability for the team's effectiveness. The wrong ones are usually not absurd; they are the answers of a project manager, a team lead, or a Scrum Master who solves the problem for the team instead of helping it solve the problem itself.

That is why the extra time exists. Three minutes per question is generous for reading, but not for re-reading five plausible options twice.

What PSM II covers

Scrum.org lists the PSM II focus areas from its Professional Scrum Competencies:

• Understanding and Applying the Scrum Framework - empiricism, Scrum Values, the Scrum Team, events, artifacts, Done.
• Developing People and Teams - self-managing teams, facilitation, leadership styles, coaching and mentoring.
• Managing Products with Agility - Product Backlog management, stakeholders and customers.
• Developing and Delivering Products Professionally - managing technical risk.
• Evolving the Agile Organization - organisational design and culture.

Scrum.org does not publish weights for these areas. The split on our exam format page is our own estimate from the emphasis in official preparation material, and it is labelled as such. Our PSM II practice bank has 109 questions, filterable by these five areas, with the largest share in Developing People and Teams.

The four-week plan

This plan assumes you passed PSM I, or could pass it today, and spend roughly an hour a day. Scrum.org publishes no study-hours figure; practitioners with Scrum Master experience commonly report 20-40 hours, and this plan sits in that range. Each week ends with a checkpoint - do not move on until you meet it.

Week 1: the Guide again, but asking why

You read the Scrum Guide for PSM I to learn what it says. Read it now to learn why. For every rule, write one sentence on what goes wrong when a team ignores it: why the Sprint Goal is fixed while the Sprint Backlog is not, why the Developers and nobody else create the plan for the Sprint, why the Increment must meet the Definition of Done before it can be presented. PSM II questions are built on these reasons, not on the rules themselves.

Then take the free Scrum Open assessment until it feels easy, and take our PSM II diagnostic once to find which of the five focus areas is weakest. If Scrum Open does not feel easy, stop and go back to PSM I material first - PSM II will not be kind to gaps at that level. Our PSM I vs CSM guide lists the workplace habits the Guide does not support.

Week 2: people and teams

This is where most PSM II candidates lose points, because it is where workplace instinct is strongest. The recurring pattern in scenario questions: the best first move is usually to make a problem visible and help the team or the people involved address it, not to fix it for them, escalate it immediately, or change the rules of Scrum to work around it.

Practise sorting responses into three buckets: what a manager would do, what a team lead would do, and what a Scrum Master serving a self-managing team would do. When two options both sit in the third bucket, prefer the one that builds the team's own capability over the one that gets a faster result this Sprint. Use the Developing People and Teams filter in our practice questions and read every rationale, including on questions you answered correctly.

Week 3: product, framework and organisation

Three areas in one week, because they overlap. For Managing Products with Agility, be clear on what the Product Owner is accountable for and what the Scrum Master can do to help - coaching the Product Owner on backlog management and stakeholder collaboration, not taking the backlog over. For Evolving the Agile Organization, expect questions about impediments that sit outside the team: reporting requirements, fixed-scope contracts, managers who want utilisation numbers. The Scrum Master's job there is to help the organisation understand and adopt Scrum, which the Guide states explicitly.

Developing and Delivering Products Professionally is the smallest area and the one with the least Guide text behind it. Know why technical debt and an unclear Definition of Done increase risk, and why transparency of the Increment matters more than velocity.

Week 4: timed mocks and booking

Switch to full timed mocks: 30 questions, 90 minutes, no pausing. Keep an error log with one line per mistake - which option you chose, which was right, and which principle you traded away. Patterns show up after two or three mocks, and they are usually about one habit, not many facts.

Book the attempt when you hold 90% or more on mocks you have not seen before. The 85% bar leaves little room, and a real assessment always has a few questions that feel new.

Course or self-study?

The Advanced class includes a free PSM II attempt. If you take it within 14 days of receiving the password and score below 85%, Scrum.org grants a second attempt at no extra cost. Course fees are set by each trainer, so there is no single price to compare against.

The course is worth it if you want structured discussion of scenarios with an experienced trainer, if your employer pays, or if you have limited hands-on Scrum Master experience. Self-study is enough if you already work with a Scrum Team, passed PSM I comfortably and are disciplined about reviewing mistakes. In the self-study route, the cost is $250 if you pass first time and $500 if you need a second password.

After PSM II

PSM II is the step before PSM III, which costs $500 and is open only to people who have passed both PSM I and PSM II. That is the one practical reason to hold PSM I even if you skip it on the way to PSM II. If you are also considering SAFe roles, our SSM vs PSM I guide covers how the two ecosystems differ. For a wider view of options, start at which certification.

Fees, format, languages, course terms and prerequisites verified on scrum.org on 26 September 2026. Scrum.org publishes no pass rate and no focus-area weights for PSM II, so we give neither.