Suggested Reading for Professional Scrum with User Experience™

Prove Your Scrum with User Experience Knowledge

PSU I includes questions from the following Focus Areas as defined in the Professional Scrum Competencies. PSU I focuses primarily on validating that you have a fundamental level of understanding about how to integrate modern UX practices into Scrum and to work effectively within Scrum Teams.

• Understanding and Applying the Scrum Framework:
  • Empiricism, Scrum Values, Scrum Team, Events, Artifacts, Done
• Developing People and Teams:
  • Self-Managing (Cross-Functional) Teams - Including UX
• Managing Products with Agility:
  • Product Value, Product Backlog Management, Stakeholders & Customers, Work Management with UX
• Complementary Practices:
  • Lean UX Practices & Techniques

Where to begin

We have gathered content below which we suggest you utilize when preparing for the PSU I. These are suggested resources, and you may find resources not mentioned on this page helpful, along with the application of your own experience using Scrum.

• Take the Professional Scrum™ with User Experience training course.
• Become very familiar with the Scrum Guide.
  • Valuable series of articles, blogs, videos and more that pertain to the 2020 version of the Scrum Guide released on November 18, 2020.
• Take the Scrum Open and Product Owner Open assessments to get a baseline of your knowledge and take them again until you are comfortable with the content. The Open assessments are a learning tool, and thus feedback is provided during the test.
• Know which agile practices you may have seen or used that are NOT part of the Scrum framework. Teams need to pull in the complementary practices that fit their ever-changing needs, but it is important to know what is and is not required by Scrum.

Blogs

• Lean UX Canvas
• 5 Rules for Integrating UX with Agile and Scrum
• Here’s what to do when user research doesn’t fit in a Sprint 
• Scrum and Hypothesis-Driven Development
• UX: Creating Proto-Personas
• The Secret to Actionable VoC and Customer Journey Mapping Programs
• Adapting Usability Investigations for Agile User-Centered Design
• Driving Product Teams To Become More Design Mature
• The Truth Curve
• Emergent Principles: A Rebel Leader’s Secret to Better Team Design Decisions
• Dual Track Development is Not Duel Track
• UX Design is team work

Books

• Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden
• The Lean Startup by by Eric Ries
• Testing with Humans by Giff Constable
• The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett

Practice

• Take the Scrum Open and Product Owner Open assessments until you are comfortable with the content. The Open assessments are a learning tool, and thus feedback is provided during the test.
• Apply Scrum in your workplace. As you do, stop to reflect on whether you’re taking advantage of all the opportunities that the Scrum framework offers, or if you’re using ScrumBut.
• Be conscious of your decisions as you adapt and evolve with project complexity and team member's old habits. Think about why Scrum is structured the way it is, and how the Scrum framework differs from traditional management practices.

Additional Scrum Resources

• Familiarize yourself with the Scrum glossary.
• Read articles on our Blog, written by our expert Professional Scrum Trainers.
• Join the Scrum.org Forum discussions.
• View the Scrum.org Resources page.
• View the What is Scrum Resource page.