With already a lot of Scrum courses and their assessments listed under the Professional Scrum, there is another addition to the list called “Professional Scrum with Kanban (PSK)”.This new addition is simply introduced to enhance the ways of using Scrum by a Scrum Team or an organization.
With a brief and ultimate motive, this Professional course of Scrum with Kanban is introduced to improve the efficiency and effectiveness in the implemented methodologies by a Scrum Team in delivering a product.
With this, we have intriguing points rising, which are “Does the Scrum with Kanban bring any change in Scrum?” and “How does it differ from the other Scrum.org certifications?”
Stick till the end and you will find the answers to all your questions.
What is Scrum with Kanban course?
This professional course, the Scrum with Kanban, is for everyone following Scrum. It is especially beneficial to those with an organization and uses Scrum to deliver the products to the market including Development team, Scrum masters, and product owners.
The professional Scrum with Kanban course lets the Scrum practitioners know how to apply Kanban practices at their work and understand the importance of transparency and the workflow as it pertains to the Scrum framework.
Scrum is a de facto standard for the performance of an Agile team and on an ongoing basis; Scrum is never confined to few methodologies, techniques, and practices. Developers keep improving, learning and adapting the course of streams available for the efficiency of teamwork.
The course just adds a few additional Kanban practices to your routine Scrum practice, without getting the changes in Scrum, and so you can keep going with your working with Scrum.
The objectives of the Scrum with Kanban course
- It aims at letting the participants gain a clear understanding of the workflows in the context of Scrum.
- When introduced to the Kanban practices, the Scrum team can adapt to the changes to improve efficiency and effectiveness in delivering the product.
- To learn and implement the practical approach in improving transparency and visibility of the work.
- To understand the way of effectively using the Kanban practices without changing the Scrum at all.
Professional Scrum with Kanban (PSK) assessments
The PSK Level-1 (PSK I) assessment is available to everyone who can validate their knowledge on “how the Scrum teams can use the Scrum with Kanban ability in order to support the value creation and the delivery.
Taking the Professional Scrum with Kanban course is recommended, but if you are already acknowledged with it, then you can directly head to take the PSK I assessment.
The Professional Scrum with Kanban subject areas involve Kanban Practices, Scrum Framework, Agile Metrics. The PSK assessment is to ensure that you understand the use of Kanban by a Scrum team.
Many of the questions are based on interpreting the meaning from the Kanban guide for the Scrum teams or for applying the content from the PSK subject areas or sometimes require applying their own experiences.
Preparation for the assessment
As mentioned above, the PSK I assessment is grounded in the Professional Scrum with Kanban subject areas. The assessment is rigorous and exhaustive, the questionnaires need an understanding of the Scrum practices with Kanban to be answered correctly.
The questions you may encounter may ask you to interpret the meaning from the Kanban guide or the Scrum Guide or sometimes from both of them. Lot of them require applying content from the Professional Scrum with Kanban subject areas like Agile metrics, Scrum frameworks etc.
At times you also have to apply the logical approaches and also your own experiences. You can find the additional information and resources online to prepare for the PSK I assessment and also guides for you to understand and learn about Professional Scrum with Kanban.
How does the PSK differ from PSM and PSPO?
With the addition of new certification, the PSK I, there is a talk around about what is the difference between their certification and which one to take up for a better opportunity.
Well, before we proceed to the differences between them, let’s have a glance at the certifications first.
- PSM I -> PSM II -> PSM III (Professional Scrum Master)
- PSPO I -> PSPO II (Professional Scrum Product Owner)
- PSD (Professional Scrum Developer)
- PSK I (Professional Scrum with Kanban)
- SPS (Scaled Professional Scrum)
To know what a certification exactly represents or what makes the difference between each certification is much more confusing.
So, to help out all the newbies in the Scrum field or someone unfamiliar with the stream, here are a few main points to look at that displays a unique take on certifications like PSM, PSPO and PSK.
The difference in role competency and exam difficulty
- Though the PSPO II and PSM II are listed on two different tier levels, they reflect the same role competency and exam difficulty.
- The PSK I itself denotes that it is the level 1 certification and the level 2 doesn’t exist for it, but the role competency and exam difficulty makes it different from the PSM and PSPO.
The difference in subject areas
- The PSPO and PSM are grounded within a few similar subject areas like Scrum framework, Scrum theory and principles, and Cross-functional self-organizing terms.
- While the PSK is grounded in just similar subject areas of the PSM and PSPO that is the Scrum Framework and the rest of the subject areas include Agile metrics and others, they are completely different from the subject areas of the PSM and PSPO.