Passing the PSD I: the trap is not technical, it is organisational

A developer preparing for the PSD I revises testing, continuous integration and technical debt. They are right, that is indeed the dominant material. Then they fail on the organisational questions. Scrum defines only three accountabilities: Product Owner, Scrum Master and Developers. None of them is called architect, and design belongs to the Developers, collectively. It is written in the Scrum Guide. It is also what a developer from an organisation that employs an architect finds hardest to accept against a clock. ## The format, as published The figures come from the official PSD page, checked in September 2026. - 80 questions in 60 minutes. - Passing threshold: 85%, so twelve mistakes at most. - $200 per attempt. - Single choice, multiple choice and true or false. One difference from the management certifications: the PSD I exists in English only. The PSM I and the PSPO I also offer Japanese and Simplified Chinese. Here there is no alternative. ## The only published weighting in the catalogue Scrum.org almost never puts numbers on the weight of its exam areas. The PSD is the exception, and it is written on its page. Around 85% of the questions come from the "Developing and Delivering Products Professionally" area. It covers backlog refinement, cross-functionality, self-managed development, design, coding, quality and testing. The remaining 15% covers the core of Scrum. Put another way, six questions in seven concern engineering practice as Scrum conceives it. That is rare information, and it saves you guessing blind where to put your effort. Three topics dominate that area: code quality and testing, emergent architecture, continuous integration. That is where most of the exam is decided. ## The central trap: the anti-role The rule comes from the Scrum Guide, not from a statistic. It describes three accountabilities and none of them is an architect. A cross-functional team carries that skill without delegating it, throughout development. The subject shows up from several angles, which is what makes it formidable. Who decides the architecture. Who answers for it. How you ensure it stays sound. And whether a preparatory Sprint is needed to lay it down. Four wordings, one answer. A candidate treating the first as an isolated question will make the same mistake three more times. The corollary follows immediately. There is no Sprint 0, no upfront design phase, no stabilisation week. From the first Sprint, the team aims at a usable Increment. The legitimate tool does exist. A spike is a time-boxed piece of research, placed on the Product Backlog like anything else. It answers a question; it does not build an architecture in advance. A developer from an organisation that employs an architect will answer from their daily life. That is exactly what the exam is looking for. ## The format is worth working on for itself The PSD I uses multiple-response questions more than the other certifications. The material invites it: a list of metrics or practices rarely admits a single right answer. And the number of correct answers expected is not fixed. Depending on the question, the wording asks for the two best, the three best, the four best, or all that apply. A candidate ticking two boxes out of habit would lose points without noticing. Read the count asked for, every time. That reflex belongs in your preparation, not in the exam room. ## The other patterns behind wrong answers Negative framing. The wording sometimes asks what is not a quality metric, or which document is least useful. The negation reads fast and gets lost just as fast against a clock. Items from elsewhere. Some questions in the Developer practice test appear identically in the Scrum Master and Product Owner ones. We found one present in three different tests. Scrum.org's pools are not walled off, which means the core of Scrum needs revising even for a technical certification. The project management reflex. It runs through every certification, and here it takes the shape of a technical lead deciding in the team's place. We described it alongside nine other traps. ## Preparing in three moves ### 1. Read the Scrum Guide, appearances notwithstanding Fifteen per cent of the questions come straight from it, and the rest leans on it. The sections on the Developers, on the Definition of Done and on the Increment deserve a second reading. Accountability boundaries come up here too, in a technical guise. How decisions are distributed in a Scrum Team therefore matters as much for the PSD as for the PSM. ### 2. Revise engineering practices as Scrum sees them Code quality, test-driven development, continuous integration, refactoring, technical debt, backlog refinement. These are the dominant topics. Watch the nuance separating the two worlds. Each of these practices has a precise definition in its own discipline, and the exam asks about them through Scrum. The question is not how you implement them, but who carries the responsibility and at what moment. ### 3. Practise on the exact format The vocabulary matters: cross-functional, emergent, technical debt, code coverage, refinement. Reproduce the full format, 80 questions in 60 minutes, no feedback before the end. Force yourself to reread the count asked for on every multiple-response question. Aim for three consecutive runs above 85% before booking. ## Frequently asked questions ### Do you need to know how to code to pass the PSD I? The exam tests no language and asks you to write no code. It covers engineering practices and how Scrum organises them. Development experience helps you read the questions; it is not enough to answer them. ### Does the PSD I exist in other languages? No. Unlike the PSM I and the PSPO I, it is not offered in Japanese or Chinese either. English is the only language available. If you were weighing several certifications, that is a criterion to factor in. ### Is there an architect in a Scrum Team? No. Scrum defines three accountabilities, Product Owner, Scrum Master and Developers, and none corresponds to an architect. Design falls to the Developers, collectively and continuously. The point appears under several wordings, which multiplies the chances of getting it wrong. ### How many correct answers are needed? 68 out of 80, the threshold being set at 85%. It is the same threshold as the other foundation-level certifications, and it leaves twelve mistakes. ### Does the PSD I expire? No. Scrum.org states that its certifications do not expire and require no renewal, and carry no later fees. ## Key points - 80 questions, 60 minutes, 85%, $200, and English as the only language. - Scrum.org publishes the weighting: around 85% engineering, 15% core Scrum. It is the only certification in the catalogue where that figure is given. - Quality and testing, emergent architecture, continuous integration: the three dominant topics of the engineering area. - There is no architect in Scrum, no Sprint 0, no design phase. The spike is the tool provided for resolving uncertainty. - Multiple-response questions are more frequent here than elsewhere, and the expected count varies from two to all. - Negative framing keeps coming back: read "is not" and "least" twice. - Some items circulate between the practice tests, so the core of Scrum needs revising too. To see where you stand, the free PSD I trial uses the official format with the answer explained straight away, and no account to create.