I finally took the certification and I am now Certified Scrum Professional.

The process has been somewhat complicated. The certification is offered by Castle Worldwide and in Denmark, where I live, there’s only one certification provider: Aalborg University. They only had two dates available back in May, so I looked for the possibility of taking the certification in Malmö, Sweden instead. When I finally submitted my request for Malmö, Castle Worldwide told me, that the certification center in Sweden was closed. Aalborg University now offered only one date in September. I signed up and started preparing.

The suggested reading list is loooong and I selected only a few books from the reading list:

• Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum. Author: Mike Cohn
• Agile Estimating and Planning. Author: Mike Cohn
• Agile Retrospectives, Authors: Esther Derby and Diana Larsen
• Agile Software Development with Scrum, Authors: Ken Schwaber, Mike Beedle
• Extreme Programming Explained, Author: Kent Beck
• User Stories Applied, Author: Mike Cohn
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, Author: Fowler
• Test-Driven development by example, Author: Kent Beck
• Agile product management with Scrum, Author: Roman Pichler

With $300 certification fee at stake and Aalborg being a 4 hour train ride away, I just had to pass. I decided to arrive in Aalborg the day before the exam and staying at a hotel. Arriving at the test center I found out, that I was the only one taking the exam that day and that Aalborg University will properly stop offering Caste Worldwide exams. The CSP is only valid for 2 years so I don’t know what I’ll do when I have to renew the certification.

I took the 150 question multiple choice exam and there were questions from all the books I had read. I finished the exam in 1 1/2 hour and got a score of 553 out of 600 (with a passing score of 450). My experience with Scrum helped me but I could not have passed the exam without reading the above books.