Teaching and Facilitation of Professional Scrum Courses
This domain examines how a Professional Scrum course is actually run: exercise-driven, timeboxed, aligned to published learning objectives and to the assessment the class prepares for. It rewards concrete facilitation craft over enthusiasm.
What a Professional Scrum course is
A two-day, workshop-style class delivered from Scrum.org courseware, with the same objectives worldwide while examples adapt to the room. Adults learn by doing: short input, immediate practice, then a debrief that connects back to the Scrum Guide. Trainers label opinion as opinion and never present a proprietary method as Professional Scrum.
Facilitation craft
- State every timebox aloud, hold it, and let the group finish thinking before you speak.
- Give instructions, check understanding with a question back, then start; stop talking when the exercise starts.
- Diverge before you converge: brainstorm, cluster, then prioritize with an explicit decision rule.
- Debrief with open questions ("What did you notice?") before offering your own interpretation.
- Protect psychological safety: invite quiet voices by structure, separate people from ideas, and park off-topic items visibly.
Worked example
A Sprint Planning simulation runs long. The trainer drops from three rounds to two but keeps the full debrief and the "why does the Sprint Goal matter?" question. Reasoning: the learning objective is understanding Sprint Planning's purpose, so cut repetition, never reflection.
Teaching choices that earn marks
Teach the rule, the reasoning, then a counterexample. Make the assessment connection explicit ("this is how a PSM I question would frame it"). Keep examples industry-neutral so product people and developers both recognize themselves.
Traps
- Slides-first lecturing that leaves no practice time.
- Letting one dominant voice consume the debrief.
- Answering the question you wished were asked instead of the one asked.
- Teaching your own template as though it were the framework.