Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) Scaling Scrum and Organizational Adoption Syllabus

List the five Nexus events.

Nexus Sprint Planning, Nexus Daily Scrum, Nexus Sprint Review, Nexus Sprint Retrospective, and Refinement (Nexus Refinement)—all wrapped around the standard Scrum events within the shared Sprint.

What is Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS)?

A scaling framework by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde that applies single-team Scrum principles to many teams working on one product, with one Product Owner, one Product Backlog, one Sprint, and one shippable increment.

What are the two configurations of LeSS?

Basic LeSS for 2-8 teams (up to about 50 people), and LeSS Huge for more than 8 teams (hundreds of people), which adds Requirement Areas and Area Product Owners.

In LeSS, how many Product Owners and Product Backlogs exist?

Exactly one Product Owner and one Product Backlog for the entire product, regardless of the number of teams, to keep a single prioritized product view.

What is a 'Requirement Area' in LeSS Huge?

A grouping of customer-centric requirements (a major area of the product) handled by a set of teams and led by an Area Product Owner, used to manage scale beyond 8 teams.

What is an Area Product Owner (APO) in LeSS Huge?

A Product Owner responsible for a single Requirement Area; APOs act like a normal PO for their area and work under the overall Product Owner who balances priorities across areas.

How does LeSS handle Sprint Planning for multiple teams?

Sprint Planning One is shared—representatives of all teams meet with the PO to decide which items each team takes; Sprint Planning Two is per-team (or shared) to plan the work in detail.

What is the key philosophical difference between LeSS and frameworks like SAFe?

LeSS emphasizes 'descaling'—removing organizational complexity and extra roles—whereas heavier frameworks add roles, layers, and processes; LeSS keeps standard Scrum and adds the least possible structure.

Compare Nexus and LeSS on team count.

Nexus is designed for roughly 3-9 teams on one Product Backlog; LeSS supports 2-8 teams in basic LeSS and scales to many more (hundreds of people) via LeSS Huge with Requirement Areas.

Compare Nexus and LeSS on integration roles.

Nexus adds a dedicated Nexus Integration Team to own integration; LeSS adds no such team—teams coordinate directly and integrate continuously, relying on cross-team communication and a single shared definition of done.

What is Change Management in the context of agile adoption?

The structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and an organization from current ways of working to agile ways, addressing the people side of change so adoption actually sticks.

What are the eight steps of John Kotter's change model?

1) Create urgency, 2) Build a guiding coalition, 3) Form a strategic vision, 4) Enlist a volunteer army (communicate the vision), 5) Enable action by removing barriers, 6) Generate short-term wins, 7) Sustain acceleration, 8) Institute/anchor change in the culture.

What are the five stages of the Kübler-Ross Change Curve as applied to organizational change?

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance—describing the emotional reactions people pass through when facing significant change such as an agile transformation.

What does the ADKAR change model stand for?

Awareness (of the need to change), Desire (to support the change), Knowledge (of how to change), Ability (to implement the change), and Reinforcement (to sustain it)—Prosci's model focused on individual change.

What are the three stages of Lewin's change model?

Unfreeze (prepare the organization and challenge the status quo), Change/Transition (implement the new ways of working), and Refreeze (stabilize and embed the new state as the norm).

In the Satir Change Model, what is the 'Chaos' stage?

The period after a foreign element disrupts the late status quo when performance and morale dip as people struggle with the new way, before reaching the transforming idea and integration that raises performance to a new status quo.

Why is creating a sense of urgency (Kotter step 1) important for agile adoption?

Without a compelling reason to change, people default to the comfortable status quo; urgency motivates stakeholders to invest effort and overcome inertia and complacency.

What is a 'guiding coalition' in change management?

A cross-functional group of influential, committed leaders and change agents who champion the transformation, provide authority and resources, and drive the change together.

What are the most common sources of resistance to agile adoption?

Fear of the unknown/job security, loss of status or control (especially among managers), comfort with existing processes, lack of understanding of agile, past failed change efforts, and unclear benefits ('what's in it for me').

What is an effective way to overcome resistance rooted in fear of losing control?

Involve resisters early, give them a meaningful role in the change, redefine management as servant-leadership/coaching, and clearly communicate how their value and responsibilities evolve rather than disappear.

How does early involvement and participation reduce resistance to change?

People who help shape the change feel ownership and are more likely to support it; participation reduces the feeling of change being imposed and surfaces concerns that can be addressed early.

What role does communication play in overcoming resistance?

Transparent, frequent, two-way communication of the vision, reasons, and benefits reduces uncertainty, dispels rumors, builds trust, and addresses the personal concerns that drive resistance.

How do short-term wins help overcome resistance?

Visible early successes provide evidence that the change works, build momentum and credibility, convert skeptics, and reward the effort, making continued support easier to sustain.

What is the difference between active and passive resistance to change?

Active resistance is open and visible (objecting, criticizing, refusing), while passive resistance is covert (silent non-compliance, withholding effort, agreeing publicly but not acting)—passive resistance is harder to detect and address.

What does 'measuring agile adoption' focus on, and what should be avoided?

It focuses on outcomes—business value, quality, and customer satisfaction—and on team health, while avoiding vanity/output metrics like velocity used for comparison across teams or as a productivity target.

Why is velocity a poor metric for measuring agile adoption across teams?

Velocity is a team-relative planning measure based on each team's own estimation; comparing velocities across teams is meaningless and using it as a performance target encourages gaming and estimate inflation.

Name common outcome-oriented metrics for tracking agile adoption maturity.

Cycle time/lead time, throughput, escaped defect rate, deployment frequency, customer/business value delivered, customer satisfaction (e.g., NPS), and employee/team engagement and happiness.

What is the formula for a team's velocity?

Velocity = total story points (or backlog items) the team completed and accepted as 'Done' in a Sprint, typically averaged over several recent Sprints to forecast future capacity.

What is 'sustaining continuous improvement' (Kaizen) in scaled agile?

The ongoing practice of regularly inspecting and adapting processes—through retrospectives at team and cross-team levels—to make small, incremental improvements that compound over time and prevent backsliding.

How is continuous improvement sustained across multiple teams in scaled frameworks?

Through cross-team or overall retrospectives (e.g., the Nexus Sprint Retrospective or LeSS Overall Retrospective) where shared, systemic impediments are identified and improvement actions are tracked and acted on each Sprint.