The Scrum Master of the building-permits portal reorders Product Backlog items to “balance department fairness.” What should the Product Owner do?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Fairness-by-shuffle is not a product strategy, and it is not the Scrum Master’s backlog. The Product Owner owns order; the Scrum Master helps the team and organization use Scrum. Put the permit items back in value order and keep facilitation in its lane.
Full Explanation
Only the Product Owner is accountable for Product Backlog content and order, including on a multi-department building-permits portal. The Scrum Master may coach and facilitate, but reordering items to balance department fairness usurps that accountability and replaces value ordering with political shuffle. The Product Owner should reassert ownership of order and keep the Scrum Master in a facilitation stance so permit value for residents stays coherent.
Accepting the new order because facilitation includes owning Product Backlog sequence confuses Scrum Master service with Product Owner accountability. Splitting the Product Backlog into one list per department so fairness becomes a voting system fragments the product. Asking the planning director to freeze order for the fiscal year so neither role can change it blocks empiricism under the banner of stability.
Exam caveat: PSPO II is explicit that Product Backlog order is Product Owner accountability; fairness-by-shuffle and SM reordering are distractors.
Operational check: restore a single ordered permits Product Backlog by value toward the Product Goal, invite the Scrum Master to facilitate stakeholder understanding of trade-offs, and decline department-quota ordering.