PSM-I practice questions
Scrum.org · PSM-I · 200 questions
Original practice questions for the Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I) assessment, covering the Professional Scrum Competencies as defined by Scrum.org: understanding and applying the Scrum framework (the 2020 Scrum Guide's accountabilities, events, artifacts, commitments, and empiricism), developing people and teams (self-management, facilitation, servant-leadership), managing products with agility (Product Backlog management, forecasting, product value), developing and delivering products professionally (technical quality, flow, managing risk), and evolving the agile organization (organizational impediments) — all framed at a consumer robotics company scaling from one Scrum Team to several, balancing hardware, firmware, app, and retail-launch constraints.
This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.
About the PSM-I exam
- Exam fee
- $200 USD
- Time allowed
- 1 hour
- Questions
- 80 (multiple choice, multiple answer, true/false)
- Passing score
- 85% (68 of 80 correct)
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online and unproctored, taken through the Scrum.org web assessment platform on the candidate's own account
Exam details published by the vendor, checked 26 August 2026. Vendors change fees and formats without notice — confirm on the vendor's own page before you book.
Practice Quizzes
Test your knowledge with standard 20-question practice sets.
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Understanding and Applying the Scrum Framework · 88 questions
- At a home-robot company, the retail buyer, the support lead, and the hardware lead each want their own item moved to the top of the Product Backlog for the next Sprint. Who has final say over the order of the Product Backlog?
- A newly formed Scrum Team at a home-robot company includes firmware engineers, an app developer, and a hardware test engineer. Leadership wants to appoint one of the firmware engineers as 'team lead' with authority to assign daily tasks to the others. What does the 2020 Scrum Guide say about this?
- The home-robot company is forming its second Scrum Team as the app, firmware, and cloud work grows. A manager proposes splitting the single existing 9-person Scrum Team into a 'firmware sub-team' and an 'app sub-team' that each report separately to the Scrum Master, while keeping one Scrum Team name for reporting purposes. Does this satisfy the Scrum Guide's definition of the Scrum Team?
- During Sprint Planning, a hardware test engineer on the Developers says the team can commit to fewer Product Backlog items this Sprint because of an unexpected certification retest. The Scrum Master overhears and tells the Developers they must keep the original number of items to avoid disappointing the Product Owner. Is this an appropriate use of the Scrum Master accountability?
- A robotics company's Product Owner is on medical leave for two weeks during active Sprint work. A stakeholder asks the Scrum Master to make Product Backlog ordering decisions in the interim so work doesn't stall. What should the Scrum Master do?
- A company hires a professional with the job title 'Project Manager' to serve on a home-robot Scrum Team, expecting them to track tasks and report status upward. Which statement best reflects how the 2020 Scrum Guide treats accountabilities like Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Developer?
- A hardware test engineer joins the Developers on a home-robot Scrum Team and also happens to hold a formal supervisory title in the company's org chart, with authority to conduct the other Developers' performance reviews. Inside Scrum events like Sprint Planning, how should this person's Developer accountability function?
- A home-robot company's single Scrum Team has grown to 14 people across firmware, app, and hardware test as the product line expands. The Scrum Master raises a concern based on the Guide's team-size guidance. What is the concern most likely about?
- The Scrum Master for a home-robot company's app team is asked by the VP of Engineering to also personally review and approve every pull request before it merges, since 'the Scrum Master should ensure quality.' Is this an appropriate expectation of the Scrum Master accountability?
- A retail partner emails the Scrum Master directly asking to add a new feature to the current Sprint's Sprint Backlog because it would help close a deal. The Scrum Master forwards the request to the Developers with instructions to add it immediately. What went wrong here?
- During a particularly chaotic Sprint, a company executive tells the Scrum Master, 'just run the Daily Scrum yourself and tell the Developers what to report, since you're the one accountable for the team.' What is the most accurate response to this framing?
- A home-robot company's Developers include firmware engineers, an app developer, a cloud engineer, and a hardware test technician. A stakeholder asks why the company doesn't just split these into four specialist teams that hand work to each other in sequence. What does self-management within one Scrum Team offer instead?
- A Scrum Master notices that the Developers are hesitant to raise a serious integration risk in the Daily Scrum because a stakeholder who is not part of the Scrum Team often sits in and criticizes anything that sounds like bad news. What is the most appropriate Scrum Master action?
- A hardware test engineer new to Scrum asks the Scrum Master, 'Since the Product Owner decides what we build and the Developers decide how we build it, what's actually left for you to be accountable for?' Which answer best reflects the 2020 Scrum Guide's description of the Scrum Master accountability?
- A home-robot company is scaling from one Scrum Team to three as it adds a cloud-services product line, and all three teams pull items from the same overall product. According to the 2020 Scrum Guide, what is the minimum structural requirement across these three Scrum Teams regarding the Product Backlog?
- A robotics company's Scrum Master spends most of their time updating a shared spreadsheet of task statuses and reminding individual Developers to update their rows, rather than attending Scrum events or coaching the team. A peer describes this as 'basically being the project's status admin.' What does this indicate about how the Scrum Master accountability is being applied?
- A hardware certification lab tells the Developers a required safety test can only run once every two weeks due to lab scheduling, which conflicts with the company's weekly Sprint cadence. This is a constraint outside the Scrum Team's control. Whose accountability is it to raise this as an organizational impediment if it is blocking progress?
- A company describes its Scrum Master as 'the person who makes sure the Developers finish everything the Product Owner asks for on time.' Which part of this description conflicts with the 2020 Scrum Guide?
- A robotics company's Product Owner personally writes every Product Backlog item, refines every item alone, and never involves the Developers or stakeholders in refinement. A new hire asks whether this matches the Scrum Guide's expectation of Product Backlog management. What is the most accurate response?
- A Sprint is underway when the retailer abruptly changes the launch requirements in a way that makes the current Sprint Goal obsolete. The Product Owner believes continuing the Sprint is pointless. Who has the authority to cancel the Sprint?
- A home-robot company's app Developers finish their planned work three days before the Sprint ends. Rather than waiting idly, they decide among themselves to pull in and start a smaller, related Product Backlog item that supports the same Sprint Goal. Is this consistent with the Scrum Guide?
- A robotics company is debating whether its Scrum Master should also serve as the Product Owner for the same Scrum Team to 'save headcount.' What does the 2020 Scrum Guide indicate about combining these two accountabilities in one person?
- A firmware team at a consumer home-robot company is three days into a two-week Sprint when a supplier reports a PCB revision won't arrive until after the Sprint's original end date. The Scrum Master is asked to extend the current Sprint by a week to accommodate the delay instead of ending it on schedule. According to the Scrum Guide, what should happen to the Sprint's length?
- At a home-robot company, a newer Scrum Master is drawing a calendar for the team and wonders where the Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective fit relative to the Sprint boundaries. According to the Scrum Guide, how do these other events relate to the Sprint?
- A company builds a home robot with firmware, an app, and injection-molded housings. As the company adds a second Scrum Team, leadership debates whether Sprints should be longer to match the slower cadence of hardware certification cycles. What does the Scrum Guide say about choosing a Sprint length in this situation?
- Partway through a three-week Sprint, a home-robot company's leadership asks whether the current Sprint can be shortened to two weeks so the app team's work ships sooner for a marketing event. What does the Scrum Guide say about changing a Sprint's duration once it has started?
- During Sprint Planning for a new Sprint, the Scrum Team at a home-robot company discusses why this Sprint is valuable before deciding anything else. Which topic of Sprint Planning does this conversation address?
- Continuing Sprint Planning, after the Scrum Team agrees on a Sprint Goal for the home-robot company's app team, they turn to selecting specific Product Backlog items to forecast for the Sprint. Which Sprint Planning topic does this activity represent?
- In the final part of Sprint Planning, the Developers at a home-robot company's firmware team break the selected Product Backlog items into a day-by-day plan for delivering an Increment. Which Sprint Planning topic does this represent?
- A home-robot company runs two-week Sprints for its app team. What is the maximum length of the Sprint Planning event for a two-week Sprint, according to the Scrum Guide?
- As a home-robot company grows to three Scrum Teams — app, firmware, and cloud — a new Scrum Master asks who should attend Sprint Planning for the firmware team's upcoming Sprint. According to the Scrum Guide, who is Sprint Planning for?
- During Sprint Planning, a Product Owner at a home-robot company pushes the app team to commit to eight Product Backlog items for the Sprint, more than the Developers believe is realistic. According to the Scrum Guide, who decides how many Product Backlog items the Developers forecast for the Sprint?
- Midway through a Sprint, a home-robot company's app team discovers that one planned feature is harder than expected, so the Developers swap it for a different Product Backlog item that still supports the same overall objective set at Sprint Planning. What Scrum element makes this kind of flexibility possible?
- During Sprint Planning for the cloud team at a home-robot company, the Product Owner explains why a set of Product Backlog items would increase the product's value this Sprint but leaves the decision of exactly how much work to take on to the Developers. What does this behavior reflect about the Product Owner's role in Sprint Planning?
- A Scrum Master notices that Sprint Planning for the firmware team keeps running long and drifting into detailed task estimation that could happen later. What is the Scrum Master's responsibility in this situation, according to the Scrum Guide?
- After Sprint Planning ends for the app team at a home-robot company, the Developers have a Sprint Goal, a set of selected Product Backlog items, and an actionable plan for delivering them. According to the Scrum Guide, what artifact do these three pieces together make up?
- Every working day, the Developers on a home-robot company's firmware team hold a short, focused meeting to check how close they are to the Sprint Goal and adjust their plan for the day ahead. What Scrum event does this describe?
- A home-robot company runs one-week Sprints for its app team and one-month Sprints for its firmware team. What is the maximum timebox for the Daily Scrum in each case, according to the Scrum Guide?
- At a home-robot company, a stakeholder from customer support asks to actively participate in the firmware team's Daily Scrum by raising questions during the event itself. According to the Scrum Guide, who is the Daily Scrum for?
- A newly hired Scrum Master at a home-robot company starts running the Daily Scrum for the cloud team by calling on each Developer in turn and recording their answers. Who does the Scrum Guide say is accountable for conducting the Daily Scrum?
- A Scrum Master joins a home-robot company's app team and notices their Daily Scrum doesn't follow the traditional three-questions format — instead, the Developers walk a shared task board and discuss whatever is blocking progress toward the Sprint Goal. Is this acceptable under the Scrum Guide?
- A home-robot company's firmware team holds its Daily Scrum at a different time each day depending on who's free, and sometimes skips it if the room is booked. What guidance does the Scrum Guide give about when and where the Daily Scrum should happen?
- During the Daily Scrum, the Developers on a home-robot company's cloud team realize a planned task is no longer needed and add a different task to stay on pace for the Sprint Goal. What is this kind of adjustment an example of?
- A Product Owner at a home-robot company wants to sit in on the app team's Daily Scrum to stay informed but is not actively working on Sprint Backlog items. According to the Scrum Guide, is this allowed, and under what condition?
- A home-robot company's app team finishes a Sprint with a working notification feature. The Scrum Master schedules the Sprint Review as a slide deck presented to the VP of Product, with no other stakeholders invited and no discussion planned. What is the most important problem with this plan?
- During a Sprint Retrospective, a home-robot company's firmware team spends the whole session identifying that a slow flash-cycle test rig kept blocking integration work all Sprint. What is the Retrospective's purpose in this situation, according to the Scrum Guide?
- A home-robot company's firmware team enters Sprint Review having finished only two of the four Product Backlog items it selected, and the Sprint Goal was not fully reached. The Product Owner wants to skip discussing the shortfall and only demo the two finished items. What should happen at this Sprint Review instead?
- A Scrum Master at a home-robot company explains empiricism to a new hire by naming its three pillars. Which set correctly names them as defined in the Scrum Guide?
- A home-robot company now runs three Scrum Teams — app, firmware, and cloud — pulling from one Product Backlog. At the Sprint Review, the firmware team's Increment only becomes meaningful once it's paired with the app team's companion-app update. What should the Sprint Review do in this case?
- A cloud-services team at a home-robot company had a smooth Sprint with no major problems and wants to cancel this Sprint's Retrospective to get a head start on the next Sprint Planning. What should the Scrum Master tell them?
- A home-robot company's Product Owner considers cancelling a Sprint after a competitor unexpectedly launches a similar product, but the Sprint Goal is still partly reachable. According to the Scrum Guide, how should the Product Owner treat the decision to cancel?
- The Developers on a home-robot company's firmware team privately track which safety tests they skipped under deadline pressure, without recording it anywhere the Product Owner or stakeholders can see. Which pillar of empiricism does this behavior undermine?
- A home-robot company's operations director wants the Sprint Review reframed as a formal sign-off gate, where the Increment cannot move toward release unless she personally approves it in the meeting. Why does this conflict with the Scrum Guide's description of the Sprint Review?
- During a Sprint Retrospective, a home-robot company's app team realizes their Definition of Done never accounted for accessibility testing on the companion app, and several released features quietly fall short. What is the appropriate outcome of this Retrospective discussion?
- A home-robot company's Product Owner cancels a Sprint after a critical safety recall makes the Sprint Goal irrelevant. Several Product Backlog items were already finished and meet the Definition of Done when the cancellation happens. What happens to that work and to the unfinished items?
- A home-robot company's cloud team decides to stop holding Daily Scrums and Sprint Reviews, arguing that inspecting the work too often just interrupts focused engineering time. What tension in the empiricism pillar of inspection does this decision ignore?
- A home-robot company runs one-month Sprints. The Scrum Master is scheduling the Sprint Review for the final day. What is the maximum timebox the Scrum Guide sets for a Sprint Review at this Sprint length?
- During a home-robot company's Sprint Retrospective, the Scrum Master sits at the back taking notes but never speaks, believing the event belongs only to the Developers and Product Owner. What does this misunderstand about the Scrum Master's role in the Retrospective?
- The Developers on a home-robot company's firmware team unanimously agree the Sprint Goal is unreachable because a PCB spin failed certification, and they vote among themselves to end the Sprint early. Under the Scrum Guide, is this vote sufficient to cancel the Sprint?
- At a Sprint Review, stakeholders point out that the home-robot's companion app misreads battery status in a way the firmware team hadn't noticed. The Product Owner immediately reorders the Product Backlog to prioritize a fix. Which pillar of empiricism does the Product Owner's action demonstrate?
- A home-robot company's Product Owner wants to invite the retail partner's merchandising lead and the customer-support director to the next Sprint Review, alongside the app and firmware Developers. Is this consistent with the Scrum Guide's description of the Sprint Review?
- A home-robot company's hardware team wants to skip the Sprint Retrospective for a Sprint where a batch of enclosures shipped with a visible seam defect, saying the mistake is obvious and doesn't need a meeting to discuss. What is the flaw in this reasoning?
- A Developer on a home-robot company's firmware team notices during Sprint Planning that the Sprint Goal quietly assumes a certification test will pass despite known risk, but stays quiet to avoid conflict with the Product Owner. Which Scrum value would most directly call for the Developer to speak up instead?
- A home-robot company's cloud team keeps context-switching mid-Sprint to help other teams with unrelated production incidents, leaving their own Sprint Goal at risk. Which Scrum value most directly addresses what the team is failing to uphold?
- A home-robot company's app team is behind on its Sprint Goal and worries that admitting this at the Daily Scrum will make them look bad in front of the Product Owner. Which Scrum value most directly calls for the team to disclose this honestly anyway?
- A home-robot company's Scrum Master tells the app Developers exactly which tickets to pick up each morning and in what order, believing this keeps the team efficient. Which Scrum value does this most clearly violate?
- At Nestbot Robotics, one Developer only writes firmware, another only builds the companion app, and a third only handles hardware bring-up. A new engineering director wants to give them formal titles like 'Firmware Developer' and 'App Developer' and have each one accountable only for their own specialty's backlog items. How does this fit the Scrum Guide's description of the Developers?
- Nestbot Robotics is scaling from one Scrum Team to three, all building toward the same home robot. Leadership wants a single artifact everyone can point to that describes the long-term objective the Product Backlog is working toward. Which Scrum artifact element serves that purpose?
- During Sprint Planning for the robot's companion app, the Developers select several Product Backlog items, agree on a Sprint Goal, and sketch out how they'll deliver the work. Who is responsible for creating the resulting Sprint Backlog?
- Halfway through a two-week Sprint, the firmware team at Nestbot discovers one selected Product Backlog item is riskier than expected. They want to swap it for a smaller item that still supports what they committed to delivering. What allows this kind of mid-Sprint flexibility without breaking the Sprint Backlog's commitment?
- A Developer on the firmware team finishes coding a new sensor-calibration feature, runs it once locally, and marks the task complete on the team's board. The item has not yet been tested against the team's agreed Definition of Done. Does this work count as part of the Increment?
- Nestbot's firmware team has never formally written down a Definition of Done. A new Scrum Master joins and asks who is responsible for creating one appropriate for firmware work, given any organizational standards that already exist. Who should create it?
- Stakeholders at Nestbot keep asking the Product Owner what the app team will build next. Instead of answering each request individually, the Product Owner points everyone to the ordered Product Backlog. Which Scrum concept does keeping the backlog visible and ordered primarily support?
- The app team at Nestbot finishes three separate Product Backlog items on three different days within the same Sprint, each one meeting the Definition of Done as soon as it's finished. According to the Scrum Guide, how many Increments has the team created that Sprint?
- A companion-app Product Backlog item is coded, reviewed, and demoed internally, but it hasn't been run through the automated regression suite the Developers agreed belongs in their Definition of Done. What should happen to this item?
- Nestbot now has three Scrum Teams, one each for firmware, the companion app, and cloud services, all contributing to the same robot product. Each team currently uses a different personal standard for what counts as finished work. What does the Scrum Guide say should happen to their Definitions of Done?
- Nestbot is starting an entirely new robot product line, and no Definition of Done exists yet for this kind of firmware. The new Scrum Team wants to begin their first Sprint. What should they do about the Definition of Done?
- During a Sprint, the firmware team updates their Sprint Backlog daily as they learn more about the calibration work, adding detail to tasks and re-estimating what's left. What purpose does this ongoing update to the Sprint Backlog primarily serve?
- A new Product Owner at Nestbot insists that every Product Backlog item must be sized in story points before Sprint Planning, calling it "a Scrum requirement." A Developer pushes back. According to the Scrum Guide, is a specific estimation unit like story points required?
- Nestbot's app team currently tracks its Product Backlog in a shared spreadsheet, while the firmware team uses a different tracking tool entirely. A consultant tells the firmware team they're "doing Scrum wrong" because they aren't using the same software as the app team. Is the consultant correct about what the Scrum Guide requires?
- The Scrum Master joining Nestbot's cloud services team notices they don't maintain a burndown chart and instead just discuss remaining work verbally at the Daily Scrum. A stakeholder asks whether this violates Scrum. What is the accurate answer?
- The app team's Product Backlog currently has two separate lists, one ranked by engineering effort and another ranked by stakeholder excitement, and the Developers aren't sure which one to pull from during Sprint Planning. What does the Scrum Guide say the Product Backlog should be?
- Six months after launch, Nestbot's Product Backlog for the home robot still has new items being added weekly, existing items being re-ordered, and old items being reworded as the team learns more about customers. A new hire asks when the backlog will be "finished" so the team can stop maintaining it. What is the accurate answer?
- Two weeks into a Sprint, the app team realizes a selected Product Backlog item is more complex than expected. They talk with the Product Owner and agree to trade it for a different item that still supports the agreed Sprint Goal. What does this exchange demonstrate about the relationship between the Sprint Goal and Sprint Backlog scope?
- At Sprint Review, the app team demonstrates a new feature completed this Sprint alongside several features completed in prior Sprints, all still working together in the same build. How should the team describe what they're demonstrating?
- The firmware Increment meets the Definition of Done and is fully usable at Sprint Review, but the Product Owner decides not to release it to customers yet because a hardware certification cycle hasn't completed. Does this delay mean the Increment isn't real yet?
- A new hire studying for the assessment notices that the Product Backlog has the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has the Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done. What is the shared purpose these three commitments serve across the three artifacts?
- Nestbot's firmware Definition of Done includes a criterion that the firmware image must pass the company's internal FCC pre-compliance check before a Product Backlog item can be called Done. A visiting consultant claims the Scrum Guide itself specifies this exact criterion. Is the consultant right?
Developing People and Teams · 40 questions
- At a home-robot company, the hardware program manager tells the firmware Developers which of them should fix a battery-driver bug this Sprint. What should the Scrum Master do?
- A robotics company's Developers decide, on their own, that they no longer need to run the automated firmware regression suite before calling firmware work "Done," since it slows them down. Is this a valid use of self-management?
- A home-robot company's Scrum Team can design, build, and test its firmware and app changes, but every Sprint it must wait for a separate compliance department to review any change touching wireless radio settings before it can be released. What does this suggest about the team?
- As a home-robot company grows from one Scrum Team to three (app, firmware, and cloud), the app team is repeatedly blocked each Sprint waiting for the firmware team to expose a new sensor API before the app team can build anything visible. What is the most useful thing for the Scrum Master to do?
- During a Sprint Review, the app and firmware Developers disagree about which stakeholder feedback to act on first. The Scrum Master steps in to keep the conversation structured and make sure every voice is heard, without stating a preference. Which Scrum Master stance is this?
- A newly hired firmware Developer at a home-robot company has never worked with Scrum before and keeps asking why the Sprint Backlog can change during the Sprint. The Scrum Master sits down and walks them through what the Scrum Guide says about the Sprint Backlog belonging to the Developers. Which stance is the Scrum Master using?
- A firmware Developer who already understands the Scrum Guide well complains that the Daily Scrum "never helps" the team. Instead of telling the Developer what to change, the Scrum Master asks, "What would make the next fifteen minutes worth your time?" Which stance best describes this?
- A Scrum Master who previously worked at another consumer-electronics company tells a struggling Product Owner, "When I was in a similar spot with a smart-speaker launch, here's the approach that worked for us and why." Which stance is this?
- Partway through a Sprint, the app Developers realize their original plan for reworking the pairing screen won't work and want to change their approach to the remaining Sprint Backlog items. Who decides whether that change happens?
- During the Daily Scrum, a Scrum Master notices the Developers haven't discussed the firmware flashing task that's most at risk of missing the Sprint Goal, so the Scrum Master decides who should pick it up next. Was this an appropriate action?
- A Scrum Team keeps needing a mechanical engineer's sign-off from another department before it can call a housing-design change Done. Which response best supports the team becoming more cross-functional over time?
- The firmware Developers decide, on their own authority, that they will skip the required UL safety certification checklist for this Sprint's battery-charging feature because they're confident it's safe. Is this a valid exercise of self-management?
- At Sprint Planning, the Developers are unsure how much work they can realistically take on this Sprint given an upcoming firmware certification deadline. The Scrum Master keeps the discussion focused on forecasting capacity but does not tell them a specific number of items to commit to. What is this an example of?
- A newly promoted Product Owner at the robot company asks the Scrum Master to explain what "Commitment" and "Courage" actually mean as Scrum values, since they've only heard the terms in passing. The Scrum Master walks through each value and how it shows up in daily work. Which stance is this?
- None of the Developers on a newly formed hardware Scrum Team have ever taken a product through a UL safety certification cycle before. The Scrum Master, who has personally guided two prior product certifications at a former employer, offers to walk the team through what that process typically looks like and the pitfalls to expect. Which stance is this?
- An engineering director asks the Scrum Master to make sure a particular senior Developer is the one who fixes every critical firmware bug this Sprint, bypassing the team's own workflow. What is the Scrum Master's best response?
- On a home-robot company's app team, only one Developer can debug the Bluetooth pairing code, creating a bottleneck every Sprint. The Developers decide among themselves to pair that Developer with two others so the skill spreads across the team. What best describes the Scrum Master's role in this situation?
- Two firmware Developers disagree about whether to use interrupt-driven or polling-based sensor reads for the new vacuuming robot's obstacle detection. Both approaches are technically workable. What should the Scrum Master do?
- Facing a tight retail launch date, the Developers on a home-robot company's Scrum Team agree among themselves to stop writing automated tests for new app features for the rest of the release, planning to "catch up on testing later." Does self-management give them the authority to make this change on their own?
- A Scrum Team keeps citing the same recurring impediment — nobody feels confident writing firmware unit tests — Sprint after Sprint, without making progress on it. Rather than arranging training for them or solving it personally, the Scrum Master asks the team, "What's one small step your team could try this Sprint to start closing that gap?" Which stance is the Scrum Master primarily using?
- During the Daily Scrum, two Developers on the home-robot firmware team start raising their voices at each other over how to implement a battery-charging retry routine, and the disagreement is clearly derailing the meeting. What should the Scrum Master do?
- A firmware Developer privately tells the Scrum Master that a safety-certification test has been failing for two Sprints, but the Developer has been afraid to raise it in the Daily Scrum because a previous Scrum Master publicly criticized bad news. What is the most effective step for the Scrum Master to take first?
- During a Sprint Review, the Product Owner sharply criticizes a Developer's companion-app work in front of retail stakeholders, embarrassing the Developer. What should the Scrum Master do after the event?
- The companion-app team and the firmware team, both working on the same home-robot product, spend a Sprint Review blaming each other for a Bluetooth pairing feature that never integrated successfully. What is the most effective facilitation move for the Scrum Master?
- A firmware Developer is split 50/50 between the home-robot Scrum Team and an unrelated legacy-product team, and the robot team's Sprint Backlog repeatedly stalls waiting for that Developer's availability. What should the Scrum Master do?
- One Developer on the home-robot cloud-services team works remotely from a timezone six hours off from the rest of the team, making the usual Daily Scrum time land at midnight for that Developer. Who should decide how to adjust the Daily Scrum, and how?
- With three weeks left before a big-box retailer's launch deadline, a director asks the Scrum Master to add two new Developers to the firmware team in the middle of the current Sprint to speed up certification work. What should the Scrum Master do?
- As the home-robot product grows, the company splits into an app Scrum Team and a firmware Scrum Team, and the two teams start keeping separate backlogs of work they each think is most important, causing conflicting priorities. What does the 2020 Scrum Guide say should happen instead?
- During Sprint Planning, two Developers on the app team disagree strongly about which companion-app bug to tackle first, and the Product Owner has already left the meeting. What should the Scrum Master do?
- In a Sprint Retrospective, a junior firmware Developer admits they knew the Sprint Goal was at risk a week earlier but stayed quiet because they were afraid of being blamed. What should the Scrum Master focus on in response?
- During a Sprint Retrospective, feedback about a missed certification deadline turns personal, with one Developer telling another they are simply "not careful enough" for firmware work. How should the Scrum Master redirect the conversation?
- At a Sprint Review, the hardware team and firmware team disagree in front of stakeholders about which team's defect caused a robot's arm motor to stall during demonstration. What should the Scrum Master do in the moment?
- The home-robot product's app Developers work from one office and the firmware Developers work from another office in a different country, and the two groups rarely interact outside formal meetings, leading to slow, indirect communication. What is the most appropriate Scrum Master action?
- A regulatory-compliance specialist who is not a Developer on the Scrum Team joins the Daily Scrum most days to ask detailed certification questions, regularly extending the event well past 15 minutes. What should the Scrum Master do?
- A new Developer joins the firmware Scrum Team at the start of a Sprint, and within days the team's usual pace visibly slows as existing Developers spend time explaining context and reviewing the newcomer's early work. A stakeholder asks the Scrum Master why the team suddenly seems less productive. What is the most accurate response?
- As the home-robot product scales to an app Scrum Team and a firmware Scrum Team, each team defines its own separate Definition of Done for its component, and integrated releases keep failing because "done" firmware sometimes breaks against "done" app builds. What does the 2020 Scrum Guide indicate should happen?
- A Developer who lost a disagreement with a teammate over a firmware coding standard skips the Scrum Master entirely and emails a senior director asking to have the decision overturned. What should the Scrum Master do?
- The Scrum Master notices that one Developer has repeatedly failed to deliver on what they said they'd finish by the Daily Scrum, several Sprints in a row, without ever raising a blocker. What is the most appropriate way for the Scrum Master to address this?
- A retail stakeholder is angry with the Product Owner in a hallway conversation about a slipped launch date for the home-robot, and the conversation is becoming tense. The Scrum Master happens to walk by. What is the appropriate role for the Scrum Master to play?
- With three Scrum Teams now building different parts of the home-robot product, each team wants to hold a separate Sprint Review with its own stakeholders, resulting in a fragmented picture of the actual integrated product. What should the Scrum Master(s) work toward instead?
Managing Products with Agility · 36 questions
- At a home-robot company, the retail launch director insists the companion-app squad reorder the Product Backlog to put a marketing-requested feature ahead of a firmware safety fix already sitting at the top. Who actually has the authority to change the order of the Product Backlog?
- A support-operations lead emails the Developers directly, asking them to bump a battery-overheating bug fix above everything else in the Sprint because support tickets are spiking. The Developers agree and quietly change the Sprint's plan without looping in the Product Owner. What is the problem with this outcome?
- A new Scrum Master at the home-robot company schedules a two-hour 'Backlog Refinement' meeting every other Friday and tells the Scrum Team refinement only happens there. A Developer asks whether that's really how refinement is supposed to work. What should the Developer be told?
- The home-robot company's Product Owner writes: 'By the end of Q3, the companion app reliably reconnects to the robot after any home Wi-Fi drop, with no customer-visible setup step.' The Scrum Team then pulls Product Backlog items over several Sprints that all move toward that statement. What is that statement functioning as?
- The Product Owner for the robot's cloud services is buried in stakeholder meetings, so a senior Developer starts writing acceptance criteria for upcoming Product Backlog items and quietly reordering a few based on what seems technically easiest. Is this arrangement acceptable under Scrum?
- As the home-robot company grows from one Scrum Team to four — app, firmware, cloud, and hardware — the firmware team's lead proposes each team keep its own separate Product Backlog so they can move independently. What does the Scrum Guide say about this, given there is one product?
- During a refinement conversation, the Developers estimate that a proposed obstacle-avoidance feature for the robot will take about three Sprints and ask the Product Owner to clarify what 'done enough to demo' would look like for the first slice. What is this exchange an example of?
- Two Developers on the hardware team decide, on their own, to swap the order of two upcoming Product Backlog items because tackling them in the opposite order lines up better with a parts shipment they're expecting. They don't mention it to the Product Owner. What's the concern here?
- A manufacturing-floor supervisor tells the Product Owner that a particular firmware calibration step is error-prone on the assembly line and asks for it to be simplified soon. The Product Owner listens, asks follow-up questions, and later decides where that work lands in the Product Backlog relative to everything else. What does this exchange illustrate about stakeholder engagement?
- As the home-robot company scales to several Scrum Teams sharing one Product Backlog, a new hire assumes each team's Product Owner-facing contact effectively co-owns backlog decisions as a small committee. A veteran corrects this assumption. What is the correct statement?
- The Product Owner updates the Product Backlog's long-range statement from 'expand the robot line to outdoor use' to 'the robot line safely operates on uneven outdoor terrain by year-end,' and several previously low-priority items suddenly move up because they now clearly serve that statement. What best explains why the items moved?
- The Product Owner asks a UX researcher to run stakeholder interviews and asks two Developers to flesh out acceptance criteria for the next dozen Product Backlog items, then reviews everything before finalizing order. A stakeholder later asks, 'so who do I actually hold accountable if this backlog goes wrong?' What's the correct answer?
- A stakeholder asks the Scrum Master, 'when exactly is your team's refinement meeting, so I can send my request in time?' The Scrum Master explains there isn't a single fixed slot the way there is for the Daily Scrum. Why is that answer accurate under the 2020 Scrum Guide?
- Instead of holding a monthly meeting where support, retail, and manufacturing each vote on priorities, the Product Owner reviews field-failure reports, retail sell-through numbers, and assembly-line defect rates, then updates the Product Backlog order based on that evidence. What does this approach demonstrate?
- Two Product Backlog items are roughly the same size. One is a minor cosmetic tweak to the companion app's color scheme; the other closes a firmware gap that's currently blocking a safety-certification submission. The Product Owner puts the certification-blocking item first. What principle is being applied?
- The Product Owner asks the Scrum Master to facilitate the refinement conversations so the Product Owner can focus on stakeholder conversations that week. During that session, the Scrum Master keeps discussion on track but does not decide which items get refined first or make the final call on any item's order. Why does the Product Owner remain accountable for the Product Backlog even though the Scrum Master ran the meeting?
- A support-escalation manager pages the on-call Developer at 9pm asking them to move a specific bug fix to the very top of the Product Backlog immediately, without contacting the Product Owner, because a customer is upset on social media. The Developer complies overnight. What should happen the next morning?
- A retail buyer keeps emailing engineering leadership directly with feature requests instead of going through the Product Owner, and leadership keeps forwarding those emails straight into the Sprint Backlog. A consultant is asked to name the core Scrum problem with this pattern. What should the consultant say?
- At a consumer home-robot company, the companion-app team has shipped a new feature every Sprint for the last five Sprints, yet daily active use of the robot's app has not moved. What should this pattern prompt the Scrum Team to inspect?
- A Product Owner tells the Scrum Team their success this quarter will be measured by the total number of firmware features shipped before the retail launch window. A Developer pushes back on this framing. What is the strongest empirical reason for the pushback?
- The Product Owner believes customers will trust the home robot more if its companion app shows a live battery-health graph. Rather than building the full graphing feature across several Sprints, the Developers build a small Increment showing a simple percentage and release it to a subset of real customers. What Scrum concept does this approach demonstrate?
- A retail buyer asks the Product Owner to confirm, in writing, that a specific list of companion-app features will be complete by a fixed date six months out. The Product Owner instead explains this as a forecast based on recent Sprints. What is the Product Owner correctly reflecting about Scrum?
- Partway through a Sprint, the Developers on the firmware team realize two of the Product Backlog items they selected during Sprint Planning will take longer than expected, but the core capability behind the Sprint Goal is still achievable. What should the Developers do?
- A regulatory safety certification the home robot's firmware must pass before retail sale has a historically unpredictable review timeline. The Product Owner is building a release plan for a fixed holiday launch window. What is the most empirically sound way to plan around this uncertainty?
- The app team's next Increment depends on a firmware API that the firmware team has not yet finished. Both teams share one Product Backlog. What is the most empirical way for the Scrum Teams to manage this cross-team dependency?
- Customer support at the home-robot company reports a rise in returns citing "the robot doesn't do what I expected," even though the Developers have completed every planned Product Backlog item for the last three Sprints on schedule. What does this situation most likely indicate?
- The Product Owner assumes new customers struggle to pair the home robot with the companion app during first-time setup, but the team has no data confirming this. Before committing several Sprints to redesigning the pairing flow, what should the Scrum Team do first?
- A newer Product Owner asks the Scrum Master which specific estimation technique Scrum requires the team to use to forecast how much Product Backlog remains for the next retail cycle. How should the Scrum Master respond?
- A marketing director wants to announce an exact retail ship date to press six months before launch, based on the Product Owner's current forecast. What risk should the Product Owner raise before agreeing?
- A Product Backlog item for a new firmware feature cannot be called Done until it passes an external hardware safety certification that can take several weeks and is outside the Developers' control. How should the Scrum Team handle this at Sprint Review?
- At the end of a Sprint, the Developers complete only three of the five Product Backlog items they forecast during Sprint Planning, though the Sprint Goal was achieved. A stakeholder accuses the team of breaking its commitment. How should the Scrum Master respond?
- Two candidate Product Backlog items would take the Developers about the same effort: one adds a cosmetic new LED animation to the robot, and one fixes a navigation bug that causes the robot to bump furniture in small apartments. Framed purely in terms of product value, what should guide the choice?
- With four feature teams now working from one Product Backlog toward a fixed retail launch window, a hardware-parts delay threatens two other teams' planned work. What is the most empirically grounded response?
- Before pushing a firmware update to every home robot in the field, the Developers release it to a small percentage of devices first and monitor real error reports for a few days. What does this practice best demonstrate about how Scrum Teams should treat risky assumptions?
- Company leadership asks the Product Owner for a single, guaranteed unit-count the home robot will sell by the retail launch date so they can commit to a supplier contract. The Product Owner is uneasy about giving a single hard number. What is the soundest Scrum-based reasoning for that unease?
- After a full year of Sprints, the home-robot company has shipped far more app and firmware features than its closest competitor, yet the competitor is outselling them. What question should this prompt the Scrum Team to ask about their own performance?
Developing and Delivering Products Professionally · 24 questions
- A firmware Developer finishes the code for a new obstacle-avoidance routine, but the automated sensor-calibration tests that the Definition of Done requires have not been run against a physical unit by the end of the Sprint, so what should happen to that Product Backlog item?
- With two days left in the Sprint, a program manager asks the Scrum Team to temporarily drop the "verified against the safety-certification checklist" line from the Definition of Done so this Sprint's firmware update can be marked complete before a retail deadline, so what is the appropriate response?
- Two feature teams building the same home-robot product — one for the companion app, one for the onboard firmware — each keep their own Definition of Done, and their separately "Done" work frequently fails to function correctly once combined, so what should the teams do?
- For several Sprints, the cloud-connectivity team has skipped cleaning up quick, hard-coded fixes made under launch pressure, and each new Sprint now takes noticeably longer to add features to that same code, so what is the most direct explanation?
- The firmware Developers on a home-robot product each work on their own long-lived branch and only merge everything together on the final day of the Sprint, which regularly produces last-minute merge conflicts and broken builds, so which change would most directly address the root cause?
- The companion-app Developers rely entirely on manual testing performed in the final two days of every Sprint, and this manual pass has become the team's biggest bottleneck to finishing items by Sprint end, so what practice would most directly relieve this bottleneck?
- Over several releases, the cloud-services team has kept adding new Product Backlog items to its data-sync module without ever restructuring the existing code, and each new item now takes visibly longer to design cleanly, so which practice addresses this directly?
- A firmware Developer has been stuck alone for three days on a difficult motor-control bug, working in isolation rather than asking teammates for help, and the item is now at risk of missing the Sprint Goal, so what should the Scrum Master most encourage?
- Before writing any code, a robotics company's leadership insists the entire hardware-and-software architecture for the whole product line be fully specified and locked down up front, arguing this avoids rework later, so how does this align with Scrum's approach to architecture and design?
- A newly hired firmware Developer asks why the team bothers maintaining a written Definition of Done instead of just letting each Developer decide individually when their own work feels finished, so what is the best explanation?
- At Sprint Review, the companion-app Developers discover that a new pairing-flow screen has not passed the accessibility checks required by the Definition of Done, even though it is visually complete and demoed without issue, so what should happen to this item?
- With a retail launch date only one Sprint away, the Product Owner suggests the Scrum Team declare this Sprint's device-pairing feature Done even though it still fails the pairing-reliability tests specified in the Definition of Done, reasoning that the date matters more this one time, so how should the Scrum Master respond?
- A newly formed cloud-services team joins a home-robot product that already has an app team and a firmware team, and the new team adopts a much lighter Definition of Done than the other two, skipping several checks the existing teams both require, so what problem does this most directly create?
- To hit several recent Sprint deadlines, the firmware team repeatedly skipped writing automated regression tests for a navigation module, and the following Sprint was largely consumed fixing regressions that those tests would have caught, so what does this best illustrate?
- As a robotics company's retail launch approaches, the app, firmware, and cloud teams historically schedule a dedicated multi-week "integration Sprint" right before release because their code has rarely been combined and tested together before then, so what underlying practice gap does this reveal?
- The companion-app team covers its user interface exclusively with manual testing, and several UI regressions have reached customers in recent releases because manual testers could not realistically re-check every screen every Sprint, so which change would most reduce this recurring problem?
- The motor-control firmware module has grown increasingly tangled because Developers have repeatedly added quick fixes directly into existing functions rather than restructuring them, and even small new Product Backlog items now require touching many unrelated parts of the file, so which practice would most directly improve this over time?
- One Developer on the firmware team is the only person who understands the low-level driver code, rarely documents anything, and has not paired with or explained the code to any teammate, creating a serious risk if that person is ever unavailable, so what does the Scrum Team's expectation of working together most directly call for here?
- At the very start of a new robotics product line, leadership wants every architectural decision for the next two years of hardware and software locked in during a single upfront planning phase before any Sprint begins, and a Scrum Master is asked whether this fits how Scrum expects design to work, so what is the accurate answer?
- During Sprint Review preparation, the Developers realize that a firmware update for battery management has not passed the required stress-test cycle specified in the Definition of Done, so how should this item be handled at the Sprint Review itself?
- A Developer proposes that this particular Sprint's Definition of Done skip the usual stress-test requirement for a new charging-dock feature, reasoning that "it's not really needed this time" since the feature seems simple, so what is the concern with this proposal?
- A new hardware-integration team is being added to a robotics product that already has an established, shared Definition of Done used by the app and firmware teams, and the new team wants to start with its own lighter version "until it settles in," so what is the appropriate approach?
- After several Sprints of quick hacks made to hit a retail launch date, the cloud-services team's release velocity has slowed noticeably, and the Scrum Master notices this pattern during Sprint Retrospectives, so what would be the most appropriate way for the Scrum Master to respond?
- Given that hardware constraints like PCB manufacturing lead times and firmware flash cycles make it hard to iterate as quickly as pure software, what should a Scrum Team at a home-robot company do to still reliably produce a usable, Done Increment every Sprint?
Evolving the Agile Organization · 12 questions
- At a consumer home-robot company, the Scrum Master learns that a company-wide change-freeze policy set by IT operations is blocking the firmware team from shipping a critical safety patch outside of quarterly release windows, and no one on the Scrum Team has the authority to change the policy. What should the Scrum Master do?
- A consumer home-robot company introduced Scrum for its firmware group, but functional managers who predate Scrum still conduct performance reviews and still occasionally tell individual Developers which task to pick up next. The Scrum Master wants to work with these managers rather than against them. What is the best approach?
- Executives at a home-robot company ask the Scrum Masters to report how "agile" the organization has become now that every team runs Daily Scrums and uses a Sprint Board. Which measure would best reflect actual organizational agility rather than practice adoption?
- A home-robot company's single firmware Scrum Team has grown too large, so leadership splits it into two Scrum Teams that both build firmware for the same companion-app-connected robot. According to the Scrum Guide's view of multiple teams working on one product, how should the two teams be set up?
- A big-box retailer sets a fixed feature-complete date eight months out for a new home-robot model, and company leadership hands that fixed date, fixed scope, and fixed quality bar down to the Scrum Team as non-negotiable. The Scrum Master recognizes this as an organizational impediment. What is the best response?
- Leadership at a home-robot company announces a "digital transformation" initiative to redesign the entire org chart around agile teams in a single reorganization completed before any team starts sprinting under the new structure. A Scrum Master is asked for input on this approach. What should the Scrum Master recommend?
- At a home-robot company, hardware, firmware, app, and cloud work are each owned by separate functional departments that hand work to one another in sequence, so no single Scrum Team can produce a done, working Increment within one Sprint without waiting on another department. Who should address this, and how?
- A home-robot company's leadership ranks its several Scrum Teams by which one runs its Sprint events exactly as prescribed, with perfect attendance and no events skipped, and calls the top-ranked team "most agile." What is the best correction to this way of measuring agility?
- A customer-support organization that predates Scrum starts adding urgent field-failure reports directly to the firmware Scrum Team's Sprint Backlog whenever a robot malfunctions, without involving anyone else. What should the Scrum Master do to address this across the organization?
- As a home-robot company grows from one Scrum Team to four Scrum Teams (app, firmware, cloud, and a hardware-integration team) all contributing to the same robot, a leader asks whether Scrum requires appointing four separate, dedicated Scrum Masters, one per team. What does the Scrum Guide actually say about the Scrum Master role at this scale?
- A home-robot company's bonus structure rewards managers for hitting the retail launch date regardless of the state of the Increment, and the firmware team starts feeling pressure to report progress more favorably than it actually is to avoid conflict with leadership. What should the Scrum Master do about this?
- A home-robot company's leadership decides how much investment each of next quarter's product lines gets based on which team's engineers appear busiest, rather than on what value each team has actually delivered. A Scrum Master is asked to weigh in on this funding process. What should the Scrum Master encourage?
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