Understanding and Applying the Scrum Framework

PSM-I · 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?