A senior stakeholder is unhappy that their request sits near the bottom of the Product Backlog. During the Sprint they approach two Developers directly and ask them to "just slot it into the next Sprint". What is the correct position in Scrum?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 1. Understanding and applying the Scrum framework medium
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The options
Correct Ordering the Product Backlog is the Product Owner's decision, and anyone who wants it changed can try to convince the Product Owner
Correct. Scrum gives stakeholders a real route to influence — persuasion — and deliberately keeps the decision in one place so that the ordering stays a single, defensible view of value.
Not correct The Developers may agree to it, since it is the Developers who select the items for a Sprint
Wrong, and it is the trap in this question. Developers do select the Sprint's items, but they select them from the Product Backlog through discussion with the Product Owner, in an order the Product Owner owns.
Not correct The Scrum Master settles the conflict, since serving the organisation is one of their accountabilities
Wrong. A Scrum Master may well facilitate this conversation and help everyone understand how ordering works, but they do not arbitrate what the product should do next.
Not correct The stakeholder's seniority settles it — the Scrum Team works for the organisation and should respect its hierarchy
Wrong, and precisely inverted. Scrum's requirement runs the other way: for Product Owners to succeed, the entire organisation must respect their decisions, and those decisions are visible in the content and ordering of the Product Backlog.
Why
The Product Owner is one person and not a committee, which is what makes the ordering answerable. They may represent the needs of many stakeholders in the Product Backlog, and stakeholders change it by convincing them. The organisational discipline that makes this work is the one everybody forgets: respecting the Product Owner's decisions is stated as an obligation on the organisation, not a courtesy from it.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Product Owner
- What it says
- Those wanting to change the Product Backlog can do so by trying to convince the Product Owner.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 1 and space the ones you get wrong.
Practise Professional Scrum Master I
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