With three days of the Sprint left, the Developers agree among themselves to skip the security review and the automated regression suite, both of which are in the Definition of Done, so that two more items can be finished. They argue that as a self-managing team it is their call. Is it?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 2. Developing people and teams medium
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The options
Correct No — the Developers are required to conform to the Definition of Done
Correct. Self-management covers how the team works, not whether the quality bar applies to it. Skipping the checks does not produce two more done items: an item that does not meet the Definition of Done cannot be released or even presented at the Sprint Review, and returns to the Product Backlog.
Not correct Yes, provided they tell the Product Owner and record the exception
Wrong, and it is the tempting one because informing the Product Owner feels like the honest thing to do. Transparency about a breach does not authorise the breach — the Product Owner cannot grant an exemption from the Definition of Done either.
Not correct Yes, because a self-managing team owns its process and the Definition of Done is part of its process
Wrong. The Definition of Done is a commitment attached to the Increment, not a working practice the team can suspend when the Sprint gets tight.
Not correct No, unless the Scrum Master approves the reduced checks for this Sprint
Wrong. There is no such approval in Scrum. A Scrum Master helps the team focus on Increments that meet the Definition of Done; they cannot waive it.
Why
The commonest abuse of self-management is treating it as permission to lower the bar under pressure. It is not, and the mechanism is worth carrying: the Definition of Done exists to give everyone a shared understanding of what was actually completed, so a team that quietly relaxes it is not moving faster, it is destroying the one signal that says what is finished. During the Sprint, quality does not decrease.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Commitment: Definition of Done
- What it says
- The Developers are required to conform to the Definition of Done.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 2 and space the ones you get wrong.
Practise Professional Scrum Master I
More questions on this objective
- A team lead who sits outside the Scrum Team has taken to opening the board every Monday and assigning each Sprint Backlog item to a named Developer for the week. The Developers say the assignments rarely match who is best placed to pick the work up. Who decides which Developer works on which item? machine-checked
- On day four of a two-week Sprint, a department head tells one of the five Developers to spend the rest of the week on a customer escalation for another product. The Sprint Goal depends on that Developer's work. What should the Scrum Master do? machine-checked
- During Sprint Planning, a solution architect who is not on the Scrum Team hands the Developers a task breakdown for each selected Product Backlog item and asks them to follow it. The Developers had planned to decompose the work differently. What does Scrum say about this? machine-checked
- A Scrum Team is reworking its Daily Scrum. They are tired of three questions each and want to try walking the board right to left instead, and they also want to know how much else about the event they are free to change. Which two of the following are genuinely theirs to decide? (Choose two.) machine-checked
- A Scrum Team has stopped keeping its Sprint Backlog current, and when a stakeholder asks how the Sprint is going the Developers reply that they are self-managing and will show the result at the Sprint Review. Two Sprints in a row have then missed the Sprint Goal. What is wrong here? machine-checked
- An organisation publishes a Definition of Done that all its products must meet. In a Retrospective, one Scrum Team decides it wants to add accessibility testing and a documented rollback plan to its own Definition of Done, which the organisational standard does not mention. A programme manager objects that the standard is the standard. Who is right? machine-checked