A Scrum Team of nine has organised itself into a front-end group and a back-end group, each with its own stand-up, its own portion of the Sprint Backlog and a nominated senior who speaks for it. They describe this as self-management. How should a Scrum Master respond?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 2. Developing people and teams easy
Machine-checked — no person has signed for it. This question was read against the source cited below by an automated pass, which found no contradiction. That is a weaker claim than it sounds: the same kind of process wrote the question, so it can confirm its own mistake.
Treat it as a good draft rather than as settled fact, and read the source below before you rely on it. It is not used in mock exams here — only questions a person has signed for are.
The options
Not correct Endorse it — a self-managing team may organise itself however it likes, including into groups
Wrong. Self-management decides who does what, when and how; it does not extend to redrawing the structure of the Scrum Team, which the framework fixes.
Not correct Endorse it only if the two groups keep a shared Definition of Done
Wrong. A shared Definition of Done would not repair the split. The problem is a structure with sub-teams and appointed spokespeople inside a unit Scrum requires to be cohesive.
Not correct Suggest they formally become two Scrum Teams with two Sprint Goals for the same product
Wrong, and it is the tempting fix because Scrum does scale by adding teams. But nine people are not too large, and two teams on one product would share a Product Goal, Product Backlog and Product Owner rather than splitting into halves of one Sprint.
Correct Coach them that within a Scrum Team there are no sub-teams or hierarchies, and help them work as one cohesive unit on one objective
Correct. The prohibition is stated flatly, and the reason is in the next sentence — the Scrum Team is a cohesive unit of professionals focused on one objective at a time.
Why
Self-management and no-hierarchy are two different rules that reinforce each other. If a team can appoint spokesmen and carve out territory, it has re-created the reporting lines Scrum removed, and the decisions the framework put in the whole team start being taken by a few. The exam tests this with sympathetic arrangements — component groups, a nominated technical lead, a Developer who signs off the others' work — all of which fail the same sentence.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Scrum Team
- What it says
- Within a Scrum Team, there are no sub-teams or hierarchies.
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
- 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? machine-checked