The next Sprint involves a payments integration nobody on the Scrum Team has worked with before. The Product Owner suggests inviting a specialist from another team to Sprint Planning to advise. The Developers say that would compromise their self-management. Are they right?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 2. Developing people and teams easy
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The options
Correct No — the Scrum Team may invite other people to Sprint Planning to provide advice, and the decisions still remain the team's
Correct. Taking advice and surrendering a decision are different acts, and only the second would touch self-management.
Not correct Yes — Sprint Planning is for the Scrum Team alone, so nobody outside it may attend
Wrong. The Guide explicitly permits the Scrum Team to invite others to Sprint Planning for advice.
Not correct Yes — taking outside advice would mean the team is not cross-functional, so it must acquire the skill itself before starting
Wrong, and it is the plausible one because cross-functionality really does mean holding the skills needed. But Scrum expects teams to share or acquire skills as needed, and asking an expert a question is one of the ways they do it.
Not correct No, and the specialist should therefore decide how the integration work is broken down, since nobody else understands it
Wrong, and it is the sharper trap because it starts from the right answer. Advising is welcome; deciding is not — how selected items become Increments is at the sole discretion of the Developers.
Why
Self-management is often misread as isolation — nobody may help us, nobody may look in. It means the opposite of that: a team confident enough in its own authority to pull in whatever expertise the work needs. What would breach it is the specialist deciding rather than advising. Cross-functionality is about the team having the skills necessary to create value each Sprint, which includes acquiring them.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Sprint Planning
- What it says
- The Scrum Team may also invite other people to attend Sprint Planning to provide advice.
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