Halfway through a Sprint the Developers find that one selected item is far larger than they thought. They can still meet the Sprint Goal without it. Being self-managing, they simply delete the item from the Sprint Backlog and say nothing, planning to mention it at the Sprint Review. What should they have done?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 2. Developing people and teams medium
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 Kept the item and worked overtime, because the Sprint Backlog was agreed at Sprint Planning and may not shrink
Wrong. The Sprint Backlog is updated throughout the Sprint as more is learned; it is the Sprint Goal that holds, not the item list.
Not correct Asked the Scrum Master to decide whether the item stays in the Sprint
Wrong. That is not a Scrum Master decision. Their part might be to help the conversation happen sooner, not to adjudicate scope.
Correct Collaborated with the Product Owner to renegotiate the scope of the Sprint Backlog, without affecting the Sprint Goal
Correct. Dropping the item is very likely the right outcome — what is wrong is reaching it alone, because scope is a shared decision with the Product Owner even though the plan is the Developers'.
Not correct Raised a change request with the stakeholders who asked for the item
Wrong. Stakeholders influence the product by convincing the Product Owner; routing scope decisions to them puts the decision outside the Scrum Team entirely.
Why
This is the sharpest edge of self-management: the Developers own the plan, and yet scope is renegotiated with the Product Owner. The reason is that dropping an item changes what the product gets, which is the Product Owner's domain, while how the remaining work is arranged is the Developers'. Two things distinguish a good answer here — that the Sprint Goal is untouched, and that the conversation happens when the discovery is made rather than at the Review.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Commitment: Sprint Goal
- What it says
- they collaborate with the Product Owner to negotiate the scope of the Sprint Backlog within the Sprint without affecting the Sprint Goal.
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