A functional manager has started attending the Daily Scrum and asking each Developer in turn what they did yesterday and what is blocking them, then noting the answers for a weekly report. The Developers have begun addressing their updates to her rather than to each other. What is the Scrum Master's best response?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 2. Developing people and teams medium
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The options
Not correct Ban the manager from the event, as only Scrum Team members may be present
Wrong, and it misstates the rule. Scrum sets no attendance ban on the Daily Scrum; it says whose event it is and what it must produce. Policing the door also leaves the Developers still performing for an audience the moment anyone else is in the room.
Correct Coach everyone that the Daily Scrum is an event for the Developers to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal, and help the manager get what she needs from the transparent artefacts instead
Correct. It names the problem — the event has become a status report to an outsider rather than the Developers' own re-planning — and it serves the manager's legitimate need without changing whose event it is.
Not correct Have the Scrum Master relay the Developers' updates to the manager after each Daily Scrum
Wrong, and it is tempting because it protects the event. It also makes the Scrum Master a reporting channel and leaves the artefacts no more transparent than before.
Not correct Accept it, because a self-managing team should be transparent and this is transparency
Wrong, and it trades on a real principle. Transparency is served by artefacts anyone may inspect, not by turning the Developers' fifteen minutes into an interrogation that redirects their attention outward.
Why
The Daily Scrum belongs to the Developers because it is where they adapt their own plan; the moment its audience is somebody else, the event stops producing an actionable plan and starts producing reassurance. Note the related rule the exam likes: if the Product Owner or Scrum Master are actively working on Sprint Backlog items, they participate as Developers — attendance follows the work, not the job title.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Daily Scrum
- What it says
- The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute event for the Developers of the Scrum Team.
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