This Sprint the Product Owner has taken two Sprint Backlog items — a set of content changes — and is working on them herself. The Scrum Master is not working on any Sprint Backlog item. A Developer asks whether the Product Owner should be in the Daily Scrum. What is the accurate answer?
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 She attends as a guest and answers questions about priorities, but does not plan the day with the others
Wrong, and it is the tempting answer because it describes what most Product Owners actually do. But someone carrying Sprint Backlog work is planning the Sprint's day like everyone else, not visiting.
Not correct She must not attend, because the Daily Scrum is for the Developers only
Wrong. The event is for the Developers, which is exactly why she is in it — she is doing Developers' work this Sprint. Reading the rule as a ban on people is how candidates lose this item.
Correct She participates in the Daily Scrum as a Developer, because she is actively working on items in the Sprint Backlog
Correct. Scrum ties Daily Scrum participation to the work, not to the job title: whoever is actively working on Sprint Backlog items is a Developer for the purposes of that event.
Not correct Both the Product Owner and the Scrum Master must attend, because all Scrum events involve the whole Scrum Team
Wrong. Sprint Planning, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective are whole-team events; the Daily Scrum is not. The Scrum Master here holds no Sprint Backlog item and has no participant's role in it.
Why
This is one of the few places where the Guide names the Product Owner and Scrum Master inside the Developers' event, and the condition is precise — actively working on items in the Sprint Backlog. It follows the mechanism rather than the label: the Daily Scrum is where the people doing the Sprint's work replan their day, so anyone doing that work is in it, and anyone not doing it has no seat regardless of accountability.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Daily Scrum
- What it says
- If the Product Owner or Scrum Master are actively working on items in the Sprint Backlog, they participate as Developers.
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