Half of the upcoming Sprint's candidate items touch a payments integration nobody on the team has used. The Developers want the company's integration specialist, who is not on the Scrum Team, in the room for Sprint Planning. Is that allowed, and on what terms?
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 Yes, and because he has the expertise he should decide how many payment items the Sprint can hold
Wrong, and it is the trap in this item. Advice is welcome; the forecast is not his. Selecting how much can be done is the Developers' call, informed by their past performance, capacity and Definition of Done.
Correct Yes — the Scrum Team may invite other people to Sprint Planning to provide advice, and the specialist advises while the Developers still select the work
Correct. Scrum explicitly permits invited advisers at Sprint Planning. What does not change is who decides: the Developers select the items and plan how the work gets done.
Not correct No — Sprint Planning is attended only by the Scrum Team, so the Developers must consult him beforehand
Wrong. Consulting him first is a reasonable idea and the ban is invented; the Guide allows the Scrum Team to invite others to attend for advice.
Not correct No, unless the Scrum Master approves the guest and briefs him on Scrum first
Wrong. There is no Scrum Master approval step anywhere in Scrum. The invitation is the Scrum Team's to issue.
Why
Attendance and authority are separate questions, and PSM I loves the gap between them. Sprint Planning may include invited people who provide advice, and their presence changes nothing about ownership: the Product Owner proposes the value, the whole Scrum Team crafts the Sprint Goal, the Developers select the items and decide how the work gets done. When an option lets an outsider decide any of those, it is wrong however sensible the person sounds.
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