At 10:30 on day six a Developer finds that the approach agreed in Sprint Planning cannot work for two of the Sprint Backlog items. She notes it down to raise at tomorrow's Daily Scrum, saying "that is where we replan". What should the Scrum Master coach?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 2. Developing people and teams hard
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The options
Correct That she should pull in the Developers she needs now — the Daily Scrum is not the only time the Developers may adjust their plan
Correct. Developers meet throughout the day for the detailed conversations that adapting the Sprint's work requires. Twenty-four hours of work on an approach known to be wrong is exactly what empiricism asks a team to stop doing.
Not correct That she is right, since replanning outside the Daily Scrum undermines the event and hides changes from the team
Wrong, and it is the most defensible-sounding option because it appeals to transparency. The Daily Scrum inspects progress and adapts the plan; it does not hold a monopoly on the Developers' thinking, and tomorrow's Daily Scrum will inspect the change she makes today.
Not correct That she should raise it with the Scrum Master, who will decide whether the Sprint Backlog can change mid-Sprint
Wrong. The Sprint Backlog belongs to the Developers and they update it throughout the Sprint as they learn. The Scrum Master decides nothing about its contents.
Not correct That the Product Owner must approve any change of approach before the Developers act on it
Wrong. How Product Backlog items are turned into an Increment is at the sole discretion of the Developers. The Product Owner is involved if scope or the Sprint Goal is in question, not in the choice of technical approach.
Why
The Daily Scrum's fifteen minutes are an inspection point, not a permission slip. Treating it as the only moment a plan may change turns a daily rhythm into a daily bottleneck and delays adaptation by up to a day — while Scrum asks that adjustment be made as soon as possible to minimise further deviation. Raise it, fix it, and let tomorrow's Daily Scrum inspect where that leaves progress toward the Sprint Goal.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Daily Scrum
- What it says
- The Daily Scrum is not the only time Developers are allowed to adjust their plan.
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