A stakeholder whose feature is in the Sprint asks the Scrum Master for a two-minute slot at the end of each Daily Scrum to hear how his feature is progressing. He is not working on any Sprint Backlog item. How should the Scrum Master handle it?
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 Grant the slot, since a two-minute addition does not breach the fifteen-minute timebox
Wrong. The issue is not arithmetic. A standing item for an outsider makes the Developers' replanning event partly a progress report, and the second stakeholder to ask will have a precedent.
Correct Decline the slot and point him to the Product Owner for progress, and to the Sprint Review for inspecting the outcome
Correct. The Daily Scrum is a fifteen-minute event for the Developers of the Scrum Team. His interest is legitimate and Scrum gives it two proper channels — the Product Owner, and the event built for stakeholders.
Not correct Grant it on condition that the Scrum Master answers on the Developers' behalf
Wrong, and it is the tempting middle way because it seems to shield the team. It makes the Scrum Master the reporting channel for the Sprint and takes a Product Owner conversation away from the Product Owner.
Not correct Ask the Developers to publish a written summary of each Daily Scrum for stakeholders instead
Wrong. That is the same report in another format, paid for daily by the people doing the work, and it still routes stakeholder questions around the Product Owner.
Why
The Daily Scrum is named for whom it is for. The Guide bends that once, and precisely: a Product Owner or Scrum Master actively working on Sprint Backlog items participates as a Developer. Otherwise the event is the Developers' fifteen minutes to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and plan the next day, and it is never converted into a channel for anyone else. Saying no here is cheap, because Scrum already provides two better answers to the question he is really asking.
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