A Sprint Retrospective identifies that flaky test data is costing the Developers roughly a day a Sprint. The team agrees it is the most painful problem it has. Which TWO responses fit Scrum?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 2. Developing people and teams medium
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The options
Choose 2.
Not correct Record it in an improvement register that the Scrum Master reviews with management each quarter
Wrong. A register that is inspected quarterly turns a team decision into someone else's agenda item, and by the next quarter the team has paid the cost six more times.
Not correct Assign the fix to the Scrum Master, since removing impediments is his accountability
Wrong, and it is the plausible one: the Scrum Master does cause the removal of impediments. Causing removal is not doing the work, and a technical fix inside the Developers' own environment is Developers' work.
Correct Add an item for fixing the test data to the Sprint Backlog of the Sprint that is about to start
Correct. Scrum explicitly allows the most impactful improvements to be added to the next Sprint's Sprint Backlog, which is what makes an improvement real work rather than an aspiration.
Correct Address it as soon as possible, rather than holding it for a future improvement cycle
Correct. The Guide asks that the most impactful improvements be taken up as soon as possible, because an improvement deferred is an improvement paying its cost every Sprint until it is done.
Why
The Retrospective's output is not a list, it is a change. Scrum gives that change somewhere concrete to live — the next Sprint's Sprint Backlog — and a timing expectation, as soon as possible, which together stop improvement being the thing a team always intends to get to. A Retrospective whose findings go into a register nobody schedules produces the same result as skipping the event, with an hour spent on top.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Sprint Retrospective
- What it says
- The most impactful improvements are addressed as soon as possible. They may even be added to the Sprint Backlog for the next Sprint.
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
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- 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
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