A portfolio director asks the Scrum Master to send a written weekly status report — percentage complete, risks, a RAG rating — because the directors want visibility without attending anything. What is the best response from the Scrum Master?
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 Write the report each week, since keeping stakeholders informed is part of serving the organisation
Wrong, and it is tempting because the motive is legitimate. Serving the organisation means teaching it to get visibility from the Increment and the events, not becoming its reporting function.
Not correct Decline and tell the directors that Scrum does not permit reporting outside the Sprint Review
Wrong. Scrum forbids no reporting, and a flat refusal leaves a real need unmet — it wins the argument and loses the stakeholders.
Not correct Ask the Developers to produce the report, since they know the actual state of the work
Wrong. This buys the Scrum Master's time with the Developers' time and still teaches the directors that a document, rather than a working Increment, is how they learn where the product stands.
Correct Understand what decisions the directors need to make, then coach them to inspect the Increment at the Sprint Review and get transparency from the artefacts
Correct. The Sprint Review exists to show key stakeholders the results of the work and discuss progress toward the Product Goal, which is a better answer to their question than a percentage would be.
Why
A status report is a summary of a summary; Scrum's answer to the same question is an inspectable Increment and artefacts that are transparent by design. The exam-worthy point is what the Scrum Master does with the request: not comply, not refuse, but find the decision behind it and show the organisation where Scrum already answers it. Turning the Scrum Master into a reporting line is one of the commonest ways the accountability is misused in practice.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Sprint Review
- What it says
- The Scrum Team presents the results of their work to key stakeholders and progress toward the Product Goal is discussed.
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