On day six of a two-week Sprint, a Done item fixes a checkout bug that has been costing sales daily. The Product Owner wants it in production this afternoon. A release manager objects that nothing ships before it has been shown at the Sprint Review on day ten. Who is right?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 3. Managing products with agility 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.
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The options
Not correct The release manager, because the Sprint Review is where the Increment is inspected and accepted before release
Wrong, and this is the belief the Guide names directly: the Sprint Review should never be considered a gate to releasing value. Inspection at the Review is not a precondition for delivery.
Correct The Product Owner — an Increment may be delivered to stakeholders before the end of the Sprint
Correct. Value delivered on day six is four days of value that holding the fix back would have thrown away, and Scrum puts no release gate in front of it.
Not correct The release manager, because releasing mid-Sprint changes the Increment the Sprint Review will inspect
Wrong. The sum of the Increments created in the Sprint is what is presented at the Review, whether or not some of them are already live; releasing early removes nothing from the inspection.
Not correct The Developers decide, because releasing is a technical act and they own the Definition of Done
Wrong on ownership. The Definition of Done is the quality standard for the product — an organisational standard where one exists — and the Developers are required to conform to it, not to own it; and whether Done work goes to customers is a decision about the product's value.
Why
Scrum separates two things organisations habitually fuse: inspecting an Increment and releasing it. The Sprint Review exists so stakeholders and the Scrum Team can decide what to do next, not so that someone can approve a shipment. Once work meets the Definition of Done it is releasable, and the decision to release belongs with the accountability for value. Any answer that makes the Sprint Review a gate is wrong on this paper, whatever the organisation's change process says.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Increment
- What it says
- The Sprint Review should never be considered a gate to releasing value.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 3 and space the ones you get wrong.
Practise Professional Scrum Master I
More questions on this objective
- A portfolio manager has drawn up a spreadsheet ranking every requested feature by projected revenue and tells the Scrum Team to build them in that order. The Product Owner believes two of the top five items will not be used by the customers she has spoken to. Who is accountable for maximising the value of the product? machine-checked
- It is the last afternoon of the Sprint. Three of the eight selected items are coded and demonstrable on a laptop, but they have not been through the automated regression suite the Definition of Done requires. The Product Owner suggests showing them at tomorrow's Sprint Review anyway, marked as "pending test". What does Scrum say? machine-checked
- A new Scrum Master is asked by a director where in Scrum the organisation gets to see whether the last four weeks of work were worth anything, and what should change as a result. Which event is she describing? machine-checked
- A Scrum Team spent a Sprint building a bulk-import feature. It meets the Definition of Done, it is usable, and it was released on day nine. At the Sprint Review the stakeholders explain that since the Sprint began their largest customer has moved to a different data format, and nobody will use the feature. What does Scrum say about this Sprint, and what happens now? machine-checked
- A delivery manager introduces a quarterly target: every Scrum Team must raise its velocity by fifteen per cent, and team performance reviews will cite the number. Within two Sprints the team's story point totals have risen and no more working software is reaching users than before. What is the most accurate statement about this measure? machine-checked
- A Scrum Team is agreeing what it will actually put in front of stakeholders at the end of each Sprint. Which TWO of the following statements about the Increment are true in Scrum? machine-checked