At Sprint Planning the Developers open the top of the Product Backlog and start pulling items until their capacity is used up. Nobody has said what the Sprint is for. The Scrum Master intervenes. What is missing, and whose part is it?
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.
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
Correct The Product Owner should propose how the product could increase its value and utility in this Sprint, and the whole Scrum Team then defines a Sprint Goal
Correct. The proposal is hers because value is her accountability; the Sprint Goal is the team's because they must all be able to commit to it, and it has to be finalised before Planning ends.
Not correct Nothing is missing — selecting the highest-ordered items that fit is exactly what Sprint Planning is for
Wrong, and it is what a great many Sprint Plannings actually look like. Capacity-filling produces a batch of items rather than a coherent reason for the Sprint to exist.
Not correct The Scrum Master should write the Sprint Goal, since they are accountable for the effectiveness of the event
Wrong on ownership. A Scrum Master ensures Sprint Planning happens and is productive, which here means asking the question — not supplying the answer.
Not correct The Product Owner should write the Sprint Goal and present it to the Developers for acceptance
Wrong, and the closest miss. She proposes the value; the whole Scrum Team collaborates to define the Sprint Goal, so handing down a finished goal skips the collaboration that makes it theirs.
Why
The first topic of Sprint Planning is not what will be built but why the Sprint is worth running, and the order matters: value is proposed, a Sprint Goal is defined together, and only then do the Developers select items through discussion with the Product Owner. A Sprint that starts with selection has no way to answer the question the Sprint Review will ask. Note the division the exam leans on — proposing value is the Product Owner's, defining the Sprint Goal is the whole Scrum Team's.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Topic One: Why is this Sprint valuable?
- What it says
- The Product Owner proposes how the product could increase its value and utility in the current Sprint.
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