On day four of a two-week Sprint a stakeholder stops a Developer in the corridor and asks for a "two-line change" to a screen the team is working on right now. A team-mate later says all stakeholder contact must go through the Product Owner and the Developer should never have taken the conversation. What is accurate?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 3. Managing products with agility medium
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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 The team-mate is right — Developers do not talk to stakeholders, because the Product Owner is the Scrum Team's single channel to the business
Wrong, and it is the rule teams invent most often. Scrum makes the whole Scrum Team responsible for product-related activities including stakeholder collaboration; a team that will not talk to the people it builds for starves itself of the information it needs.
Not correct The Developer may take the change in if it is genuinely small and can be absorbed without slipping the Sprint Goal
Wrong, and this is the most tempting option because it sounds pragmatic and protects the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Backlog is the Developers' plan for reaching the Sprint Goal, not an intake queue — new product scope is Product Backlog content, and only the Product Owner decides whether it becomes work.
Correct The conversation was fine, but the request is a change to what the product does, so it goes to the Product Owner and any renegotiation of this Sprint's scope happens with them
Correct. It separates the two things the corridor conversation confuses: talking to a stakeholder is the Scrum Team's job, while deciding what the product will do is the Product Owner's.
Not correct The Scrum Master should step in and stop stakeholders approaching Developers during a Sprint
Wrong, and precisely backwards. A Scrum Master's job in the organisation includes removing barriers between stakeholders and Scrum Teams; erecting one is the opposite of the accountability.
Why
Two questions hide inside every corridor request, and PSM I is asking you to pull them apart. May we talk — yes, always, because stakeholder collaboration is product work the Scrum Team owns. Who decides whether it gets built and when — the Product Owner, working the Product Backlog. Teams that answer the second question by banning the first end up with an isolated team and a Product Owner relaying messages, which is slower and less transparent than the problem it was meant to solve.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section The Sprint
- What it says
- Scope may be clarified and renegotiated with the Product Owner as more is learned.
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
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- 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