A key stakeholder says the Sprint Goals she is shown read like lists of ticket numbers and mean nothing to her, and that nobody tells her afterwards what any of it changed. She asks what Scrum actually promises someone in her position about a Sprint. Which TWO of these does Scrum state?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 3. Managing products with agility medium
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The options
Choose 2.
Correct The whole Scrum Team collaborates to define a Sprint Goal that communicates why the Sprint is valuable to stakeholders
Correct. The Goal is written to be read from outside the team — a sentence someone who has never seen the Product Backlog can understand and judge. That audience is named in the Guide rather than implied.
Not correct Stakeholders set the Sprint Goal, since the value of a Sprint is value to them
Wrong, and it is the flattering misreading of the same sentence. The Product Owner proposes how the product could increase its value in this Sprint and the whole Scrum Team then defines the Goal; stakeholders are who the Goal must make sense to, not who writes it.
Not correct The Sprint Goal is the list of Product Backlog items selected for the Sprint, so stakeholders can see exactly what they will get
Wrong, and it is the habit that produced her complaint. The selected items are one part of the Sprint Backlog; the Sprint Goal is the single objective those items serve, which is why the Developers can renegotiate the items during the Sprint without the Goal moving.
Correct The Scrum Team and its stakeholders inspect the results and adjust for the next Sprint
Correct. Scrum's own summary of itself ends there rather than at delivery — the cycle is not closed until the people the work is for have looked at the outcome and the next Sprint has changed because of it.
Why
Both halves of her complaint name a real failure rather than a preference. A Sprint Goal exists to say why the Sprint is worth running, in language that reaches past the team, and a list of ticket numbers cannot do that for anyone who does not already know the tickets. The inspection is the other half: Scrum describes the Scrum Team and its stakeholders inspecting the results together and adjusting the next Sprint, which is what the Sprint Review is for. A stakeholder who can say neither what this Sprint is for nor what the last one changed has been left out of the empirical loop, not merely off an invitation list.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Topic One: Why is this Sprint valuable?
- What it says
- The whole Scrum Team then collaborates to define a Sprint Goal that communicates why the Sprint is valuable to stakeholders.
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