Stakeholders complain that they have no idea what is happening between Sprint Reviews. A manager proposes a fortnightly "stakeholder sync" in the middle of every Sprint, with the Developers presenting progress and fielding questions. What should the Scrum Master point out?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 3. Managing products with agility medium
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The options
Not correct Scrum forbids meetings that are not Scrum events, so the sync cannot go ahead
Wrong. Scrum forbids nothing of the sort — the Scrum Team talks to stakeholders whenever it is useful, and Developers often meet during the day to re-plan. The framework minimises the need for extra meetings; it does not ban them.
Not correct The sync should replace the Sprint Review, which becomes redundant once stakeholders see progress mid-Sprint
Wrong. The Sprint Review is where the Increment is inspected and the Product Backlog adapted; a progress update inspects nothing and adapts nothing, so removing the Review removes the only formal inspection point stakeholders have.
Correct Scrum events exist to create regularity and to minimise the need for meetings not defined in Scrum — the real complaint is that the artefacts are not visible, and a standing progress meeting treats the symptom
Correct. It names the underlying failure. Make the Product Backlog and the Increment genuinely inspectable and keep the Sprint Review a working session, and the appetite for a mid-Sprint status meeting usually evaporates.
Not correct The Scrum Master should attend the sync and report on the team's behalf, so the Developers are not interrupted mid-Sprint
Wrong. Reporting on the team is not a Scrum Master accountability, and doing it makes them the status channel between stakeholders and the team rather than the person removing the barriers between them.
Why
Every Scrum event is a formal opportunity to inspect and adapt an artefact, and the events are shaped so that the regular ones remove the reason to invent more. A request for a mid-Sprint status meeting is nearly always a transparency problem in disguise — stakeholders who could see the Product Backlog and a genuinely usable Increment would not need one. Fix the artefact first; if a conversation still helps, have it, but do not let it grow into a shadow Sprint Review.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Scrum Events
- What it says
- Events are used in Scrum to create regularity and to minimize the need for meetings not defined in Scrum.
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
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