The Product Owner is away for two weeks. Before leaving, they asked the Scrum Master to "keep the backlog tidy — wording only, please leave the order alone". The Scrum Master rewrites six item descriptions and moves two items up because the Developers say those two unblock the rest. What is the correct reading of this?
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
Not correct It is fine, because the Scrum Master is accountable for the Scrum Team's effectiveness and the reorder makes the team more effective
Wrong. That accountability is about the team's practices and its ability to work, not about which product work is worth most. Effectiveness is not a licence to decide what the product does next.
Correct The Scrum Master may help with techniques and clarity for Product Backlog management, but ordering is not theirs to do — the Product Owner remains the one who orders, absent or not
Correct. The Guide puts the Scrum Master alongside the Product Owner on Product Backlog management as a helper, and absence does not transfer an accountability to whoever is in the room.
Not correct It is fine, because the Product Owner delegated the work and delegation transfers the accountability for the period of the absence
Wrong, and this is the trap. A Product Owner may indeed have others do the work, but the Guide is explicit that the accountability does not travel with it — so a delegated hand can draft, and the ordering decision still answers to the Product Owner.
Not correct It is fine for the descriptions but the Developers, not the Scrum Master, should have done the reordering since they identified the dependency
Wrong. Developers surface dependencies and that information should absolutely reach the Product Owner, but knowing the sequencing constraint does not make the Developers the ones who order the Product Backlog.
Why
Ordering Product Backlog items is listed among the Product Owner's own accountabilities, and the Guide adds that the work may be delegated while the accountability stays put. A Scrum Master's service to the Product Owner is help of a different kind — finding techniques for effective Product Goal definition and Product Backlog management, and helping the team understand the need for clear and concise items. So a Product Owner may of course ask others to do backlog work, but nobody may help themselves to it: what was asked for here was wording, and the reorder was taken, not given. The line to carry into the exam room is that a Product Owner's absence creates a delay, not a vacancy someone else quietly fills.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Product Owner
- What it says
- The Product Owner may do the above work or may delegate the responsibility to others. Regardless, the Product Owner remains accountable.
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