A new Product Owner asks the Scrum Master to help them separate what they must answer for from what belongs to the Developers. Which TWO of these are part of the Product Owner's accountability for effective Product Backlog management?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 3. Managing products with agility medium
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The options
Choose 2.
Correct Ordering the Product Backlog items
Correct. Ordering is named directly as part of effective Product Backlog management, and it is the decision the whole accountability turns on.
Not correct Sizing the Product Backlog items so the order reflects cost as well as value
Wrong. Sizing belongs to the Developers who will be doing the work; a Product Owner may influence them by helping them understand and select trade-offs, but the size is not theirs to set.
Not correct Planning how the selected items will be turned into an Increment that meets the Definition of Done
Wrong, and it is the plausible one because it happens with the Product Owner in the room at Sprint Planning. How the work gets done is at the sole discretion of the Developers.
Correct Ensuring that the Product Backlog is transparent, visible and understood
Correct. The Guide lists this alongside ordering, and it is what makes the ordering usable — an order nobody can see or understand decides nothing.
Why
The Guide gives four elements of Product Backlog management: developing and explicitly communicating the Product Goal, creating and clearly communicating items, ordering them, and keeping the backlog transparent, visible and understood. Read the list and notice what is missing — sizing, and any say over how the work is done. That boundary is the one the paper tests: the Product Owner owns what and in which order, the Developers own how big and how.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Product Owner
- What it says
- Ordering Product Backlog items
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
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