Before the first Sprint, a governance board signs off a Product Backlog of one hundred and forty items and rules that any addition or removal afterwards needs a change request approved at the monthly board meeting. Which objection is the one grounded in the Scrum Guide?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 3. Managing products with agility hard
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The options
Correct The Product Backlog is emergent — it is expected to change as more is learned about the product, so a signed-off list gated by change control cannot do its job
Correct. Emergent is the Guide's own word for the artefact, and change control on it converts an instrument for adapting into a record of what was believed before anything was built.
Not correct One hundred and forty items is too many for one Product Backlog to remain transparent
Wrong. Scrum sets no size limit on the Product Backlog; a long backlog with coarse items far down it is entirely normal.
Not correct The board has usurped the Developers, since the Developers select what goes into the Product Backlog
Wrong. Developers select items for a Sprint from the Product Backlog; they do not decide what the backlog contains, so this names the wrong injured party.
Not correct The objection is procedural — the board may set the backlog contents but must meet at least once a Sprint to keep pace
Wrong, and it is the tempting concession because it sounds like a workable improvement. Meeting more often does not fix an arrangement in which a body outside the Scrum Team controls the contents of the Product Backlog at all.
Why
Emergent is not a hedge about sloppy planning; it is a claim about complex work, where what should be built next becomes knowable only once something has been built and inspected. A Product Backlog under change control still adapts, just at the speed of a committee, which is why the Increment stops driving it. Watch for the distractor that accepts the gate and only argues about its frequency.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Product Backlog
- What it says
- The Product Backlog is an emergent, ordered list of what is needed to improve the product.
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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