A newly formed Scrum Team keeps overreaching in Sprint Planning and finishes about half of what it selects. The Scrum Master wants to help the Developers forecast with more confidence. Which THREE things does Scrum say make Developers more confident in their Sprint forecasts?
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
Choose 3.
Correct What the Developers know about their past performance
Correct. Only what has already happened is available as evidence in a complex environment, so the team's own record of finished work is the firmest ground a forecast has.
Not correct A capacity figure signed off by the delivery manager before Sprint Planning
Wrong. An externally set capacity is a target imposed on the Developers, not knowledge they hold, and Scrum gives no one outside the Developers a say in how much they take on.
Correct What the Developers know about their upcoming capacity
Correct. Leave, on-call duty and a new joiner all change what the next few weeks can hold, and a forecast built without that knowledge is guessing at the most knowable variable it has.
Correct What the Developers know about their Definition of Done
Correct. The Definition of Done fixes how much work an item actually carries, so a vague or shifting one makes every estimate a different size than it looked.
Not correct How many items this team completes compared with the other Scrum Teams in the organisation
Wrong. The evidence Scrum points at is this team's own past performance, not a league table. Another team's throughput says nothing about what these Developers, with this Definition of Done, can finish.
Why
Scrum names three sources of forecasting confidence, and all three are things the Developers themselves know: past performance, upcoming capacity, and the Definition of Done. Notice what is absent — no estimation technique, no tool, no manager's number. The mechanism is that a forecast is only as good as the evidence behind it, and the evidence a team owns is its own history, its own availability and its own standard of Done.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Topic Two: What can be Done this Sprint?
- What it says
- the more the Developers know about their past performance, their upcoming capacity, and their Definition of Done, the more confident they will be in their Sprint forecasts
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