Three Increments are Done and sitting behind a feature flag. The Developers want to release all three tomorrow; the marketing lead wants to hold them until a campaign launches in three weeks. The Scrum Master is asked who settles it. Who decides when the Increments are released?
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 The Developers, because they built the Increments and know best whether they are safe to deploy
Wrong, and it is the closest miss. The Developers decide whether the work meets the Definition of Done and how it is built; whether releasing now is the most valuable move is a different question.
Correct The Product Owner, who is accountable for maximising the value of the product resulting from the team's work
Correct. Release timing is a value judgement — now versus with the campaign — and Scrum puts value decisions about the product with the one person accountable for them.
Not correct The Scrum Master, as the person accountable for the Scrum Team's effectiveness
Wrong. Effectiveness means helping the team improve its practices, not making product decisions for it. A Scrum Master who picks release dates has taken the Product Owner's accountability.
Not correct The stakeholders present at the next Sprint Review, by consensus
Wrong. Stakeholders influence the product by informing the Product Owner and the Product Backlog. Handing them the decision replaces one accountable person with a committee, which is exactly what Scrum avoids.
Why
Scrum defines no release-approval step and no committee — so the question resolves through the accountabilities. The Developers decide how the work is built and whether it meets the Definition of Done; the value of the product resulting from that work is the Product Owner's accountability, and the Guide asks the whole organisation to respect her decisions. Holding three Done Increments back for a campaign is a judgement about value, which is why it lands with her rather than with the people who wrote the code or the people waiting for it.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Product Owner
- What it says
- The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team.
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