A programme office instructs every Scrum Team to maintain a Sprint burn-down chart, on the grounds that it is "one of the Scrum artefacts and therefore mandatory". A Developer asks the Scrum Master whether that is true. What should the Scrum Master say?
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 true — the burn-down is the Increment's artefact, since it shows how much of the Increment remains
Wrong. The Increment is the working, usable output itself, and the commitment attached to it is the Definition of Done. A chart of remaining work is neither.
Not correct It is true — the burn-down is the visible form of the Sprint Backlog, so the two are the same artefact
Wrong, and it is the most persuasive version of the error. The Sprint Backlog is the Sprint Goal, the selected items and the plan; a burn-down is one optional way to picture progress against that plan.
Correct It is not true — burn-downs are one of several forecasting practices, and Scrum's artefacts are the Product Backlog, the Sprint Backlog and the Increment
Correct. The Guide names burn-downs, burn-ups and cumulative flows as practices that exist alongside Scrum and are useful, but it does not make any of them part of the framework.
Not correct It is not true, and the team should therefore stop using burn-downs, as Scrum does not permit practices it has not defined
Wrong, and it overcorrects. Scrum is a framework that other practices are deliberately layered on; not being an artefact is not the same as being forbidden.
Why
Scrum names exactly three artefacts, each with one commitment: Product Backlog with the Product Goal, Sprint Backlog with the Sprint Goal, Increment with the Definition of Done. A burn-down is on neither side of that list — "The Sprint" files burn-downs, burn-ups and cumulative flows among the practices that exist to forecast progress, complementary to the framework: allowed, often helpful, never required. The exam likes this boundary because organisations routinely present a favourite chart as a rule of the framework.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Scrum Artifacts
- What it says
- Each artifact contains a commitment to ensure it provides information that enhances transparency and focus against which progress can be measured: For the Product Backlog it is the Product Goal. For the Sprint Backlog it is the Sprint Goal. For the Increment it is the Definition of Done.
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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- 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
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