On day eight of a two-week Sprint the Developers realise a migration is far larger than they thought and that two of the seven selected items will not be Done. The Sprint Goal itself is still achievable without them. What should happen?
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 extend the Sprint by three days so the original seven items can still be finished
Wrong. Sprints are fixed length, and stretching one to protect a forecast destroys the very consistency that makes the next forecast possible.
Correct The Developers collaborate with the Product Owner to renegotiate the scope of the Sprint Backlog, leaving the Sprint Goal unchanged
Correct. Scope is the flexible part by design; the Sprint Goal is what was committed, and it survives intact because the remaining work still achieves it.
Not correct The Scrum Master changes the Sprint Goal to reflect the five items that can realistically be finished
Wrong on both counts. The Sprint Goal is not the Scrum Master's to rewrite, and rewriting it to match whatever is achievable turns the commitment into a running commentary.
Not correct The Developers carry the two unfinished items into the next Sprint automatically, since they were already selected
Wrong, and it is the habit most teams have. Unfinished work returns to the Product Backlog for the Product Owner to order against everything else — it does not inherit a place in the next Sprint.
Why
When a forecast fails mid-Sprint, the mechanism is renegotiation, not heroics and not a moved boundary. Because the commitment is the Sprint Goal rather than the item list, the Developers and Product Owner can reshape scope inside the Sprint and still deliver what was promised. Two things must not move: the Sprint's length and the Sprint Goal. Everything between them is negotiable as more is learned.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Commitment: Sprint Goal
- What it says
- If the work turns out to be different than they expected, they collaborate with the Product Owner to negotiate the scope of the Sprint Backlog within the Sprint without affecting the Sprint Goal.
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