A team on four-week Sprints has been badly wrong about scope three Sprints running, and each time the organisation learned of it a month late. The Scrum Master proposes moving to one-week Sprints. What is the strongest argument in Scrum's terms?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 3. Managing products with agility medium
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The options
Correct Shorter Sprints generate more learning cycles and limit the risk of cost and effort to a smaller time frame, so a wrong forecast can only be wrong for a week
Correct. The Sprint length is the ceiling on how long an inaccurate plan can run before it is inspected, so shortening it shrinks the maximum size of the mistake.
Not correct Shorter Sprints make the Developers' estimates more accurate, because smaller numbers are easier to get right
Wrong, and it is a plausible-sounding claim. Scrum's argument is about limiting exposure and increasing feedback, not about estimation becoming more precise.
Not correct Shorter Sprints are required whenever a team has missed its forecast, as an escalation step
Wrong. There is no such rule. Sprint length is a choice about feedback and risk, not a sanction applied after a bad Sprint.
Not correct Shorter Sprints let the team skip the Sprint Review when little has changed, saving the time the extra planning costs
Wrong. Every event happens in every Sprint; dropping one costs the inspection and adaptation that made the shorter Sprint worth having in the first place.
Why
Sprints are fixed length events of one month or less, and each may be considered a short project. That framing is the whole argument: whatever the team gets wrong is bounded by the Sprint, because at its end the work is inspected and the plan is remade. Sprint length is therefore a risk dial — the shorter the Sprint, the smaller the maximum loss from a forecast that turns out to be nonsense.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section The Sprint
- What it says
- Shorter Sprints can be employed to generate more learning cycles and limit risk of cost and effort to a smaller time frame.
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
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