Agile Scrum Master

Justin is the Product Owner (PO) for a product line. Over time, the work of the team has expanded such that it cannot be completed by a single Scrum team. It now requires 3 Scrum teams and there is the possibility of adding another one. As Justin is getting burned out, what is the best way to resolve this?

Add a few POs but have one of them play the role of a Lead PO and maintain only 1 product backlog EXPLANATION: The situation requires scaling of the Product Owner, but it is recommended that a single product backlog be maintained for one product.

Members of an Agile team are drawn from different organizations. They are used to following different techniques and methodologies. This leads to conflict within the team. Which of the following statements from the Agile manifesto can provide guidance about how to resolve the conflict?

Agile values individuals and interactions over processes and tools

The Product Owner wants two releases in the project: one on the middle and one at the end. The Scrum Master points out that this does not matter. Why does the Scrum Master say this?

All increments should be potentially releasable.

There are multiple teams working on the same Scrum project. Each team has its own Product Owner. There are regular conflicts among these Product owners and the teams feel they are not heading anywhere. What should be done to solve this problem?

Appoint a Chief Product Owner and ask all the other Product Owners to report to this new Chief Product Owner

For the past several Sprints, the team completed development on most of the planned issues, but testing could not be completed. The testers felt it was impossible to complete all the tests in the given timebox. How should the Scrum Master proceed?

Ask the team members if some of them would like to be nominated for a training on Agile testing methods EXPLANATION: The Scrum Master has to act like a coach to the team. Testers being unable to complete tasks is not a new phenomenon. There are some options for the team to consider. Instead of pointing to them a specific action (such as adding team members or automated tests), the Scrum Master should encourage the team to learn more and help by offering to nominate them for trainings.

Which of the following is the correct expansion of ADAPT model of Scrum Adoption?

Awareness, Desire, Ability, Promotion, Transfer EXPLANATION: ADAPT stands for Awareness, Desire, Ability, Promotion, and Transfer.

The Product Owner and the Development Team have disagreements in the Sprint Planning meeting. The Product Owner believes that the developers have estimated the items and their capacity too pessimistically and, therefore have selected too few items for the Sprint. What is the best action for the Scrum Master?

Explain to the Product Owner that his decision belongs to the Development Team and that it should be accepted

After six months into transition, the CEO of the organization has asked the Product Owner to estimate time demand for the project. What would be the best answer?

Product Owner's time demand will increase as the project progresses EXPLANATION: Product Owner's time demand increases as the project progresses, while time demand of Scrum Master decreases as the project progresses.

Hilton is a staunch opponent of the Scrum transition in the team. He thinks Scrum is a fad that will pass and makes his opinion known to anybody who cares to hear. What is the best way to deal with Hilton?

Reinforce and reiterate the organization's commitment to scrum

Which of the following is NOT an Agile phobia?

Scrum requires everyone to be a generalist EXPLANATION: This is waterfallacy-a mistaken belief about Agile after working too long on waterfall projects.

A team member suggested a feature for inclusion in the current release of a product. This was not requested by any customer till date, but it could be an exciting addition to the product and be a unique selling proposition. Other team members felt that there were many other pending mandatory features which should be prioritized first. Ultimately, it was left to the Product Owner to determine the priority of the exciter feature. How should the Product Owner decide?

Take a decision based on the perceived ROI of the exciter feature and the mandatory features EXPLANATION: A reasonable method for the Product Owner to adopt is to determine the ROI of each feature independently. If the exciter feature has a very high ROI as compared to the mandatory features, it can certainly be prioritized.

During the initial identification of Scrum Roles for the first Scrum Project in an organization that is adopting Agile, a Tech Lead volunteered for the role of Scrum Master. Which of the following is a risk of having the Tech Lead as the Scrum Master?

Tech Leads usually provide direction to team members

A Product Owner was reading out a user story:

The story should express a need, not the solution; it should be up to the team to figure out the solution. EXPLANATION: The story should state the need and leave the technical details and the solution to the team members.

An organization has started transition toward Agile. Which of the following is NOT a reason for the organization to feel that transition to Scrum is hard?

The time to market is faster EXPLANATION: This is NOT a reason why transition can be hard. The reasons are: successful change is not entirely top-down or bottom-up, the end state is unpredictable, Scrum is pervasive, Scrum is dramatically different, change is occurring more quickly than ever before, and the best practices are dangerous.

During Agile transition using Scrum, an organization is using Internal Coaches. Which of the following is the best situation to use Internal Coaching?

When teams that are running well need not be split EXPLANATION: Internal coaching is suitable when teams that are running well need not be split. Coaches can be selected for new teams and can be moved from team to team.

The Agile Scrum approach cannot be applied to all projects. In which case is Scrum the most desirable?

When the product requirements may change in the process

There are 9 teams working on a large international project. All of them are composed of highly experienced developers that have been working in Scrum environments for a long time. How many Scrum Master roles are needed for this project?

3 Scrum Masters, with one for three teams

A large product team comprises five different Scrum teams working on the same product.The Scrum Masters meet once a week to synchronize the work. For one of the teams, the Scrum Master is out sick. Whom should the team send for the meeting?

A developer from the team familiar with the overall product EXPLANATION: The scrum-of-scrums is essentially meant to sync the work of multiple scrum teams. It is not necessary that only the Scrum Master should represent the team. Another team member who is familiar with the product and the team's work can also represent. It is a better option for somebody from the team to go, rather than have a person external to the team represent them or to skip the meeting entirely.

Which of the following is acceptable as the output of the first Sprint?

A few simple functionalities that add the most value

A cross-functional team must have all skills necessary to go from an idea to a completed product. What is the initial implication?

Team size may become larger than desired EXPLANATION: Team size may become larger than the recommended size.

During the Sprint retrospective meeting, the Scrum Master ran a quick poll of each team member about how they felt about the achievements of the Sprint. Half the team (mostly the developers) felt the Sprint went really well and the team got a lot done. The other team members (mostly testers and other specialists) felt the work wasn't complete and the Sprint could not be considered a success. Based on this information, what should the Scrum Master focus on?

A clearer definition of done so that the expectations about "done" ness is clarified EXPLANATION: All of the things (team building, clarity of stories, and task level decomposition) may be good to do and perhaps may also be helpful. What would be MOST helpful, from the given the information, is a well articulated and understood definition of done. The team members seem to have different interpretations of what "done" really means, which is leading to different levels of satisfaction about the work done in the sprint.

What is a Scrum of Scrum of Scrums?

A sync up meeting to coordinate the work of multiple Scrum teams working on a large product

An organization is transitioning to Scrum. There is widespread belief that the current system is not working and needs to be changed to something better. There is good buy-in for adopting Scrum and some pilot teams have been using it for some time with good results. They have been coached by external Scrum coaches and are starting to develop some expertise. At which stage of the ADAPT framework is the organization at present?

Ability

An organization transitioning to Scrum decided to go for an all-in pattern, that is, they decided that all the projects will move to Scrum at once. Which of the following is the most important advantage of the all-in approach?

An all-in transition will get over quickly EXPLANATION: The first 3 statements are actually in favor of the "start small" approach and go against the "all-in" pattern. The last statement is correct - that an all-in transition will likely finish sooner because everybody moves together and therefore will also complete around the same time as opposed to a staged roll out

Tom is a member of the Scrum team. He attended a trade conference and came across a feature idea that he felt should be present in the product he was working on. When should that idea be included in the product backlog?

As soon as Tom is able to discuss the idea with the Product Owner EXPLANATION: The Product backlog is supposed to contain "all the things that could potentially add value". If Tom can convince the Product Owner that the idea indeed adds value, it can be added to the backlog immediately. Prioritization and scheduling of the story can only take place after it is first put on the product backlog

A team looked at stories prioritized for the Sprint and feels it can take only 8 out of the 10 stories. The Product Owner wants all the stories to be done because he has an internal demo with the marketing team. The discussion remains deadlocked for several minutes. What is the best way for the Scrum Master to deal with this?

Ask the Product Owner if the stories can be split up so that they will be ready for the marketing demo, but some of the finishing work can be done later. EXPLANATION: The Scrum Master must facilitate the discussion and not make decisions on behalf of the team. However, the Scrum Master can stimulate additional discussions by encouraging the concerned parties to explore different options, instead of getting stuck on a specific issue. As long as it can be done in a non-dictatorial fashion, it would probably be the best contribution the Scrum Master can make to the planning discussions.

A team follows a Kanban system to manage the work flow. They found that the work items invariably get stuck at the "waiting for test" stage and this creates a bottleneck. Which of the following steps will help reduce the bottleneck?

Ask the other team members to pick up some testing tasks EXPLANATION: Of all the steps outlined, the step that is most likely to help reduce the bottleneck at the testing stage is to have other team members help with some of the tasks

A team was trying to estimate a story using the Planning Poker technique. Mary, a junior developer, felt the story deserved a story point of 20, whereas Tom, a senior developer, felt it should be 8. After 4 rounds of discussion, there was still no consensus. What should the Scrum Master do?

Ask the team how it would like to proceed

A team has a very pushy and demanding Product Owner. The Scrum Master was sick during one of the Sprint planning meetings and couldn't attend it. After he was back, the Scrum Master discovered that the team had been pushed into accepting more work than they could accommodate in that Sprint. What can be done in this situation?

Ask the team how much work they can get done in the Sprint and work with the PO to identify the MUSTs within the current Sprint EXPLANATION: It would be incorrect to cancel the Sprint - and in any case, that decision lies with the PO. The Scrum Master must step in to protect the team, so asking them to reconcile to the situation (even if you offer the carrot of an "easy" Sprint) is not helpful. It also goes against the principle of sustainable pace. The best way is for the team to work with the PO to identify the critical stories within the current Sprint and focus their efforts on at least completing those.

The Scrum Master finds that the team members are often blocked by having to wait for user experience designer's (UED) inputs without which they cannot finalize the screens. The designers are shared across multiple teams and they have a certain lead time in being able to accommodate requests. What is the best way to resolve this issue?

Ask the team if it is possible to give more lead time to the UED team to get inputs by staggering their work EXPLANATION: This seems to be an external dependency and there seems to be no immediate or short term solution. It is possible that we need to get more UED experts or re-prioritize work or empower the team. However, all of those decisions rest with the external team. The Scrum Master should first ask the team to explore if it is possible to work around the dependency by making their requests earlier in the cycle, thus reducing the delays.

Early into the planning of a release, a team felt they could not demonstrate any working system in the first three Sprints because the user interface would not be built until the fourth Sprint. What should the Scrum coach of the team recommend?

Ask the team to figure out a way to provide a demo; even if it is a bare bones UI or simply the API or schema EXPLANATION: Working software is the primary measure of progress as per the Agile principles, therefore the team must find a way to show a working system. Further, the coach should avoid dictating to the team how they should schedule their work, but gently suggest to them that they need to find a way to showcase their work.

During a Scrum retrospective, a team identified a bunch of improvement actions, but said they could not work on any of those because the next few Sprints were going to be very busy. How should the Scrum Master respond?

Ask the team to prioritize the actions and pick the top two or three, offering to negotiate the Sprint backlog during the next Sprint planning meetings EXPLANATION: Continuous improvement is a key tenet of the Agile way of thinking and it cannot be put on a pause mode. It is OK not to try too many changes at a time, but the changes can be prioritized and (in the spirit of sustainable pace) the sprint backlog can be tuned to accommodate the time needed to bring in the improvements.

A week into a 3-week Sprint, a team discovered that they were unlikely to complete the Sprint deliverables. Some of the team members felt they could catch up with the work during the last 2 weeks if they got lucky with some of the dependencies. The Scrum Master is required to log a weekly Sprint status with the stakeholders. What is the most appropriate status for the Scrum Master to represent?

At risk EXPLANATION: Transparency is one of the pillars of Scrum teams. The team is currently reporting a delay and this must be conveyed to the stakeholders so that they can be prepared for the eventuality and make adjustments if necessary

ADAPT is an acronym for the activities in an Agile transition plan. The first 'A' stands for 'Awareness.' Why is Awareness important as a first step when introducing Agile?

Because only early successes will build momentum and get others to follow

A Scrum team has been assigned a new project and decides to add the following statement to the Definition of Done: Only features for which a functional design is drafted and accepted are put on the Sprint Backlog. The Scrum Master reviews this and states: Documentation is needed. For each feature, the design should be created or updated. We need to add to the Definition of Done and keep this in mind when estimating tasks for the next Sprint Backlog. Why does the Scrum Master say this?

Because the documentation can be created and adjusted per feature

The Executive Team at a company considering a transition to Agile methodologies is looking for a crisp elevator pitch. Which of the following statements makes most sense?

By following an iterative and incremental development life cycle, Agile promotes flexibility

An organization's CEO is not convinced about the need for transition. He says "We have been working like this for the past 20 years. Why should we adopt Scrum?" What is the best answer to this question?

Communicate that there is a problem EXPLANATION: This is a tool to promote awareness. The CEO might not be aware of the current problem, so communicating the problem may shift the CEO's focus toward current reality.

What does osmotic communication, one of the core properties of projects in the Crystal methodology, mean?

Communication by overhearing and currents, beyond the parties who are actually conversing EXPLANATION: The idea behind osmotic communication is that communication should spread through currents, for instance by overhearing. There is immense value in communication spreading across the team in this manner because it spreads awareness and through awareness the team can collaborate more.

A Scrum Master is extremely busy and getting overwhelmed with a large number of tasks that are waiting for his attention. Can you help the Scrum Master prioritize among the following tasks, that is, which one should he do first?

Contact a technical expert with a request to help out a team member who is stuck on a particular issue EXPLANATION: The Scrum Master has many responsibilities but the most important one is to help the team members who are blocked

Tom is a senior developer in an Agile team. During a particular Sprint, he picked up a particularly complex story. Apart from completing the functionality, he took some time to simplify the code structure, make it more readable, and then found a way to improve performance by reducing some redundant processing. This is an example of _____.

Continuous refactoring EXPLANATION: Continuous refactoring is an extreme programming practice that believes in leaving the code in better shape than you found it in.

The Product Owner assigns tasks to developers in the Daily Scrum, and the meeting always takes more than 15 minutes. How should the Scrum Master address this situation?

Convince the Product Owner to stop assigning tasks to the Development Team and not to participate in the Daily Scrum

An organization in the middle of a Scrum adoption program has selected a few pilot projects with buy-in from executives. They have appointed Scrum coaches to provide real-time guidance to the teams. Team members have been appointed to the Scrum roles and they have been provided training. What else must be done to make the pilot projects successful?

Create an Enterprise transition committee and have them iterate through the backlog of issues surfaced by the team EXPLANATION: Getting org-wide evaluation criteria changed when the pilot has just started may be getting a little too far ahead. The other two steps (executive buy-in and training and coaching - implying understanding of definition of done) seem to have been addressed. What is probably most important is to ensure that there is an ETC with the mandate to work through the issues as the team encounters them

David is part of a Scrum team. He doesn't like Scrum and is an active opponent. He makes his displeasure known at every opportunity. He thinks that Scrum is fine for mickey mouse sized projects but doesn't work for enterprise class projects. He uses every challenge in the team to drive home his point. What can be done about David?

David's manager needs to have a direct conversation with him and he should be moved to another assignment or out of the organization EXPLANATION: According to classification of Scrum resistors, David is a "saboteur". There is no information given which suggests that David is an expert on scaled Agile or that he can be reasoned with or involved. The best way is to have a direct conversation and if necessary separate ways-it may be best for everybody.

DSDM Atern proposes a prioritization scheme abbreviated as MoSCoW-Must, Should, Could, and Won't. What is the shortest timebox for which this principle can be applied to for the identification of critical activities?

Day EXPLANATION: The MoSCoW prioritization mechanism can be applied at every time box to identify what are the critical activities, what are the highly desired, and what are the nice-to-haves. This creates awareness of importance and organizes work in favor of getting the important things first

A developer and tester were jointly interpreting a user story and studying the acceptance criteria. The tester wrote a test scenario that the developer felt was invalid. The tester was adamant that it was a valid test scenario and needed to be addressed. How can the dispute be resolved?

Discuss with the Product Owner and ask if it is a valid scenario EXPLANATION: Usually the Product Owner should be able to help sort out issues like these. It should be the first alternative to choose in trying to reconcile the differing views on this.

A team feels that it is running endless disconnected and isolated Sprints. What is the best way to overcome this situation?

Display the Product Backlog and make it clearly visible EXPLANATION: This will help the team members to see how the User Stories they are working on in the current Sprint relate to other items.

During Agile transition, some team members are open to both sides of the argument and prefer practical change. These individuals are known as Pragmatists. Which of the following is the best activity to help Pragmatists to transition to Scrum?

Do a pilot project with these pragmatists as team members

A team is working on the development of internal tools. One of the tools is meant to help optimize network traffic for the company. What is the best time to involve the transition manager from the Network Team into the team's development cycle?

During the Sprint reviews to get feedback and identify any deployment issues early EXPLANATION: The transition manager needs to be able to review and provide feedback about what the team is building. The Sprint review, where the demos are given, is a good forum for this. At this forum, they will also be able to ask questions and gain clarity about what potential issues might crop up during deployment.

When is the Definition of Done used first by the Development Team?

During the estimation of the features in the Product Backlog, since the work depends on the requirements of both the features and the Definition of Done.

Which of the following correctly describes Death by Committee?

Endless meetings with conflicting interests and politics

For an organization planning to transition to Scrum, the Scrum coach is planning for a few training sessions to develop the ability to succeed in Agile and Scrum methods. Which of the following trainings is most relevant for programmers or developers?

Evolutionary design EXPLANATION: We make the assumption that programmers have basic knowledge about ideas like design patterns or working with teams. When they move to Scrum, one of the first things that will change is that the design will evolve rather than be determined upfront. Therefore, evolutionary design is the most relevant training at this stage.

A senior member of the Project Management Office in a large company wants to try out Scrum as a methodology. She tries to convince at least one executive to sponsor the program. Everybody questions the need to try out a new methodology when the existing one has been working well. What should be her first step in selling the methodology?

Explain the issues with the current methodology and how it is hurting or limiting the organization EXPLANATION: In the AWARE model of Scrum adoption, the first step is awareness. The executives seem to be stuck in the mode of "if it aint broke, don't fix it". Therefore, they need to be informed about how the current methodology is not working and why it is important to change.

A Product Owner wrote a user story with many paths and exception scenarios. Due to the complexity of the story, the team member working on it felt it might take 2 Sprints to deliver. The Product Owner wanted to showcase this in a presentation she was making at a trade show scheduled after 1 Sprint. What is the best way to deal with this?

Figure out a way to create a showcase or demo version in 1 Sprint EXPLANATION: Based on the description provided, the use case has many exception paths, which might be a contributor to the complexity. It should be possible to create a showcase version (presumably not handling all exceptions) so that the presentation can go ahead without a fully baked version of the story.

A team finds that its Product Owner is not doing backlog grooming, often missing Sprint planning and review meetings and giving answers after long delays. What should be done in this situation?

Free the Product Owner from all other responsibilities and dedicate him or her solely to the Project EXPLANATION: This Product Owner is overworked. So freeing up the other responsibilities, along with collaborating with this Product Owner, is the best possible solution.

An organization is now aware of Agile and its benefits and wants to embark on the transition. What is the next step?

Have the desire to adopt Scrum EXPLANATION: In ADAPT Cycle, the step after Awareness is Desire.

The team wanted to work on a refactoring task of a size of about 40 hours, but the Product owner was keen on getting a new feature in. How can the Scrum Master help in this case?

Help the team articulate the value to the customer by calculating the ROI based on the benefits forecast from refactoring compared to the cost EXPLANATION: The prioritization decisions will be based on customer value. There is value in refactoring activities also, but the team seems to be unable to convince the PO about it. The Scrum Master can help the team articulate the value and then leave the ultimate decision to the PO.

A team member is stuck on a technical blocking issue for the past three days. There is nobody on the team (or the entire organization) who has worked on the platform. What is the best course of action for the Scrum Master?

Help the team member post the issue on internal and external Q&A forums and ask EXPLANATION: The Scrum Master's primary task should be to try and resolve blocking issues. The other tasks (like resetting expectations or reassigning tasks or providing incentives) may be helpful and even necessary, but doesn't necessarily need the Scrum Master to facilitate. The Scrum Master should be persistent in trying to help arrive at the solution.

The Enterprise Transition Community (ETC) exists to create a culture and environment where change can be released. How does ETC work on an improvement?

In ETC Sprints EXPLANATION: ETC also works on Sprints. So, an improvement can be delivered in an ETC Sprint.

The new members of the team have been struggling with the core logic for a product, which resulted in quality issues in the previous Sprint. The Scrum Master managed to convince Mike, a senior technical lead, that he should spend some time explaining the logic and pair program to the new members. How should the Scrum Master proceed from this point?

Introduce Mike to the team and ask them if they would like to accept his offer for help EXPLANATION: The Scrum Master is right in trying to help the team, but the decision about including Mike needs to be taken by the team. The Scrum Master has to suggest it in subtle ways without sounding authoritative. Involving Mike in Sprint planning is fine, but the Scrum Master should not get into the business of allocating tasks. Asking Mike to review code (without the team buy-in) may backfire. While asking the team is a good thing, the daily stand-up is not the right forum to use for this type of discussion.

A team is adopting some technical practices to achieve greater agility. One of the practices is continuous integration. The product is extremely complex and has multiple integration points. The integration and build process takes a long time, which is a major hurdle in achieving the goal of continuous integration. What is the best recommendation for the team?

Investigate how to reduce the time taken for integration and build EXPLANATION: Technical practices need to be introduced early in an agile team and one of the critical practices is continuous integration. If the process is time consuming or difficult, the team must figure out a way to reduce the time and complexity

The coach of a Scrum team recommended that the stories be written by hand on an index card rather than entered into the system. Which is the best argument in favor of hand-written stories as compared to stories typed into an Excel sheet or a tool?

It is one way of ensuring that the story remains small. EXPLANATION: All the statements are correct, but the one which best articulates the BENEFIT of hand written stories is that it ensures the story remains small. There is only so much space to write on and you have to make it really concise.

DSDM - Atern proposes a prioritization scheme abbreviated as MoSCoW, i.e. Must, Should, Could and Won't. What is the point of classifying a particular requirement as a "Won't"?

It means that the requirement will not be completed in the current time box but may be done later EXPLANATION: "W" or Won't means that the requirement has not been prioritized for the current time box as (likely) there are other things more important than this. Classifying something as a W does NOT preclude it from being prioritized at some point in the future

A Business Analyst wrote up a story for better error logging to simplify troubleshooting. The Product Owner is trying to ascertain the value of this story as compared to others so that relative priorities can be assigned. What is the best way to articulate the value of this work?

It will help improve operational efficiency by saving time for the customer support staff and more customers will troubleshoot on their own

A Scrum team came up with a request to redesign their team space to make it more open and collaborative. The budget requirement was about $20,000. What is the best justification for this expense?

It would enable real-time communication and improve productivity. EXPLANATION: Having a more collaborative and open environment will foster communication. Quicker communication will act as a multiplier for productivity

Which of the following methodologies may NOT follow iterative development?

Kanban

Kim is a Tech Lead with a product team and is the team's most senior developer. Her team decides to adopt Scrum. Kim wonders what will happen to her role and asks the coach who is managing the transition. How should the coach respond?

Kim can become a programmer and use all her knowledge to help the team succeed. EXPLANATION Scrum only recognizes 3 roles: Developer, Product Owner, and Scrum Master. While there is no rule against a Tech Lead becoming a Scrum Master or architect, it is not clear whether Kim has the skills necessary to do so. What we do know is that Kim is a senior developer with a lot of experience, therefore she can use all that experience to help the team and be a valued member of the team.

A former Project Manager is acting as a Scrum Master for the first time. The Project Manager is an expert in Waterfall methodologies. What is the best way for the Project Manager to ensure that previous practices are not implemented in the Scrum Project?

Make sure that the PM implements Scrum strictly by the book EXPLANATION: The PM has to follow Scrum strictly by the book. The PM must talk to other Scrum Masters and learn as quickly as possible.

Michael is a DBA and serves five Scrum teams. All the teams have equal need for his time and he also needs about half his time to perform maintenance and tuning on production databases. What is the best way to split up David's time so that all the teams are able to work with him?

Michael should spend a day with each of the Scrum team during the week and, may be, half a day on the maintenance activity EXPLANATION: It is clear that Michael needs to slice his time. Random and ad-hoc time slicing will reduce focus and productivity. Also, it is probably not reasonable that a team can do without his services for several sprints in a row. So the best approach may be to devote a day for each team, scheduled in advance so that teams as well as Michael can plan around it.

Randy is part of an Agile team. Randy dislikes Scrum and shows active resistance by writing upfront lengthy requirement documents. What tools can we use to overcome resistance shown by Randy?

Reinforce and reiterate commitment EXPLANATION: Randy is a saboteur. Reinforcing and reiterating commitment, showing success, and moving or firing are the ways to handle resistance by saboteurs.

An organization is publishing success stories of initial Agile projects during transition. With respect to the ADAPT cycle, which phase is this transition in?

Promote - success stories can be used to effectively promote Agile during a transition EXPLANATION: This transition is in the Promote phase. Promote tools are: publish success stories, host an Agile safari, and attract attention and interest.

A team that is proposing to transition to Agile is in the process of designing the office space. There is a lot of discussion and debate about the open seating. Rebecca - who is one of the team members felt it was important to have her own private space where she could feel "at home", have pictures of her family around, etc. How should the team proceed?

Provide some space for private stuff (caves) for doing private work, but keep the project space (commons) open

John, one of the most experienced members in your team, is resisting Scrum transition due to his skeptical nature. What is a good way to overcome resistance by skeptics?

Provide training EXPLANATION: To overcome resistance by skeptics, we can use these tools: provide training, let time run its course, solicit peer anecdotes, appoint a champion skeptic, push the issue, and build awareness.

A team has recently transitioned to Scrum. The project manager of the team, who used to have reporting authority over the team members, has taken up the Scrum Master role. The Agile coach told the newly appointed Scrum Master that she needs to stop doing a few things. Which of the following should she CONTINUE doing in her new role?

Push back on the product managers when they try to pack too many requirements in a particular project or release EXPLANATION: One of the assertions of the Agile manifesto is that it advocates valuing individuals and interactions more than processes and tools. This is relevant in this case as the conflict seems to be about tools, techniques, and methodologies. The way to resolve these conflicts would be to facilitate interactions and not be dogmatic about processes and tools.

One week into a four-week sprint, the Development Team has realized that it won't be able to deliver half of the Sprint Backlog items. The Product Owner is not happy with this, because the customer is expecting most of those features for a release at the end of the Sprint. What is the best course of action as the Scrum Master?

Recommend that the Product Owner to revise the order of Sprint Backlog items and let the developers continue with the best they can

A team was using planning poker technique to estimate for the first time. The process was taking a very long time. They found that each member was estimating the stories only from their perspective (Development, Testing, Database) and therefore it was hard to reach consensus. How should the Scrum Master help the team?

Reiterate the fact that it is only an estimate and that it is OK for it to be not precise as long as it is reasonable EXPLANATION: The Scrum Master must let the team come to terms with the process - it is natural that the discussions will last longer in the beginning. The Scrum Master should not dictate the process to the extent that the team members feel their voice is not heard (which is the whole point of the planning poker technique).

Andy, Adam, Adolf, Ariane, and Amar are the members of the first team that underwent Scrum transition. After 4 sprints, Andy, Amar, and Ariane are part of a new team with new members and Adam and Adolf are also part of another new team with new team members. Which strategy is exemplified in this scenario?

Split and Seed

Arthur wanted to showcase a new color theme for the product that is more consistent with the corporate branding. Which is the best forum to do this?

Sprint review EXPLANATION: Sprint review is the best forum to showcase this because it allows you to showcase a working product and gather feedback from a large number of stakeholders at the same time

A team member was assigned 4 stories during sprint planning for a 2 week Sprint. Story 1 is easy to complete but does not add a lot of value. Story 2 is also easy to complete and adds a lot of value. Story 3 is not easy to complete and doesn't add a lot of value. Story 4 is also not easy to complete but adds a lot of value. Other things being constant, which story should be worked on first?

Story 4 EXPLANATION: The two parameters provided are value and ease of completion. Obviously the higher value stories (2 and 4) should be completed before the lower value stories. Of the two that are of a higher value, the difficult one should be completed first because if there is an issue, it may not be possible to complete it at a later time.

A team was working on a 6-month release and had all the stories lined up, estimated, and assigned to Sprints before they began. During the Sprint review for the second Sprint, the customer recommended a few changes to the reporting dashboards, which would greatly increase their utility. How should the team respond to this?

The Product Owner should note this feedback and put it in the backlog and prioritize it against the existing stories in the backlog. EXPLANATION: Agile is all about being responsive to change and adjusting the plan to accommodate change that is beneficial to the customer. The first step in response to the feedback would be for the PO to note it down and determine the relative priority of these stories with the others. The impact analysis by the team in terms of additional sprints and architectural implications are needed but it is probably after the stories are prioritized for the release. Since the PO will note the changes and discuss with the customer, there is no need for a separate change management process to kick in.

A team is trying to build a complex product which requires a lot of framework and API level coding before the user visible features can be developed. The team's Scrum coach insists that every Sprint, including the first one must show visible value to the customer. The Scrum Master disagrees with the coach. Is the Scrum Master right?

The Scrum Master is right; it's is all right for the team to spend a time-boxed iteration or two writing just enough framework code. EXPLANATION: It is understandable if the team needs to spend some time working on the framework code upfront. However, it should be short and time-boxed and should not translate into a big up-front design phase. As long as it is time-boxed and follows just-in-time design principles, it is OK to extend the limits of the methodology.

During a retrospective meeting, the team agreed that their Sprint duration (3 weeks) was insufficient to deliver with good quality. They felt a 4-week Sprint would help reduce the severity of this issue. The Scrum Master asked them to consider reducing the duration to two weeks instead. Why did the Scrum Master make such an unexpected suggestion?

The Scrum Master said this to challenge the team to consider alternative options. EXPLANATION: There are times when the Scrum Master has to challenge the team. Much like the coach of a sports team, the Scrum Master may need the team to be shaken up a little if they are unable to perceive other options. It is rarely about personal preference or organization mandates. As the team's scrum coach, the Scrum Master has to help the team get the most value out of the methodology.

A Product Owner is going on vacation for 3 weeks and has requested the Scrum Master to stand in for her in the interim. How should the Scrum Master respond?

The Scrum Master should have a quick meeting to understand backlog and immediate priorities in order to help the team in the PO's absence. EXPLANATION: This is a common scenario. In the long term it is certainly not recommended for the scrum master and the PO to be the same person, but it can be done for a short period. It is better that the Scrum Master take this up instead of another PO (who may not have the context) or another team member (who may not be have a broad enough perspective). It is certainly not fair that the PO has to spend time working even while on vacation.

A team is planning a release. There are 10 team members and 6 months (about 10,000 working hours) for the release. The team estimates the backlog in ideal hours, which is about 800 hours. The team feels confident that they can accomplish this work. The Scrum Master asks the team and Product Owner to review their assumptions and check again before making the commitment. Why is the Scrum Master doubtful?

The estimate of 800 is in ideal hours and not in working hours. EXPLANATION: The mapping of 800 ideal hours to 10000 available hours needs to be validated. Further, the team needs to account for Sprint beginning and ending rituals, leave plans, and other distractions. Considering all that, the plan seems to be too tight. It is generally recommended not to pack the entire release in the beginning to allow for some wiggle room.

Jim is part of a Scrum team and is accused of slacking off by the rest of the team. Apparently, Jim doesn't collaborate with others, focuses only on his own tasks, and never helps anybody else. The team members want to remove Jim from the team. They approach the Scrum Master with the request. How should the Scrum Master respond?

The feedback about Jim needs to be reported to his manager, and Jim should be given a chance to reform. EXPLANATION: Self-organization also comes with boundaries. One of the issues outside the boundary is that the team cannot decide to fire one of its own. That decision has to lie outside the team, ideally the manager of the team member. That said, the feedback from the team needs to be taken seriously and Jim needs to take efforts to collaborate, which is an essential part of working in a Scrum mode.

Sean was a developer in a team that transitioned to Scrum about year ago. He is skilled in his trade, knows the product, and has great business insight. His ratings were always top class. He was surprised when his performance rating came down drastically in the current year. His manager told him that the feedback from the rest of the team was not good and Sean was obviously displeased. What should be done about this?

The feedback should be more frequent and specific so that Sean can take action on it. EXPLANATION: It seems that Sean heard about the feedback for the first time after about a year. This is clearly not fair to the team or the team member and the conversation needs to be more frequent.

A team's velocity for the past 5 Sprints was 45, 55, 63, 38, and 57. The customer wanted a commitment at 90% confidence level about when the team can finish a fixed set of stories. Which of these velocity values should be used?

The lowest data point as the confidence interval is fairly stringent EXPLANATION: Only 5 sprints' data is available and the amount of variation in the velocity is significant. The customer wants a 90% confidence interval which is not easy to get. So the best option would be to go with the lowest observed value.

The burn down chart for a team showed a peculiar trend. It started dropping rapidly at the beginning of the Sprint and then seemed to plateau in the middle. A day before the Sprint, the line dipped rapidly and reached the horizontal axis. Which of the following is the most likely reason for this trend?

The team encountered a major blocking issue in the middle of the Sprint which was resolved only toward the end. EXPLANATION: The burn down chart reaching a plateau (i.e. remaining flat) means tasks are not finishing, which is likely when there is a blocking issue.

For the past several Sprints, the Scrum Master found that the team's burn down chart used to slope downward gently, flattening toward the middle of the Sprint, and then rapidly declining to zero on the last day. How should the Scrum Master interpret this trend?

The team may not be updating the remaining hours diligently during the middle of the Sprint. EXPLANATION: There is no information provided about work getting added or removed to the sprint and even if that did happen (it is not allowed), the planned trajectory will also be changed. The most plausible explanation is that either they actually relax in the middle of the sprint or they do not update the hours. Since they seem to be getting stuff completed regularly, the most likely scenario is hours not getting updated

A Scrum Team had planned for 10 stories to be completed in a Sprint. The Development Team has completed coding and unit testing on the stories and they have been integrated in the build system. There are 12 outstanding bugs reported during testing. Some of them block the paths described in the stories but none of them are showstoppers. How does one determine if this Sprint is successful or not?

The team should check against the "definition of done" that it agreed upon at the beginning of the Sprint

A team has been trying to use Scrum for a while, but it has not been working out for them.The main reason is that the team's backlog is too volatile. The team often gets support tickets to work on in a completely unpredictable and ad-hoc manner. Since the system is business-critical, it is not possible to ignore the tickets. This results in the development Sprints going for a toss as more than 50% of the team's work is unforeseen. What should the team's coach recommend?

The team should consider using a continuous work flow system like Kanban or use ultra-small iterations to accommodate the frequent changes. EXPLANATION: One of the assumptions of Scrum is that the backlog has to be stable for at least 1 sprint duration. This is not happening in this case. Also, it looks like the unpredictability is inevitable and needs to be handled differently. Hence a pull based work management system like Kanban might work better for the team than Scrum.

A distributed team is practicing Agile. The team is spread across continents and has a fairly high rate of turnover. One of the concerns that came up in the retrospectives is that the teams do not end up creating enough technical documentation to enable new team members to ramp up quickly. What is the best action to address this issue?

The team should determine what level of documentation is appropriate and produce just enough documentation EXPLANATION: While the Agile manifesto does advocate favoring working software over comprehensive documentation, teams should ensure they are creating enough documentation that helps them move forward.

A customer has outsourced a project to a remote team which uses Scrum. Due to the time zone issues, the users are rarely able to participate in the reviews and give feedback though they would like to. What is the best solution that the Scrum Master can suggest?

The team should try to find a suitable time slot sharing some of the time zone pain and record the demo for those users who cannot attend. EXPLANATION: One of the most important reasons for following Scrum is the ability to generate interim feedback and the review is a very important forum. In this case, the users are willing to provide feedback directly, so the team should make every effort to accommodate them either by scheduling around time zone challenges or by recording demos or both.

The Product Owner of a team was asked for a forecast for the completion of a product release. There were 140 story points worth of work remaining in the project. The team's average velocity in the past 3 Sprints has been 65, though the best Sprint among the last three had a velocity of 85 story points. What should the Product Owner say?

The team will need about 3 Sprints more to complete the release EXPLANATION: Based on the average velocity, the team will require slightly over 2 Sprints of time. Accounting for some wrap-up tasks, it is safe to say roughly 3 Sprints to complete.

Catherine is an executive in an organization which is practicing Scrum for three months. One of her teams missed the Sprint deliverables for three Sprints in a row. Catherine would like to speak to a member of the team about what the issues are and how it should be addressed. Who should be invited to meet with Catherine?

The whole team EXPLANATION In the spirit of whole team accountability, the entire team is accountable for the success or failure. The team needs to understand directly from Catherine what her concerns are and convey its assessment also directly. Having the Scrum Master or PO or any other intermediary will result in loss of translation.

A very large product team has been split up into 10 different Scrum teams. The product comprises 10 different subsystems which share functionality. Each team has been finding it difficult to sift through the entire backlog, so they request each team to have its own backlog to make it easier to manage and prioritize. How should the Scrum Master respond to this?

There should be only one product backlog for one product; the teams can always create views for their own subsystem if they need to. EXPLANATION: There should ideally be only one backlog for one product. Whether the teams use physical cards or an Excel file or a project management system, they can always find ways to create views for themselves that show relevant stories. The benefit of a single backlog is that the product owners can keep the backlog complete and prioritized across the board.

An enterprise architect from a company was conducting a technical review of a product.During the review, he suggested that the team consider using the latest UI framework to enable their web portals for mobile and tablet devices in keeping with the latest trend. He followed up a week later asking the team whether they were doing anything about it. How should the team respond?

They should ask the architect to contact the Product Owner so that the request can be prioritized. EXPLANATION: It is alright for the architect to give futuristic technology based inputs to the team. However, the Product Owner needs to be involved in the process and prioritize these stories in the context of the team's work on the current project. The Product Owner's role should not be bypassed in this case.

The chief product manager is representing a large product team comprising several Scrum teams working in parallel. There are many epics and stories that require multiple projects to be connected and worked on by different teams. The PO would like to implement a tool for managing the backlog, planning, and tracking the project across various teams and give detailed views about progress across the board. What should the Scrum Masters and team members recommend?

Work with the PO to build a business case for the adoption of the tool if it brings in some benefits. EXPLANATION: For larger projects (at scale), it certainly makes sense to use an electronic tool for integrating the backlog and auto generating many of the views and reports. The tool selection has to be done carefully and the business case needs to be built jointly by the product owner and the team.

Two Scrum Masters from different organizations meet during a conference. The first Scrum Master says that their company is using Top-down approach for Agile adoption, and the second Scrum Master says they are using a Bottom-up approach. Each argues that their method is the best. Which is the best way to transition to Agile?

Top-down and Bottom-up

Scrum teams across the organizations measure their velocity in story points completed. The Project Management Office (PMO) wants to collect the velocity data for all teams to set an organizational benchmark. The Scrum Master of a team tells the PMO representative that it is not such a good idea. What might be the Scrum Master's reasoning?

Velocity cannot be compared because each team is different and so are their benchmarks for measuring story points. EXPLANATION: The velocity of each team will be different as the circumstances for each team is different. A team may be new to a project whereas another one might have been working on the product for years. Similarly when they measure story points, the benchmarks they use would also be different. It is neither recommended nor is it even possible to compare velocities across teams.

A team is working on a cutting-edge technology and does not have a lot of familiarity with the technical environment. As a result, it is struggling to estimate a complex story because the approach itself is not clear. How should the team proceed?

Write a SPIKE story (a story for carrying out the research and technical investigation) and time box it before accepting the main story for planning EXPLANATION: The best way to remove uncertainty of a technical nature is to perform experimentation - which is the intent of a SPIKE story. When a story cannot be estimated because the team needs to experiment, the best approach is to write a spike story before working on the main story