Professional Scrum Master Professional Scrum Master Coaching and Facilitation Questions and Answers 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A Scrum Master notices that the Development Team consistently defers all decisions to the Product Owner during Sprint Planning. What is the BEST coaching approach?
- Tell the Product Owner to stop making technical decisions
- Help the team recognize their accountability for selecting Sprint Backlog items and encourage self-management (Correct answer)
- Escalate the issue to management so they can intervene
- Assign decision-making responsibilities to individual team members
Correct answer: Help the team recognize their accountability for selecting Sprint Backlog items and encourage self-management
The Scrum Master should coach the team toward self-management by helping them understand they are accountable for deciding how to turn Product Backlog items into increments.
Question 2: During a Sprint Retrospective, two team members dominate the conversation while others remain silent. Which facilitation technique should the Scrum Master use?
- Ask the dominant members to leave the room temporarily
- Use silent brainstorming with sticky notes before open discussion (Correct answer)
- Cancel the Retrospective and reschedule when everyone is willing to participate
- Only allow the quiet members to speak for the remainder of the meeting
Correct answer: Use silent brainstorming with sticky notes before open discussion
Silent brainstorming ensures all voices are captured equally before group discussion begins, preventing dominant personalities from anchoring the conversation.
Question 3: A stakeholder frequently interrupts the Development Team during the Sprint to request urgent changes. How should the Scrum Master coach the Product Owner in this situation?
- Tell the stakeholder they are not allowed to talk to the Development Team
- Coach the Product Owner on managing stakeholder expectations and using the Product Backlog for transparency (Correct answer)
- Add the stakeholder requests directly to the current Sprint Backlog
- Ignore the situation since stakeholder management is not the Scrum Master responsibility
Correct answer: Coach the Product Owner on managing stakeholder expectations and using the Product Backlog for transparency
The Scrum Master serves the Product Owner by coaching them on effective stakeholder management techniques and ensuring the Product Backlog remains the single source of upcoming work.
Question 4: A newly formed Scrum Team struggles with estimating work and frequently fails to meet Sprint Goals. What coaching stance should the Scrum Master take?
- Estimate the work for the team based on historical data from other teams
- Facilitate discussions about past Sprints to help the team empirically improve their forecasting over time (Correct answer)
- Remove Sprint Goals until the team becomes more experienced
- Extend the Sprint length to give the team more buffer time
Correct answer: Facilitate discussions about past Sprints to help the team empirically improve their forecasting over time
The Scrum Master should help the team use empiricism by inspecting past results and adapting their forecasting approach rather than removing goals or doing the work for them.
Question 5: The Scrum Master is facilitating a conflict resolution session between two team members who disagree on a technical approach. What is the MOST appropriate action?
- Make the final technical decision to resolve the conflict quickly
- Help both parties articulate their perspectives and guide them toward finding a solution themselves (Correct answer)
- Separate the team members and assign them to different parts of the Sprint Backlog
- Report the conflict to HR for formal mediation
Correct answer: Help both parties articulate their perspectives and guide them toward finding a solution themselves
A Scrum Master facilitates healthy conflict resolution by creating space for open dialogue and guiding team members to collaboratively reach their own solution.
Question 6: An organization is adopting Scrum and managers want to assign tasks to individual team members during Sprint Planning. How should the Scrum Master address this?
- Allow managers to assign tasks since they have more experience
- Coach the managers on self-managing teams and explain that Developers choose their own work during Sprint Planning (Correct answer)
- Create a compromise where managers assign half the tasks and the team picks the rest
- Remove the managers from all Scrum events permanently
Correct answer: Coach the managers on self-managing teams and explain that Developers choose their own work during Sprint Planning
The Scrum Master should educate managers that in Scrum Developers are self-managing and decide how to organize and plan their work within the Sprint.
Professional Scrum Master Professional Scrum Master Coaching and Facilitation Questions and Answers 2
A Scrum Master notices that the Development Team consistently defers all decisions to the Product Owner during Sprint Planning.
What is the BEST coaching approach?