CAE Team Collaboration & Communication 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is the PRIMARY purpose of the Daily Scrum in terms of team communication?
- Report individual progress to the Scrum Master
- Synchronize the team's work and surface impediments quickly (Correct answer)
- Provide a status update for stakeholders
- Plan the day's tasks in detail for each developer
Correct answer: Synchronize the team's work and surface impediments quickly
The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute synchronization event where the team coordinates and identifies blockers to maintain sprint momentum.
Question 2: An agile team decides to use pair programming. Which collaboration benefit does this PRIMARILY provide?
- Reduces total lines of code written
- Enables real-time knowledge sharing and immediate code review (Correct answer)
- Eliminates the need for retrospectives
- Speeds up delivery by doubling developer count on each task
Correct answer: Enables real-time knowledge sharing and immediate code review
Pair programming creates continuous knowledge transfer and instant feedback, strengthening both code quality and team collaboration.
Question 3: A stakeholder requests a mid-sprint feature addition. The MOST agile-aligned team response is to:
- Add it immediately to avoid upsetting the stakeholder
- Evaluate it with the Product Owner and place it in the backlog for next sprint (Correct answer)
- Reject it outright because the sprint is locked
- Have one developer secretly work on it after hours
Correct answer: Evaluate it with the Product Owner and place it in the backlog for next sprint
Agile welcomes changing requirements but protects sprint integrity by routing new requests through the Product Owner and backlog.
Question 4: Which of the following BEST exemplifies 'osmotic communication' in an agile context?
- A daily written status report sent to all team members
- Team members naturally overhearing and absorbing relevant conversations in a shared workspace (Correct answer)
- A formal weekly communication meeting with a set agenda
- Automated Slack notifications for every code commit
Correct answer: Team members naturally overhearing and absorbing relevant conversations in a shared workspace
Osmotic communication refers to passive absorption of information by co-located team members overhearing relevant discussions.
Question 5: When a Scrum team has persistent conflict between two members, what is the Scrum Master's APPROPRIATE role?
- Stay completely neutral and never intervene in personal matters
- Facilitate a structured conversation to help the parties resolve the conflict (Correct answer)
- Immediately replace one of the members
- Assign conflicting members to separate work streams permanently
Correct answer: Facilitate a structured conversation to help the parties resolve the conflict
The Scrum Master acts as a servant leader and facilitator, helping the team resolve conflicts constructively rather than ignoring or escalating them.
Question 6: An agile team's velocity drops suddenly. Which communication action should the team take FIRST?
- Ask management to extend the sprint length
- Discuss the drop at the next retrospective and identify root causes (Correct answer)
- Ignore it and assume the next sprint will be better
- Blame the Product Owner for unclear requirements
Correct answer: Discuss the drop at the next retrospective and identify root causes
Retrospectives are the primary forum for inspecting performance trends and collaboratively identifying improvement actions.
Question 7: In an agile environment, 'information radiators' serve to:
- Automate reporting to reduce manual communication
- Passively communicate team status and progress to anyone who walks by (Correct answer)
- Restrict project information to authorized stakeholders only
- Replace sprint reviews by displaying results on a screen
Correct answer: Passively communicate team status and progress to anyone who walks by
Information radiators (like task boards and burndown charts) make project status visible to everyone without requiring active communication.
CAE Team Collaboration & Communication 3
What is the PRIMARY purpose of the Daily Scrum in terms of team communication?