SCRUM The Scrum Master Role 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which statement best captures 'servant leadership' as applied to the Scrum Master?
- Serving the team's needs while helping them achieve goals (Correct answer)
- Serving meals during meetings
- Serving as the team's primary decision-maker
- Serving as a backup Developer when needed
Correct answer: Serving the team's needs while helping them achieve goals
Servant leadership means the Scrum Master focuses on the team's growth and needs so they can deliver value.
Question 2: An impediment is blocking a Developer but is outside the team's control. The Scrum Master should:
- Tell the Developer to solve it alone
- Work to remove the impediment, escalating outside the team if needed (Correct answer)
- Ignore it until the next Sprint
- Remove the item from the Sprint Backlog
Correct answer: Work to remove the impediment, escalating outside the team if needed
The Scrum Master causes the removal of impediments, escalating beyond the team when necessary.
Question 3: How should a Scrum Master handle a team that wants to skip the Sprint Retrospective to deliver more?
- Agree to skip it to maximize output
- Explain the value of inspection and adaptation and keep the event (Correct answer)
- Replace it with an email survey permanently
- Let the Product Owner decide whether to hold it
Correct answer: Explain the value of inspection and adaptation and keep the event
The Retrospective is essential for continuous improvement, and the Scrum Master ensures it happens.
Question 4: What is the best way for a Scrum Master to coach a team toward self-management?
- Make all decisions to save time
- Ask powerful questions and let the team find solutions (Correct answer)
- Provide step-by-step instructions for every task
- Assign a lead Developer to make decisions
Correct answer: Ask powerful questions and let the team find solutions
Coaching through questions builds the team's capacity to self-manage rather than depend on the Scrum Master.
Question 5: A Scrum Master is asked by a manager for individual performance metrics on each Developer. The best response is to:
- Provide detailed individual rankings
- Explain Scrum emphasizes team accountability and redirect to team outcomes (Correct answer)
- Refuse to speak with the manager
- Secretly track each Developer's velocity
Correct answer: Explain Scrum emphasizes team accountability and redirect to team outcomes
Scrum focuses on the team as a unit, so the Scrum Master educates managers about team-based accountability.
Question 6: Which is NOT an appropriate Scrum Master activity?
- Facilitating Scrum events when requested or needed
- Coaching the team in self-management
- Assigning Sprint Backlog tasks to specific Developers (Correct answer)
- Helping remove impediments
Correct answer: Assigning Sprint Backlog tasks to specific Developers
Developers self-manage and decide who works on what; the Scrum Master does not assign tasks.
Question 7: The Scrum Master's effectiveness is best measured by:
- The number of meetings they personally run
- The team's growing self-management and value delivery (Correct answer)
- How many tasks they complete each Sprint
- The amount of documentation they produce
Correct answer: The team's growing self-management and value delivery
A great Scrum Master makes themselves progressively less necessary as the team matures.
SCRUM The Scrum Master Role 3
Which statement best captures 'servant leadership' as applied to the Scrum Master?