PSM-A Practice Assessment

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1 / 30

A multi-national company is using Scrum for product development of their five major products. What alternatives should the company consider deciding how many Product Owners are needed for these five products? (Choose the best two answers)

There is one Product Owner for all five products. This person may not delegate work to others for specific value, capabilities, and functionality, given these are all the Product Owner’s individual responsibility

There are as many Product Owners as needed to analyse, document, and explain expectations and requirements with all Scrum Teams.

There is one Product Owner responsible for all five products. This person may delegate work to others for specific value capabilities and functionality within each product to scale their accountability.

There is one Product Owner for each product (5 in total). Each Product Owner may delegate to others for specific value capabilities and functionality within the product. The five Product Owners share and align work via Product Backlog.

2 / 30

Peter is a new Product Owner on a newly formed Scrum team. Peter has projected a product completion date based on an estimated velocity of 21 completed points per Sprint. After the first 3 Sprints, the Developers have determined that their maximum velocity is 15 points and that they are unable to create shippable Increments at the end of each Sprint. What is the best way to proceed? (Choose the best answer)

Due to the failure of the Sprints to produce shippable Increments, opportunities to inspect and adapt have been lost. To increase the team's capacity, the Scrum Master should encourage the organization to add more team members.

Inform Peter that the projected completion date is not correct. The Developers would estimate the remaining work to produce a shippable Increment and suggest completing it (make it meet the Definition of Done). Based on empirical data, Peter can adjust the completion date and decide how to continue.

The Scrum Master would coach the team on improving their estimations and commitment to completing the Sprint Backlog.

Extend the Sprint in order to complete the Sprint Backlog items

3 / 30

Kevin is a senior Developer that has recently joined an existing Scrum team. The existing team members are unable to get along with Kevin and conclude that he is not the right fit. If necessary, who is responsible for removing the new team member, and why? (Choose the best answer)

The Scrum Master because he/she is responsible for helping the Developers to remove Impediments.

The HR department, as they are responsible for the hiring process.

The Product Owner because he/she is responsible for managing the team.

The Developers are responsible because it is an internal team issue. May also request help from the Scrum Master.

4 / 30

Steve is a Scrum Master asked to assist in creating five new Scrum teams that will be working to build a highly anticipated product. He talks with them about the importance of being able to integrate their Increments by the end of their Sprints. This includes the first Sprints. The product is very important to both the end-users and the organization. Of the choices raised by future team members, what would Steven encourage? (Choose the best answer)

Each Scrum team delivers Increments in its own code branch. After UAT is performed at the Sprint Review, the code branch is isolated until enough Increments are considered acceptable. All code branches will then be merged during the release phase.

Wait until enough of the infrastructure and architecture is in place before starting the first Sprints. This will increase the success of delivering integrated Increments in Sprint 1.

Each Scrum team delivers functionality at the end of each Sprint. New Product Backlog items will then be added to the next Sprint Backlog to integrate their functionality with the other teams to create a unified Increment.

All Scrum teams agree on a mutual understanding of ‘done’ that defines all work necessary to deliver a potentially shippable Increment that includes all previous Increments delivered for the product.

5 / 30

You are the Scrum Master for a team. Their Daily Scrum is scheduled to start at 9:00 AM each day. Developers routinely show up late, and once everyone is assembled, the meeting starts. By then it is typically 4 to 5 minutes later than the scheduled time. Other meetings in the organization typically allow 4 to 5 minutes for people to transport within the building. Some Developers complain that it is now hard to achieve the purpose of the Daily Scrum within the time box, since there is only 10-11 minutes left after waiting for people to show up. The Developers do not know what to do and ask for your advice. (Choose the best answer)

You escalate this issue to management since you are responsible for ensuring Scrum is understood and enacted.

You turn the question back to the Developers and ask what they think should be done to ensure their Daily Scrum is effective and meets its purpose.

To incentivize showing up on time, you tell the Developers that when people come late to the Daily Scrum, they will pay a small fee

You suggest that when someone shows up late, they cannot join that day’s Daily Scrum.

You suggest an experiment: moving the event to a time that better suits the team.

6 / 30

Another Team’s Scrum Master seeks your advice. The Daily Scrum always runs longer than 15 minutes. The Developers suggest splitting the Scrum team into two teams. What is your response? (Choose the best answer)

You agree – splitting the team into two teams is a good strategy to allow them to learn how to run Daily Scrums quickly and effectively. Once they have learned to limit the Daily Scrum to 15 minutes.

You disagree – splitting a team into two cannot be decided based on this information. You offer to observe.

You disagree – you tell the Scrum Master that as Scrum Master they need to manage the time box better

You agree – this is an appropriate solution to the problem.

7 / 30

The Developers are waiting for an external supplier to deliver a specific product component that they need to integrate and use. Without that component there will not be enough work in the next Sprint to occupy the full team. They ask their Product Owner to re-order the Product Backlog. The Product Owner asks the Scrum Master for help. What would be food advice for the Product Owner? (Choose the best answer)

Tell the Product Owner that his primary concern is the flow of value reflected in the ordering of the Product Backlog. Timeline of the flow might be influences by such dependencies and require some level of Product Backlog re-ordering

Tell the Product Owner to remove all work involving the external component from the Product Backlog and create a new backlog for it. The work can then be planned in one or more separate Sprints as soon as the component is available.

Tell the Product Owner that the Product Backlog need to be re-ordered to maximize utilization of the Developers. It is important to keep productivity high through proper use of the capacity available

8 / 30

The relationship between the Product Owner and the Developers has degraded over time. The Developers are growing increasingly angry with the Product Owner for changing the requirements all the time and not being available enough. The Product Owner is angry with the Developers for changing requirements during implementation. What guidance should the Scrum Master offer? (Choose the best answer)

Ask each person’s functional manager to instruct their employees that they must collaborate better or be removed from the team.

Address why requirement change during the Sprint Retrospective. Ask the Developers and the Product Owner to talk about why the requirements are changing and consider the impact on value during this discussion.

Ask for a project manager or other external resource to mediate and temporarily take over for the Product Owner.

Take everyone to a 2-day off-site event to relax and re-align. It is liberating to take people’s minds away from work.

9 / 30

You are the Scrum Master for four teams working from the same Product Backlog. Several of the Developers come to you complaining that work identified for the upcoming two Sprints will require full time commitment from Alex, an external specialist. As the Scrum Master what should you do to solve this upcoming problem? (Choose the best answer)

Ask Alex for a plan to hire and train additional people in his domain, and in the meantime work with the Product Owner and the Developers to re-prioritize the work so that tasks not depending on Alex

Prepare the Sprint Backlogs each day for the teams so Alex can spend some time in each team.

As needed consult with the Developers on how they want to manage this problem and help them implement their preferred solution.

Allocate Alex to one team per Sprint, so that over four Sprints every team will have the support it requires.

10 / 30

You are a Scrum Master entering an organization that wants to “evolve” their product development to Scrum. The organization’s teams are organized into component teams. This means that teams address one single application layer only (for example, front end, middle tier, back end, and interfaces). You introduce the concept of feature teams, where teams have the skills to work on multiple layers throughout a Sprint and deliver working software every Sprint. What are the two things you take into consideration when moving away from component teams towards feature teams? (Choose best two answers)

Feature teams will require time to become productive as people from the different layers and components become accustomed to working and delivering unified functionality together; as one Scrum Team.

You cannot do Scrum without feature teams. Do not continue adopting Scrum until teams are reorganized into feature teams

Productivity in terms of lines of codes or story points; will probably suffer during the transition; although even then delivery of business values is still likely to increase.

With feature teams it is easier to calculate and compare the productivity per team. Incentives on productivity are likely to speed up the transition to feature teams and therefore the adoption of Scrum

11 / 30

During the Sprint Review, the Product Owner decides to release the current Increment to production. The stakeholders suggest temporarily delaying the next Sprint in order to implement any further changes more quickly depending on a meeting with the customers, after the release. The Product Owner prefers to continue with the next Sprint and make progress towards the next release. Steven, the Scrum Master, begins facilitating the discussion. What would be two acceptable outcomes of the discussion? (Choose the best two answers)

Continue with the Sprints and keep collaborating with the customers and potentially add Product Backlog items if needed.

Continue with the Sprints but shorten the Sprint timeboxes to allow Developers respond to the new customer's requests faster.

Delay the next Sprint to allow Developers to work on new customer requests.

Continue with the Sprints but allow the Sprint Goal within the Sprint to change according to the customer feedback.

12 / 30

The Product Owner tells you that there are too many defects in the recent release. The customers are not happy. The stakeholders are also complaining about the quality of the product. What are the possible options to move ahead? (Choose the best two answers)

Coach the team about the importance of quality of code and need of Definition of Done.

Update the Definition of Done and ensure that Developers follow it. • Tell the Product Owner that quality is Developers concern and the PO should not intervene unnecessarily.

Suggest the Product Owner to make the next sprint a Defect Fix sprint to improve quality.

Coach the Product Owner how to work with Developers and improve the quality.

13 / 30

Your organization always stresses the importance of on-time delivery and reliability. A manager has detected that your team’s progress is too slow. They feel that your team’s velocity needs to be 15% higher. The organization expects you, as the Scrum Master, to make it happen. How do you respond? (Choose the best two answers)

You explain how a Scrum Team uses the velocity of a Sprint primarily to forecast work for the next Sprint; not to perfectly predict future productivity. You refer management to the Product Owner for all information concerning the progress of development.

You tell management that this is not your accountability in Scrum. You direct them to the Product Owner to determine whether the forecast is accurate.

You help management understand that it typically takes a few Sprints for a team to gradually increase the velocity up to the level expected. Meanwhile you present this to the team as a challenge and a company goal; leaving it however up to them to figure out exactly how to achieve this.

You educate management that it is the Scrum Team’s responsibility to improve their velocity. You invite management to the next Sprint Retrospective to brainstorm on how they can improve.

14 / 30

During the Sprint Review the Product Owner introduces the functionality that is likely to be done over the next Sprints. The Chief Security Officer reminds everyone that through the envisioned functionality, sensitive personal user data will be stored. This might be the subject of external security audits. He reminds everyone of important non-functional requirements with regards to security. They were not applicable and not considered previously. What are two effective ways the Scrum Team can manage these high-security concerns? (Select the best two answers)

The impact of these security concerns on past and future work needs to be determined before new sprints can start. A list of security related Product Backlog items needs to be passed on to the Product Owner before starting the next Sprint with the Development Team.

They are discussed, determined, and documented in parallel Sprints to not disturb the actual feature development. Once analyzed, they should be applied to the work already done before further feature development can continue.

They are added to the Product Backlog and addressed throughout the next Sprints; combined with creating the business functionality in those Sprints no matter how small that business functionality.

During the Sprint Retrospective the Scrum Team assesses how to add these expectations to the Definition of Done so every future increment will live up to these requirements. If needed they can work with the external specialists to better understand the requirements.

They should be managed by a separate specialist’s team in a parallel Sprint, so they can be specifically resolved through an improved application design without hindering functional development.

15 / 30

After some small experiments with Scrum, your company decides to do a complete project with Scrum. As Scrum Master, you have been invited to the "project kick-off meeting" with IT and product management. The Product Owner asks how many Sprints IT will need to first figure out architecture and infrastructure issues. What are two options to explain how such work is managed using Scrum? (Choose the best two answers)

You thank product management for understanding that these efforts indeed require effort and budget. You confirm that architecture and infrastructure are best addressed before starting Scrum, but that the exact budget is difficult to calculate upfront. You say you will organize this work in timeboxed Sprints Of no more than 30 days to limit risk and be transparent toward product management on the actual progress.

You explain that product management should not worry about such typical IT work. You inform them that you will assure that the team members reach out to the right people within the IT organization when needed. During each Sprint Planning event they will keep the Product Owner updated about the additional effort it will take for that Sprint. That effort will come on top of the effort for the forecasted functional development.

You explain that technical risks are best controlled when architecture and infrastructure emerge alongside the development of functionality. The additional advantage is that business value is created faster and sooner.

You educate the Product Owner to add this work to the Product Backlog to uphold transparency. Ask the Developers to plan work during the first several Sprints to estimate these items, while also creating some business functionality in these early Sprints.

16 / 30

You are a Scrum Master helping to establish five Scrum Teams that will be building a product. You discuss with them the high level of integration that the product Increment will require by the end of their first Sprint. It is a highly anticipated product, both by consumers and by the organization. Of the options raised by the future Scrum Team members, which option do you encourage? (Choose the best answer)

Each Scrum Team provides a separate Increment with the functionality added by the individual team. The Sprint Review is used to identify the work needed to integrate with the other Scrum Teams. This work is then added to the Product Backlog.

Each Scrum Team livers done Increments in its own area of responsibility. Upon functional acceptance at the Sprint Review, the code is isolated for future stabilization. The release date is adjusted according to the expected work and time of such integration phase.

In the first Sprint, integration is less important. The goal is to deliver business value. Functionality that is not integrated with the work of other Scrum Teams by the end of a Sprint is still reviewed to assess its potential business value. It can still be released at the Product Owner's discretion, and silent consent of the stakeholders.

All Scrum Teams agree on a shared Definition of Done that describes all work needed to deliver an Increment that is the integrated sum of the work from all Scrum Teams.

17 / 30

You are a Scrum Master employed by the IT department. The IT manager considers adopting Scrum for a new project. He wonders however, what the value is in having all team members attend this meeting called “Daily Scrum” every day. The organization already has its employees attending so many mandatory meetings. What are the two outcomes of the Daily Scrum you inform him about, to express the importance of the Daily Scrum? (Choose the best two answers)

The Developers will produce a status report indicating what everyone has done the past working day, and how much time that has taken. The accumulated reports will support discussing how the Sprint went at the Sprint Review meeting. It will provide detailed insights into the accuracy of the estimated versus actual time spent, which can be used to create better estimates at the subsequent Sprint Planning meeting.

Through the short daily alignment of the Daily Scrum the Developers build and improve a shared understanding of the most important work to be undertaken in the next 24 hours to achieve the best possible progress towards the Sprint Goal. This daily opportunity to inspect and adapt will enable the Developers to tackle any unforeseen circumstances that might otherwise disrupt the team’s progress.

During the Daily Scrum the Developers will bring up problems that are hindering their progress; and for which they have no means to resolve; this provides an opportunity to resolve those impediments.

During the Daily Scrum the Developers need to update the Scrum board with their status and progress at a task level. This is crucial to ensure that the IT manager can go up to the room at any time and view the team’s actual progress.

18 / 30

During a Product Backlog refinement meeting, the Product Owner introduces a business objective that will be worked on for the next Sprints. To achieve the business goal, the Product Owner sees a set of critical features that must be supplied. Because the features will be using sensitive user data, they will be subjected to external security audits. These non-functional security requirements were not applicable to previous Increments. What are two effective methods for developers to address these high-security concerns? (Choose the best two answers)

During the Sprint Retrospective, the Developers assess how to add these expectations to their Definition of Done so every future Increment will meet these security requirements. If needed, they can work with external specialists to better understand the requirements.

They are added to the Product Backlog and addressed throughout the next Sprints, combined with creating the business functionality in those Sprints, no matter how small the business functionality.

They should be handled by a separate security team in a parallel Sprint so that security issues can be resolved through application enhancements without affecting functional development.

A complete list of security-related Product Backlog items needs to be created before starting a new Sprint.

To avoid disrupting Developers during feature development, they should be planned in parallel Sprints. After security concerns have been resolved, they will be applied to previously completed work before new features can be developed.

19 / 30

You are the Scrum Master of a Scrum Team that has one Developer who disagrees with team decisions. Their disagreements are becoming disruptive and slowing progress. The Developer often returns earlier team decisions and re-opens the issue. What are two ways to go about this problem? (Choose the best two answers)

At the Sprint Retrospective you observe whether the topic is raised. If it does not happen, you check on how comfortable everybody is with the way team decisions are made.

You go to the Human Resources department and ask them to have a Conversation with the Developer based on the issues the team has raised.

You take the Developer aside to express your concern over their disagreements and tell them to act as a team player and to comply with the team's decision.

You organize an offsite team building activity to establish afoundation of trust. You observe whether the problem persists after the offsite activity.

20 / 30

What are two ways in which technical debt relates to velocity? (Choose the best two answers)

They are not related, technical debt should be resolved by the support or operations department, not by the Developers.

Developers can artificially increase velocity by incurring technical debt.

Velocity may unexpectedly drop when the Developers run into technical debt while attempting to complete new Product Backlog items.

Adding technical debt items to the Product Backlog to get estimated and added to your velocity forecasts can guarantee predictability.

21 / 30

A new Product Owner has joined an existing Scrum team that has been working together for eight Sprints. The Developers have grown to have a good understanding of the functionality and business for the product they have been building. The Product Owner, being new to the company, is unsure about his responsibilities. Explain two acceptable ways of assisting the Product Owner as a Scrum Master.. (Choose the best two answers)

When the items on the Product Backlog are handed over to the Developers, you tell the Product Owner to make sure there are no ambiguities or possible misunderstandings. This is best done by capturing the functional requirements during an analysis phase, resulting in documents that are considered as the working product of such analysis Sprints.

You advise the Product Owner to formulate the Product Backlog with the help of the Developers and stakeholders, as they are the most knowledgeable. The Product Owner will quickly catch up by asking questions and working with them.

You inform the Product Owner that, in today’s highly competitive markets, it is important that the Developers are updated on changing business priorities on a daily basis. The Daily Scrum allows the Developers to adapt to the changes in scope without delay.

You advise the Product Owner to start building a good relationship with the stakeholders of the product. Ongoing interaction with them is important to regularly align with changing organizational or market expectations. The Product Owner is also expected to invite the right stakeholders to the Sprint Review meeting.

22 / 30

Currently, your engineering department is organized in siloed teams that specialize by function (e.g. front-end, back-end, database and testing). What would you consider when moving away from component teams towards feature teams? (Choose the best answer)

You cannot begin Scrum without having feature teams. It is easier to measure and compare performance between feature teams. Feature teams should have an equal number of team members.

Moving from component teams to feature teams could reduce productivity in the initial stages. Feature teams have less communication complexity. Getting support from the business side makes the transition easier.

Members within feature teams require compatible personalities. Feature teams should have a mix of junior and senior members. Tasks are completed more quickly than component teams.

23 / 30

Which two of these situations best demonstrate that a Scrum Team is self-managing? (choose the best two answers)

The Developers create their own Sprint Backlog, reflecting all work that is part of the Definition of Done.

The Scrum Team invites the right external people to the Sprint Planning to help them create a complete and detailed Sprint Backlog before the meeting timebox expires.

Management is invited to the Daily Scrum for a progress update and subsequently works with the Scrum Master to optimize the plan for the next day.

The Developers are strictly working within the boundaries of their function description, and are handing off work in a timely fashion to the other members within the team.

Developers collaboratively select and re-plan their work during the Sprint.

24 / 30

The Scrum Teams work in monthly Sprints, and the team is expected to deliver all functionality in three Sprints. Recently the team's progress was slowed down because of changes to interfaces of other components that you integrate with, as well as unavailability of the program's testing infrastructure. The program manager is extremely upset and angry when they find out that the team will need two more Sprints. The project managers of the other components confirm their adherence to the expected date. As a Scrum Master, what could you do to help the Product Owner? (Choose the best answer)

You shorten your Sprints to be ready sooner.

You calculate how many additional developers it would take to increase velocity in order to make the original date. You inform the program manager of the additional budget for these developers. This would then allow making the expected date.

You inform the program manager that there is a way. You remove all items from the Product Backlog for which development is forecasted to be beyond the expected date. These are likely to be low value anyhow.

You suggest working with the program manager and the project managers of the other systems on the ordering and the value of your open Product Backlog items to redefine the possible delivery date.

25 / 30

You are the Scrum Master of a Scrum Team that is new to Scrum. The Product Owner comes to you halfway through the Sprint and says, “I do not feel like the Developers will be able to meet the forecast that they developed during Sprint Planning”. What should you do in this situation? (Choose the best option)

Agree to help the Product Owner by having a discussion with the Developer’s about the importance of meeting their forecast.

Add more people to the Scrum team to meet the Product Owner’s expectations.

Coach the Product Owner that achieving the Sprint Goal is Scrum Team’s objective. A forecast is only used to initially estimate the effort required to reach the Sprint Goal.

Talk to the Developers. Challenge and inspire them to complete all of the work so that they meet their forecast.

26 / 30

In the Daily Scrum, the Product Owner applauds every Developers who moves a Sprint Backlog item to completion. The Product Owner wants to encourage the Developers to make progress visible on the burn-down chart. Select the two best options for the Scrum Master to take. (Choose the best two answers)

Coach the Scrum Team about the purpose of the Daily Scrum.

Nothing. The Scrum Master does not attend the Daily Scrum.

Tell the Product Owner your concerns about how his behaviour may impact the Developers and ask him to stop attending the Daily Scrum for some time.

Take the opportunity to create more energy and team spirit and encourage everyone to participate in the applause. Tell the Product Owner your concerns about how his behaviour may impact the Developers and ask him to stop

27 / 30

The Product Owner suggests postponing Sprint Planning as they haven't been able to process all the feedback from the Sprint Review into the Product Backlog yet. They argue it makes no sense to plan the Sprint if the Product Backlog isn’t in a good state. As a Scrum Master, how should you respond?(Choose the best two answers)

Get the Product Backlog into a refined state as part of Sprint Planning and the early work in the Sprint.

Delay the start of the Sprint for a short time to allow the refinement to occur. Transparency is key and it would not make sense to work on other things in the Product Backlog in the meantime.

Focus on work that is refined and work to incorporate this new feedback into the Product Backlog during the Sprint.

Start the Sprint, delay Sprint planning and ensure the Scrum Team spend the time needed to refine the Product Backlog.

28 / 30

You are a Scrum Master and one of the Developers approaches you and says: Every Sprint we are not completing regression testing for all the selected Product Backlog items in the Sprint, but regression testing is part of the Definition of Done. We have discussed with the Product Owner and during the Sprint we decided to change the Definition of Done to remove regression testing. Which two actions are appropriate in this situation? (Choose the best two answers)

Disagree with the decision and tell them that having a stringent Definition of Done is important for the quality of the product, and they need to follow it.

Ask the Developers and the Product Owner what problem they are going to solve by altering the Definition of Done during the Sprint to remove the regression testing. Will this raise transparency or improve quality?

Agree with the altering the Definition of Done, if both the Developers and Product Owner agree.

Ask the Developers and the Product Owner if removing regression testing from the Definition of Done allows the team to produce useful and valuable increments at the end of every Sprint.

29 / 30

Five new Scrum teams are being formed by a company to work on a single product. Several future team members inquire about the Scrum Master's role in coordinating work among the various Scrum teams. What should the Scrum Master do next? (Choose the best answer)

Advise the teams to minimize dependencies by working on separate development branches and integrating at the end of four Sprint cycles.

Teach them that it is their responsibility to form the teams such that each team will have the necessary skills, knowledge, and competencies to create an integrated Increment by the end of every Sprint.

Teach the Product Owner to collaborate with the technical leads to order the Product Backlog in such a way that there is no technical or development overlap during a Sprint.

Visit the five Scrum teams daily to ensure alignment and that all Sprint Backlogs remain synchronized.

At the end of Sprint Planning, collect all Sprint tasks and create a consolidated plan for the entire Sprint.

30 / 30

At Sprint Planning, the Developers are not able to forecast the number of Product Backlog items they can do in the upcoming Sprint due to unclear requirements. The Product Owner, however, was able to clearly define the business objective he hopes to achieve in the Sprint. Which of the following two actions would you support? (Choose the best two answers)

The Developers forecast the most likely Product Backlog items to meet the business objective and create a Sprint Backlog based on an initial design and plan that is likely. Once the timebox for the Sprint Planning meeting is over, they start the implementation and continue to analyze, decompose, and create additional functionality during the Sprint.

If everyone agrees, the Sprint Planning can be extended until the Developers forecast enough Product Backlog items before starting the implementation. They should be able to do it because they self-manage their work.

Allow the Developers as much time as they need to review the Product Backlog items before reconvening with the Product Owner when they're confident enough to make a Sprint forecast.

They'll talk about why this happened in the upcoming Sprint Retrospective and what changes they'll make to make it less likely to happen again.

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