SSM Practice Test 11 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A team has consistently high quality but is struggling to meet the agreed-upon PI objectives due to scope creep. What should the Scrum Master do?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a discussion on the impact of scope creep on iteration goals.. Scope creep during an iteration undermines the team's ability to meet the commitment made during PI planning. The Scrum Master must coach the Product Owner and the team on the importance of adhering to the iteration goals and the impact of adding unplanned work. This maintains the integrity of the team's commitment and ensures the ART can rely on the team's output for overall PI success.

Answer

Allow the scope creep to continue as long as quality remains high.

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Ask the team to work overtime to accommodate the extra work.

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Take over the management of the team's backlog from the Product Owner.

Question 2

At the Iteration Review, a key stakeholder expresses deep dissatisfaction because a delivered feature does not function the way they envisioned, despite meeting all written acceptance criteria. What should the Scrum Master facilitate to prevent this in future iterations?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate ongoing stakeholder engagement and encourage the Product Owner to involve stakeholders in refinement sessions.. Misalignment between stakeholder expectations and team output indicates a breakdown in continuous engagement and feedback loops. The Scrum Master should facilitate closer collaboration between the Product Owner, stakeholders, and the team throughout the iteration, rather than waiting until the formal review.

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Bar the dissatisfied stakeholder from attending future Iteration Review meetings to avoid negative feedback.

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Rewrite all future acceptance criteria yourself to ensure stakeholders never complain again.

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File a formal complaint against the stakeholder with the Agile Program Management Office.

Question 3

Refer to the exhibit. Given these findings, which action should the Scrum Master prioritize to improve team flow?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a discussion on how to protect the team from mid-iteration requests and pull testing earlier.. The Scrum Master must address the root causes of flow disruption. By focusing on the mid-iteration requests, the team can stabilize their work-in-progress, which directly impacts their ability to complete testing on time. Addressing the stand-up duration is important, but flow stability is a higher priority because it directly impacts the team's ability to meet the Iteration Goal and quality standards.

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Implement a strict rule that no new work can be added after the planning session.

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Enforce a timebox of 15 minutes for the Daily Stand-up and cut off any long discussions.

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Ask the team to move testing tasks to the start of the iteration to avoid delays.

Question 4

Which TWO of the following are the primary responsibilities of the Scrum Master during the Iteration Planning meeting?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate the process to ensure the team plans effectively within the timebox.. The Scrum Master acts as a facilitator to ensure the planning process remains on track, respects the timebox, and results in a realistic, agreed-upon plan. By focusing the team on capacity and the goal, the Scrum Master prevents common pitfalls like over-commitment or lack of focus, which is essential for ensuring the team is set up for success at the start of every iteration.

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Prioritize the product backlog items for the team.

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Assign tasks to team members based on their specific technical skills.

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Define the acceptance criteria for all user stories in the iteration.

Question 5

A Scrum Master notices that the System Demo is frequently delayed because teams are struggling to integrate their code at the end of the iteration. What is the best way to support this ART event?

Accepted Answer

Encourage the team to adopt Continuous Integration and align on integration points.. The System Demo relies on the ability to show integrated work from all teams on the Agile Release Train. If integration is failing, the Scrum Master must advocate for technical practices like Continuous Integration and more frequent synchronization to ensure the demo remains a viable mechanism for gathering stakeholder feedback and measuring progress.

Answer

Suggest moving the System Demo to every other iteration to allow more time.

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Ask the Product Owner to demo only the features that are fully completed.

Answer

Request that the System Architect takes over the integration responsibilities.

Question 6

During the weekly Scrum of Scrums, the Scrum Master identifies that multiple teams are blocked by the same shared service team. What should the Scrum Master do?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate an immediate meeting between the RTE and the Shared Service manager.. The Scrum of Scrums is designed to identify and resolve cross-team impediments that affect the ART's ability to deliver. When a shared service becomes a bottleneck for multiple teams, it indicates a systemic issue that needs higher-level intervention. The Scrum Master must ensure this is visible to the Release Train Engineer for immediate resolution.

Answer

Escalate the issue directly to the Business Owners for priority adjustment.

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Tell the teams to wait until the next PI to address the shared service work.

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Instruct the teams to re-prioritize their own backlogs to avoid the shared service.

Question 7

A Scrum Master on an Agile Release Train observes that the team's Daily Stand-up has become a status report to the Scrum Master, lasting 30 minutes, with each developer giving a detailed account of tasks. The team is also skipping the Iteration Review and Retrospective because 'there is too much delivery pressure.' What should the Scrum Master do to introduce Scrum correctly?

Accepted Answer

Refocus the Daily Stand-up on inspecting progress toward the iteration goal and re-establish the Iteration Review and Retrospective as non-negotiable Scrum events.. In Scrum within SAFe, the Daily Stand-up exists so the team can inspect progress toward the iteration goal and adapt its plan, and the Iteration Review and Retrospective provide essential inspection and adaptation at the team level. Refocusing the stand-up and restoring the missing events keeps the team aligned with Scrum while supporting the ART's need for transparency and flow.

Answer

Replace the Daily Stand-up with a written status email so the team can save time for delivery work.

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Ask the Release Train Engineer to attend the Daily Stand-up and enforce a strict 15-minute timebox for the team.

Answer

Cancel the Iteration Review and Retrospective permanently and rely on the ART's System Demo and Inspect and Adapt instead.

Question 8

During Iteration Planning, the team is struggling to estimate a complex user story. A senior developer insists on using a precise hour-based estimate, while other team members prefer relative sizing with story points. What should the Scrum Master do?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a discussion about estimation techniques, explain the benefits of relative sizing, and guide the team to agree on a consistent approach.. The Scrum Master facilitates effective Iteration Planning by helping the team agree on estimation practices. When a disagreement arises, coaching the team on relative sizing and guiding them to a consistent approach builds self-management and improves planning. Endorsing one person's method or dictating a solution would undermine team ownership. Facilitation ensures all perspectives are heard while moving toward a practice that supports reliable, value-focused planning.

Answer

Support the senior developer's approach because their experience makes hour-based estimates more accurate for complex work.

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Suggest that the team skip estimating this story and simply break it down into smaller tasks during the Iteration.

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Decide that the team must use story points and instruct the senior developer to follow the team's decision without further debate.

Question 9

During the daily stand-up, a developer states they are blocked because an external vendor has not delivered an API specification. The Scrum Master notices this is the third consecutive day this impediment has been raised without resolution. What immediate action should the Scrum Master take?

Accepted Answer

Take ownership of the impediment, escalate it through appropriate ART channels, and coordinate with procurement or management to unblock it.. When an impediment persists across multiple daily stand-ups and is outside the team's ability to resolve, the Scrum Master must take direct ownership of escalating and removing it. Leaving external blockers unaddressed damages team momentum and demonstrates poor servant leadership. The Scrum Master should leverage their organizational network and escalation channels to engage the vendor management team.

Answer

Tell the developer to call the vendor directly and negotiate a contractual penalty clause to force faster delivery.

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Advise the team to wait patiently for the vendor to respond while pausing all work on dependent backlog items indefinitely.

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Remove the dependent backlog items from the iteration entirely and replace them with unrelated technical debt tasks.

Question 10

Priya is the Scrum Master / Team Coach for the Payments Agile Team in a SAFe ART. During a mid-Iteration check-in, she notices that the team's Iteration Burndown is trending nearly flat while the team reports being 'very busy.' When she asks about the flow of work, several members describe being pulled into unplanned production support, ad hoc requests from the System Architect, and a compliance audit. No one has updated the team board or raised the issue in the Team Sync. What should Priya do first to fulfill her role as Scrum Master / Team Coach?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a team discussion to make the unplanned work visible on the team board, quantify its capacity impact, and help the team decide how to protect the Iteration Goal.. The Scrum Master / Team Coach serves the team by helping it make work and impediments visible, then supporting the team in deciding how to respond. Unplanned work that is invisible on the board distorts the team's understanding of capacity and flow. Surfacing it lets the team quantify the impact, involve the Product Owner in scope trade-offs, and decide whether to raise a systemic impediment. Escalating, gatekeeping, or extending the Iteration all bypass the team's self-management.

Answer

Escalate the unplanned work to the Release Train Engineer and ask that the System Architect stop contacting the team directly.

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Instruct the team to stop accepting any work that is not on the Iteration Backlog and personally turn away the System Architect and audit requests.

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Extend the Iteration by one week so the team can complete both the planned Stories and the unplanned support work without renegotiating scope.

Question 11

A SAFe Scrum Master / Team Coach is facilitating a team's first PI Planning event. The team is struggling to define their Iteration Goals and identify dependencies. Which TWO actions should the Scrum Master / Team Coach take to best support the team? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Coach the team to break down Features into Stories and define clear Iteration Goals before finalizing PI Objectives.. The Scrum Master / Team Coach supports PI Planning by coaching the team on breaking down work and defining Iteration Goals, and by facilitating dependency identification with other teams. These actions build the team's capability and ensure alignment with the ART, while keeping ownership with the team.

Answer

Delay dependency mapping until after PI Planning to avoid disrupting the team's flow during the event.

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Instruct the Product Owner to write the PI Objectives on behalf of the team to save time.

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Take over the team's planning session to ensure the PI Objectives are aligned with the portfolio strategy.

Question 12

A Scrum Master / Team Coach is facilitating the team's first PI Planning event. The team has drafted their Iteration goals but is unsure how to make their PI Objectives measurable. What should the Scrum Master do first to help the team improve their PI Objectives?

Accepted Answer

Coach the team to write PI Objectives that describe the business value and include measurable outcomes so progress can be assessed.. PI Objectives are team-authored statements of intended value and measurable outcomes for the PI. The Scrum Master / Team Coach facilitates the team in writing them so they reflect business value and can be assessed. Coaching the team to use outcome-oriented, measurable language directly addresses their uncertainty and builds ownership, rather than shifting authorship or adding unrelated activities.

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Ask the Release Train Engineer to assign business value points to each objective before the team finalizes them.

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Have the team list every feature from the program backlog as an objective so nothing is missed.

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Instruct the Product Owner to write the PI Objectives on behalf of the team to ensure alignment with the program backlog.

Question 13

An Agile Team is consistently able to meet its Iteration Goals, but the team's Product Owner complains that the team is not delivering the highest business value each Iteration. The team's backlog is groomed and stories are well-defined. As the Scrum Master / Team Coach, what is the most effective first step to address this?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a session with the Product Owner and team to review the team backlog ordering and ensure it reflects the latest business priorities.. The Scrum Master / Team Coach is a servant leader who facilitates the team's progress. When the team meets goals but delivers low value, the likely cause is backlog ordering. Facilitating a joint review with the Product Owner and team ensures alignment on priorities without disrupting the Iteration. This approach respects the Product Owner's role while fostering collaboration.

Answer

Instruct the team to stop working on their current Iteration backlog and immediately re-plan the remaining work to focus on higher-value items.

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Ask the Product Owner to reprioritize the team backlog without involving the team, since the Product Owner owns backlog ordering.

Answer

Escalate the issue to the Release Train Engineer, as the Product Owner is ultimately responsible for value delivery.

Question 14

A SAFe Scrum Master / Team Coach notices that the Agile Team's Iteration Retrospective has become a status meeting where members simply report what they did, and no improvement actions are identified. The team has been together for six months and is generally high-performing. What should the Scrum Master do first to restore the Retrospective's improvement focus?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate the Retrospective using a structured format such as Start-Stop-Continue, and ask the team to identify one or two actionable improvements to carry into the next Iteration.. The Scrum Master / Team Coach is accountable for facilitating team events and coaching the team toward continuous improvement. When a Retrospective drifts into status reporting, the appropriate first step is to reintroduce structure and help the team identify actionable improvements. This preserves team ownership and directly addresses the root cause without escalating or bypassing the team's self-management.

Answer

Escalate to the Release Train Engineer that the team's Retrospectives are ineffective and request that the RTE attend the next Retrospective to observe.

Answer

Cancel the Retrospective for the next Iteration and use the time for additional backlog refinement, since the team is already high-performing and does not need improvement.

Answer

Ask the Product Owner to lead the Retrospective and prioritize improvement items based on business value, ensuring alignment with the program's priorities.

Question 15

During an Iteration Retrospective, several team members say they are unsure who to approach when they need help removing an impediment because the Scrum Master/Team Coach is frequently away supporting the Agile Release Train. What is the most effective action for the Scrum Master/Team Coach to take?

Accepted Answer

Establish a visible impediment escalation path with a named backup facilitator so the team can keep flow when you are supporting the ART.. The team's real problem is uncertainty about how to get help when the coach is occupied with ART-level work. A visible escalation path plus a named backup keeps impediments moving without forcing the coach to abandon train responsibilities. This balances the dual accountability of serving the team and the wider Agile Release Train.

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Ask the Product Owner to take over impediment removal because they own the team backlog and know the stakeholders best.

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Instruct the team to log every impediment in the team backlog as a Story and let the Release Train Engineer prioritize them.

Answer

Stop attending ART-level events so you are always available to the team and can personally remove every impediment.