SSM Practice Test 24 — 15 Questions

Question 1

As Scrum Master for Team Delta in a SAFe ART, you are facilitating the team's preparation for the upcoming System Demo. The Product Owner wants to show a polished, fully integrated feature, but the team has only completed three of five stories needed for that feature. What should you advise the team to do?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Demonstrate the completed stories and any partial functionality, being transparent about what is not yet integrated.. The System Demo is an integrated demo of the current system at the end of each Iteration. Teams should demonstrate completed work and be transparent about incomplete or partially integrated functionality. This approach provides accurate feedback, surfaces integration issues, and supports the ART's ability to inspect and adapt. Postponing, hiding, or replacing the demo with slides undermines the event's purpose.

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Demonstrate only the completed stories and omit any mention of the incomplete stories to avoid confusion.

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Ask the Product Owner to present a slide deck describing the feature instead of a live demo.

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Postpone the team's demo until all five stories are complete and the feature is fully integrated.

Question 2

A Scrum Master is facilitating the team's Daily Stand-up. One team member reports that they are blocked because they are waiting on a test environment that another team controls. What should the Scrum Master do to best support the team?

Accepted Answer

Note the impediment, help the team member identify who can unblock it, and follow up after the stand-up to ensure the dependency is being resolved.. The Scrum Master supports the team by capturing the impediment, helping the team member find the right path to resolution, and following up after the stand-up so the event stays focused and timeboxed. This balances the need for a brief Daily Stand-up with the Scrum Master's accountability for removing blockers and fostering self-management and cross-team collaboration.

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Ask the team member to work on a different backlog item until the test environment becomes available, and consider the matter closed.

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Tell the team member that impediments should be raised outside the stand-up so the event is not derailed by dependency discussions.

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Immediately leave the stand-up to contact the other team's manager and demand that the test environment be provided right away.

Question 3

A Product Owner on a newly formed SAFe Scrum team frequently changes acceptance criteria on user stories mid-iteration, causing developer confusion and incomplete stories at the end of the iteration. How should the Scrum Master coach the Product Owner and the team to resolve this issue?

Accepted Answer

Coach the Product Owner on the importance of stabilizing acceptance criteria before iteration planning and establishing a clear Definition of Ready.. Stability during an iteration is critical for team focus and predictability. While refinement is ongoing, altering acceptance criteria after work has commenced disrupts development and leads to unfinished work. The Scrum Master must coach the Product Owner on the value of a frozen iteration scope and guide the team to establish clear criteria for when a story is ready for development.

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Instruct the Product Owner that all backlog items must be permanently frozen three months prior to the start of any Program Increment.

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Advise the development team to ignore all future requests from the Product Owner and build the software based on their own assumptions.

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Assume the role of Product Owner and take over all backlog refinement and acceptance criteria writing responsibilities from the current Product Owner.

Question 4

An Agile Team is preparing for its Iteration Review. The Product Owner has invited several key stakeholders, but the team is unsure how to structure the event to maximize feedback. What is the Scrum Master's primary responsibility in this situation?

Accepted Answer

Ensure the team demonstrates a working, integrated increment and facilitates stakeholder engagement to gather feedback.. The Scrum Master's primary responsibility during the Iteration Review is to facilitate the event so the team can demonstrate a working increment and engage stakeholders for feedback. The team, not the Scrum Master, presents the work. Limiting or pre-collecting feedback undermines the event's purpose of inspection and adaptation.

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Limit stakeholder participation to a brief Q&A at the end so the team can focus on demonstrating features.

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Collect written feedback from stakeholders in advance and distribute it to the team after the event to avoid disruptions.

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Prepare and deliver the presentation on behalf of the team to ensure stakeholders receive a polished, consistent message.

Question 5

A Scrum Master joins an Agile Release Train where several teams have adopted Scrum ceremonies but still rely on a separate integration team to combine their work at the end of the Program Increment. The teams pass all their iteration reviews individually but the system demo repeatedly reveals broken integration. What should the Scrum Master focus on first?

Accepted Answer

Coach the teams to integrate and verify their combined work every iteration so the system demo reflects continuous integration rather than a late handoff. The recurring failure at the system demo shows that integration is being deferred to a separate team instead of being owned continuously by the teams that build the solution. Coaching teams to integrate and verify their combined work every iteration restores early feedback and aligns with SAFe's expectation that the ART demonstrates an integrated increment at each system demo. More meetings, a hardening iteration, or backlog reshuffling all leave the root behavior intact.

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Increase the frequency of the Scrum of Scrums so the integration team receives earlier notice of completed work

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Ask the Product Management group to reorder the Program Backlog so dependent features land in the same iteration for all teams

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Recommend that the Release Train Engineer add a hardening iteration at the end of the Program Increment for the integration team

Question 6

Which TWO of the following are primary responsibilities of a Scrum Master within a SAFe context when acting as a servant leader?

Accepted Answer

Removing impediments to the team's progress.. Scrum Masters in SAFe are servant leaders who support the team's self-organization and remove impediments that hinder flow. By facilitating team events and coaching them on SAFe practices, the Scrum Master ensures the team maintains its rhythm and delivers value effectively. These responsibilities are vital because they enable the team to focus on building high-quality solutions while adhering to the broader ART's operational model.

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Making all technical decisions for the team to ensure standard compliance.

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Writing all user stories for the team to save time during the iteration.

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Acting as the primary manager of the team members' personal careers.

Question 7

A SAFe Scrum Master / Team Coach is coaching a newly formed Agile Team that is struggling to self-manage during Iteration execution. The team frequently waits for the Scrum Master to assign tasks and resolve blockers. Which TWO actions best fulfill the Scrum Master's role in building team self-management? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Coach the team to resolve its own impediments by asking guiding questions and escalating only when the team cannot remove a blocker within the Iteration.. Building self-management requires the Scrum Master / Team Coach to shift ownership of coordination and problem-solving to the team. Teaching the team to pull work from the Iteration Backlog and coaching them to resolve their own impediments are both servant-leader actions that develop capability. The other options create dependency on the Scrum Master, which is the opposite of the role's intent.

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Attend every Daily Stand-up and provide a summary of each member's progress to the Product Owner to keep stakeholders informed.

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Assign each Story to a specific team member during Iteration Planning to ensure clear accountability and reduce confusion about who is doing what.

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Take ownership of the team board and update Story status daily so the team can focus on development work without administrative overhead.

Question 8

As the Scrum Master for Team Golf, you are facilitating the team's preparation for the upcoming PI System Demo. The team has completed all their stories for the Iteration, but during a dry run, you notice that the integration with another team's component fails intermittently due to an environment configuration mismatch. What should you do first?

Accepted Answer

Work with the other team's Scrum Master to resolve the environment configuration mismatch before the demo.. The System Demo must run in an integrated environment that accurately represents the system. When an integration issue like an environment configuration mismatch is detected, the Scrum Master should collaborate with the other team's Scrum Master to resolve it before the demo. This ensures the demo provides valid feedback. Ignoring, canceling, or merely documenting the issue does not address the immediate need for a working demo.

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Cancel the team's portion of the System Demo and reschedule for the next Iteration.

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Document the configuration mismatch as a risk in the team's backlog and continue with the dry run.

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Proceed with the demo and hope the intermittent failure does not occur during the actual event.

Question 9

During the Inspect and Adapt problem-solving workshop, a team traces a recurring integration failure to a root cause of inconsistent interface contracts between two teams. The team wants to ensure the corrective action is durable. What is the most appropriate action for the Scrum Master to support?

Accepted Answer

Add a prioritized improvement backlog item that establishes and validates interface contracts through automated tests.. The Inspect and Adapt problem-solving workshop ends by generating corrective actions that are prioritized into the ART's improvement backlog and planned into the next PI. A durable fix for inconsistent interface contracts is to define them explicitly and enforce them with automated contract tests, which prevents the defect from recurring. This makes the improvement systemic rather than dependent on individual vigilance.

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Escalate the issue to the Release Train Engineer to mediate a permanent boundary between the two teams.

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Document the fix in a one-time email to both teams so they remember the correct interface.

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Assign one engineer to manually review all future integrations between the two teams.

Question 10

During a PI Planning session, a team discovers that a key dependency on another team will not be met within the proposed timeline. What is the most appropriate action for the Scrum Master to take?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a discussion between the teams to negotiate a solution.. The Scrum Master must facilitate communication between the involved teams to highlight the risk and seek a resolution. In SAFe, dependencies are tracked on the Program Board, and transparency is required to manage expectations. Proactive resolution is crucial because unresolved dependencies create bottlenecks that prevent teams from achieving their PI objectives and impact the reliability of the entire ART delivery plan.

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Ask the team to ignore the dependency and hope it resolves itself.

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Inform the Release Train Engineer (RTE) so they can address the dependency.

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Remove the dependent feature from the team's plan entirely.

Question 11

During the Problem-Solving Workshop of the Inspect and Adapt event, the ART identifies that a recurring root cause of defects is insufficient test data management. As the Scrum Master, what is the most appropriate action to support the ART in addressing this issue?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate the creation of improvement stories and ensure they are added to the Program Backlog for prioritization.. The Problem-Solving Workshop in the Inspect and Adapt event is designed to identify root causes and generate improvement stories. The Scrum Master facilitates this by helping the ART create specific, actionable improvement items and ensuring they enter the Program Backlog for prioritization. This approach ensures the improvements are owned by the ART and integrated into future planning, leading to sustainable systemic change.

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Ask the Release Train Engineer to assign a single team to own all test data management across the ART.

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Recommend that the ART immediately halt all testing until a centralized test data management tool is procured.

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Suggest that each team independently develop their own test data management solution without coordination.

Question 12

What is the primary purpose of the Iteration Review in a SAFe Scrum environment?

Accepted Answer

To demonstrate the working solution and gather feedback from key stakeholders.. The Iteration Review serves to demonstrate the increment of value produced during the iteration to stakeholders. It provides a feedback loop that validates the team's progress against the PI objectives. By gathering stakeholder input, the team can adjust their backlog and improve their future work, ensuring the solution remains aligned with customer needs and the overall vision.

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To provide a performance evaluation for each team member.

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To finalize the design documents for the next release.

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To decide which team members will be laid off.

Question 13

What is the main benefit of having a cross-functional team in SAFe?

Accepted Answer

It enables the team to deliver value independently and faster.. A cross-functional team possesses all the skills necessary to define, build, test, and deploy a feature from start to finish. This minimizes handoffs and wait times, which are the primary enemies of fast flow. By enabling the team to be self-sufficient, SAFe increases the speed of value delivery and allows the team to maintain a higher degree of focus and accountability for their outcomes.

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It allows individual team members to specialize deeply in one area.

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It eliminates the need for any external dependencies on other teams.

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It forces team members to do work they are not trained for.

Question 14

Which action should the Scrum Master take if a team member repeatedly misses the Daily Stand-up?

Accepted Answer

Discuss the impact of their absence on the team's ability to sync and solve blockers privately.. The Scrum Master must address the behavior in a private setting to understand the underlying issue without causing public embarrassment. Ensuring attendance is vital for team synchronization and transparency, but understanding the cause allows for a constructive resolution. This approach protects team dynamics and ensures that everyone remains aligned toward the common goals of the iteration while maintaining a respectful, professional, and collaborative environment.

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Call out the team member in front of the team to ensure accountability.

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Ask the Product Owner to remove the team member from the project for lack of commitment.

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Ignore the behavior if the team member completes their assigned tasks on time.

Question 15

A newly formed Scrum team in a SAFe Agile Release Train is holding its first Sprint Planning session. The Product Owner presents a large, complex feature that cannot be completed in a single iteration. The team is unsure how to proceed. As the Scrum Master, what should you advise the team to do first?

Accepted Answer

Break the feature into smaller, independently deliverable User Stories that fit within one iteration.. The correct approach is to decompose the feature into smaller user stories that can be completed within one iteration. This enables the team to deliver value incrementally and maintains the cadence of the Agile Release Train. The Scrum Master should coach the team on this practice rather than altering iteration length or reassigning work.

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Defer the feature to the next Program Increment and focus on smaller items.

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Extend the iteration length to two weeks so the entire feature can be completed.

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Ask the Release Train Engineer to assign the feature to a different team with more capacity.