CAPM Agile Frameworks and Methodologies Practice Question
An organization is transitioning from a traditional project management approach to Scrum. The project manager has been reassigned as a Scrum Master but continues to assign tasks to team members and track individual progress. The team is becoming demotivated. What should the Scrum Master do differently?
⚠ Common exam trap
CAPM often tests the misconception that a Scrum Master is a renamed project manager who assigns work, so candidates pick options that preserve task assignment or status reporting instead of coaching self-organization.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Coach the team to self-organize and take ownership of their work
A Scrum Master is a servant-leader who coaches the team toward self-organization and cross-functionality, not a task-assigning manager. By continuing to assign tasks and track individual progress, the project manager is preserving command-and-control behaviors that undermine the team's ownership and intrinsic motivation. The correct shift is to coach the team to pull work from the Sprint Backlog, self-organize around the Sprint Goal, and hold each other accountable as a collective.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Coach the team to self-organize and take ownership of their work
Why this is correct
A Scrum Master must coach self-organisation, not direct work. Assigning tasks and tracking individuals sustains command-and-control, which demotivates the team. Coaching ownership satisfies the transition constraint by shifting authority to the team, letting them pull and manage their own work.
- ✗
Continue assigning tasks but explain that it is necessary for accountability
Why it's wrong here
Retaining task assignment and individual progress tracking preserves the directive behaviour causing demotivation, contradicting Scrum's self-managing team principle. It tempts when accountability genuinely requires named ownership, such as regulated deliverables, but that is not this transition's blocker.
- ✗
Switch to Kanban to reduce process overhead
Why it's wrong here
Kanban visualises flow and limits work in progress but does not address the Scrum Master assigning tasks and tracking individuals, which is the actual demotivation cause. It tempts when the real problem is process overhead or unpredictable priorities, where Kanban's continuous flow would genuinely fit.
- ✗
Ask the team to write daily status reports to increase visibility
Why it's wrong here
Daily written status reports reinforce the command-and-control tracking the team is reacting against, rather than shifting to self-management and the Daily Scrum. It tempts in distributed or low-trust teams where asynchronous visibility is genuinely needed, but here it compounds the demotivation.
About these practice questions
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official PMI exam blueprint
This CAPM practice question is part of Courseiva's free PMI certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CAPM exam.