SSM Defining the Scrum Master / Team Coach Role Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  Assign the facilitation duty to the most senior developer on the team, since seniority ensures the stand-up stays focused and on time.

  Why it's wrong here

  Assigning the duty by seniority makes the coach the decision-maker for a team working agreement and equates tenure with facilitation skill. The Scrum Master / Team Coach develops the team's ability to self-organize, including deciding how it runs its own events. Handing down this choice removes a small but real opportunity for the team to practice shared ownership and may also concentrate influence in one person.

• ✓

  Help the team establish a working agreement for rotating facilitation, and coach individuals as needed so the rotation is effective.

  Why this is correct

  The Scrum Master / Team Coach serves the team by helping it create its own working agreements and then building the skills to honor them. A facilitated conversation about rotation keeps the decision with the team, spreads facilitation experience across members, and develops the self-management SAFe relies on. Coaching individuals afterward ensures the rotation actually works rather than becoming a formality.

• ✗

  Ask the Product Owner to facilitate the Daily Stand-up, since the Product Owner already attends and can keep the team aligned to priorities.

  Why it's wrong here

  Handing stand-up facilitation to the Product Owner blurs accountabilities and can turn a team synchronization event into a status report to the Product Owner. The Daily Stand-up exists for the team to plan its day and surface impediments, not to update the Product Owner. This choice also does not resolve the underlying issue, which is the team's inability to agree on its own working agreement.

• ✗

  Facilitate every Daily Stand-up yourself so the team can focus purely on technical work and avoid the coordination overhead.

  Why it's wrong here

  Taking over facilitation permanently makes the coach a required participant and creates dependency rather than capability. The Daily Stand-up is the team's event, and the Scrum Master / Team Coach should teach facilitation skills and then step back. Owning it indefinitely also hides team dysfunction, because the coach absorbs the coordination problems the stand-up is meant to surface and resolve.