SSM Introducing Scrum in SAFe Practice Question
A newly formed SAFe team has just started its first iteration. The Scrum Master notices that the Product Owner is writing every User Story, estimating it, and assigning it directly to individual developers before Iteration Planning begins. Team members spend planning meetings passively receiving work. What should the Scrum Master do first to introduce Scrum correctly in this SAFe context?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is assuming the Scrum Master should fix the problem by taking control of planning or replacing the Product Owner, when the correct first step is coaching the Product Owner and the team toward self-management.
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 Product Owner to bring prioritized User Stories with acceptance criteria into Iteration Planning and let the team self-manage estimation and task ownership.
The Product Owner should bring a prioritized Team Backlog to Iteration Planning, and the team should decide how much work to pull and how to organize it. Coaching the Product Owner away from pre-assigning and pre-estimating restores the self-management that Scrum requires at the team level in SAFe, while still respecting the Product Owner's authority over content and priority.
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 Product Owner to bring prioritized User Stories with acceptance criteria into Iteration Planning and let the team self-manage estimation and task ownership.
Why this is correct
In Scrum within SAFe, the Product Owner owns the Team Backlog content and priority, while the team owns how much work to pull and who does what. Coaching the Product Owner to stop assigning and estimating preserves the team's self-management, which is essential for producing a potentially releasable Increment each iteration.
- ✗
Let the current approach continue for several iterations so the team can compare velocity before changing anything.
Why it's wrong here
Allowing command-and-control planning to persist reinforces the wrong behavior and makes it harder to change later. Scrum in SAFe expects teams to self-manage their work during the iteration. Waiting several iterations would waste time, distort velocity data, and teach the team that passive receipt of assignments is acceptable.
- ✗
Take over facilitation of Iteration Planning and personally assign each User Story to the developer with the most available capacity.
Why it's wrong here
The Scrum Master facilitates events but must not become the work dispatcher. Assigning stories personally replaces team self-management with a coordinator role, which contradicts Scrum principles. It also undermines the team's ownership of the Sprint Backlog and their ability to commit to a shared iteration goal.
- ✗
Ask the Release Train Engineer to reassign the Product Owner to a different team where planning is already mature.
Why it's wrong here
Reassigning the Product Owner does not teach the team or the Product Owner how Scrum works in SAFe. It avoids the coaching responsibility of the Scrum Master and may destabilize the team. The Product Owner behavior is a common new-team anti-pattern that should be corrected through coaching, not by removing the person from the team.
About these practice questions
This SSM question is part of Courseiva's 385-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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 Scaled Agile exam blueprint
This SSM practice question is part of Courseiva's free Scaled Agile 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 SSM exam.