SSM Defining the Scrum Master / Team Coach Role Practice Question
A Scrum Master / Team Coach is supporting an Agile Team whose members consistently bypass the team's working agreements, arriving late to events and skipping refinement sessions. The team's Iteration Goals are slipping. Which TWO actions are most appropriate for the Scrum Master / Team Coach in this situation? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is reaching for enforcement mechanisms such as manager escalation or imposed rules when the coach's leverage comes from facilitating the team's own reflection and modeling the desired behavior.
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
✓
Model the expected behaviors yourself by arriving early and prepared to every event, and coach individual team members privately about the impact of their absence.
Coaching a team back to its working agreements happens through the team's own inspection forums and through modeling and private coaching, not through escalation or imposed rules. Raising the pattern in the Iteration Retrospective lets the team choose to change or recommit, while modeling behavior and coaching individuals addresses specific gaps with respect for the people involved. Both actions build durable self-management.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Rewrite the team's working agreements yourself with stricter rules and present them as non-negotiable so the team has clear boundaries.
Why it's wrong here
Imposing stricter agreements removes the team's authorship of its own norms, and norms people did not help create are rarely followed. The Scrum Master / Team Coach facilitates agreement-making; the team owns the result. This approach also sidesteps the retrospective conversation that would reveal why members are disengaging, leaving the underlying cause unaddressed while adding rules the team may quietly ignore.
- ✗
Document each missed agreement and submit the record to the team's functional manager so attendance expectations can be enforced through performance management.
Why it's wrong here
Escalating attendance to functional managers converts a team working agreement into a managerial mandate and undermines the team's ownership of its own norms. It also risks damaging the psychological safety the coach needs to address deeper causes such as workload or unclear priorities. Performance management may occasionally be warranted, but using it as the first response to missed working agreements is inconsistent with the coaching role.
- ✗
Suspend the team's refinement sessions until attendance improves, so the team experiences the consequences of skipping them.
Why it's wrong here
Cancelling refinement as a punishment removes a practice the team needs to prepare Stories and improve flow, which would likely worsen the slipping Iteration Goals. Withholding a valuable event to force compliance is coercive and treats a symptom rather than the cause. The coach should instead help the team understand why refinement matters and how its absence affects their ability to meet goals.
- ✓
Model the expected behaviors yourself by arriving early and prepared to every event, and coach individual team members privately about the impact of their absence.
Why this is correct
Servant leadership includes modeling the behaviors the team has agreed to, and private coaching respects individuals while addressing specific gaps. Arriving early and prepared demonstrates commitment without lecturing, and one-on-one conversations let the coach understand root causes such as overload or unclear expectations. Together with the retrospective discussion, this builds the team's ownership rather than imposing compliance from outside.
- ✓
Raise the pattern of missed agreements with the team in the Iteration Retrospective and help the team decide whether to change or recommit to the agreements.
Why this is correct
The Iteration Retrospective is the team's own forum for inspecting how it works, and surfacing the pattern there keeps ownership with the team. Helping the team decide whether an agreement should be changed or recommitted turns a compliance problem into a conscious choice. This is coaching rather than enforcement, and it directly addresses the slipping Iteration Goals by improving the team's shared discipline.
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 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.