SSM Supporting Team Events Practice Question
During an Iteration Retrospective, the Agile Team agrees on an improvement action to pair-program on all complex stories in the next iteration. Two iterations later, the Scrum Master observes that the practice was abandoned after the first week and the same quality issues have returned. What should the Scrum Master do to support the team's improvement process?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is treating a dropped retrospective action as a compliance problem to be enforced or escalated rather than a learning opportunity for the team.
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
✓
Bring the observation to the next retrospective and facilitate a discussion about what made the action hard to sustain, then help the team adjust or replace it.
Retrospective actions are experiments, and some will not survive contact with reality. The Scrum Master supports continuous improvement by helping the team inspect why an action did not stick and adapt it in the next retrospective. This keeps ownership with the team, avoids coercion or escalation, and turns a failed action into a learning opportunity that strengthens the team's ability to improve how it works.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Reinstate pair programming immediately by mandating it in the team's working agreements and monitoring compliance daily.
Why it's wrong here
Mandating the practice and monitoring daily compliance turns the Scrum Master into an enforcer and removes the team's ownership of its improvement. It also assumes the original action was the right one, when the team may need a different solution. Coercion can produce superficial compliance without addressing the root cause, and it undermines the self-management that SAFe teams rely on for sustainable improvement.
- ✗
Document the abandoned action in the team's metrics dashboard so stakeholders can see that the team failed to improve.
Why it's wrong here
Publishing a failure on a stakeholder dashboard punishes the team for an honest improvement attempt and discourages future experimentation. Retrospective actions are internal team commitments, not performance reports for stakeholders. Using them as accountability metrics creates fear and reduces the psychological safety needed for genuine reflection. The Scrum Master should help the team learn privately, not expose its struggles to external scrutiny.
- ✓
Bring the observation to the next retrospective and facilitate a discussion about what made the action hard to sustain, then help the team adjust or replace it.
Why this is correct
Improvement actions often fail because they were not specific, owned, or realistic. Raising the observation in the next retrospective lets the team inspect why the action did not stick and adapt it, which is the essence of continuous improvement. The Scrum Master facilitates this reflection rather than enforcing the practice, preserving team ownership while ensuring the team learns from the outcome and adjusts its approach.
- ✗
Escalate to the Release Train Engineer that the team is not following its own retrospective actions so the RTE can intervene.
Why it's wrong here
Escalating a team-level improvement issue to the Release Train Engineer bypasses the team's ability to solve its own problems and can damage trust. The RTE supports the train's execution, but a dropped retrospective action is a team matter best handled within the team's own inspect-and-adapt cycle. Escalation should be reserved for impediments the team cannot resolve, not for routine follow-through on internal improvements.
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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.