SSM Defining the Scrum Master / Team Coach Role Practice Question
Marcus is the Scrum Master / Team Coach for the Identity Agile Team, which has just finished its first PI Planning on a new Agile Release Train. He wants to establish practices that build the team's self-management over the coming Iterations. Which TWO actions best support this goal? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is equating helpfulness with control, so options that have the coach do more for the team look supportive even though they quietly strip the team of ownership.
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
✓
Facilitate the Iteration Retrospective so the team identifies and owns its own improvement actions.
Self-management is built when the team owns its improvement actions and its decision-making norms. Facilitating the Retrospective and coaching working agreements both transfer ownership to the team, while assigning roles, maintaining the board, or selecting Stories keep authority with the coach. The Scrum Master / Team Coach grows capability by designing conditions for the team to decide, not by deciding for them.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Take ownership of updating the team's Iteration board daily so it stays accurate for ART-level reporting.
Why it's wrong here
Owning the board makes the coach a workflow administrator and removes the team's responsibility for transparency. In SAFe, the team is accountable for keeping its own information visible so that ART-level reporting is trustworthy. A coach who maintains the board also becomes a bottleneck and can mask the team's real progress or struggles. Transparency is a team behavior, not a service the coach performs for them.
- ✗
Assign each team member a specific role in every team event so responsibilities are always covered.
Why it's wrong here
Assigning roles unilaterally shifts decision-making back to the coach and undercuts self-management. SAFe teams are expected to organize their own work and decide how to run their events. Fixed assignments also reduce flexibility when team composition or workload changes. Coaching is about growing capability, not about the Scrum Master / Team Coach allocating who does what inside the team's own ceremonies.
- ✓
Facilitate the Iteration Retrospective so the team identifies and owns its own improvement actions.
Why this is correct
This is correct because the Retrospective is the team's own inspect-and-adapt event. By facilitating rather than directing, the Scrum Master / Team Coach helps the team generate and commit to improvements they own. Self-management grows when the team, not the coach, decides what to change. It also reinforces the SAFe principle of applying cadence and synchronization to continuous improvement.
- ✗
Decide which Stories the team should pull next based on the ART's highest-priority Features.
Why it's wrong here
Prioritizing and selecting Stories is the Product Owner's domain with the team, not the Scrum Master / Team Coach's. When the coach starts assigning work, the team loses ownership of its commitments and stops practicing the trade-off thinking that self-management requires. The coach should help the team understand priorities and dependencies, but should never take over the selection decision itself.
- ✓
Coach the team to reach agreements about how they will make decisions and resolve conflicts without escalation.
Why this is correct
This is correct because explicit working agreements and decision-making norms are the scaffolding of self-management. When a team knows how it will decide and disagree, it stops routing every issue through the coach. The Scrum Master / Team Coach's role is to help the team build those agreements and then step back, which is exactly how SAFe expects a Team Coach to develop a high-performing team.
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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.