CSM Practice Questions

Question 1

During a Sprint Planning event, the development team expresses concern that the Product Owner is pushing to include more user stories than their historical velocity suggests is feasible. As the Scrum Master, how should you facilitate this situation?

Accepted Answer

Coach the Product Owner and developers to collaboratively inspect past velocity and team capacity to negotiate a realistic commitment.. The Scrum Master must protect team sustainability while fostering collaboration. By coaching the Product Owner and developers to inspect capacity against historical data, the team can negotiate a realistic Sprint Backlog. This upholds empirical planning principles without undermining the Product Owner's accountability for maximizing value through the product backlog ordering.

Answer

Direct the Product Owner to immediately reduce the scope to match exact historical velocity to prevent team burnout.

Answer

Advise the development team to accept all requested stories and figure out how to work overtime to meet the sprint goal.

Answer

Take over Sprint Planning by selecting the user stories yourself based on your independent assessment of team capability.

Question 2

A stakeholder demands that the Scrum Master provide a detailed progress report at the end of every week. How should the Scrum Master respond?

Accepted Answer

Invite the stakeholder to the Sprint Review.. The Scrum Master must educate the stakeholder on the Scrum artifacts and the purpose of transparency. Providing a separate, manual report creates redundant effort and misaligns with Scrum's goal of using artifacts like the Burn-down chart or Product Backlog for progress tracking. This preserves the Scrum framework's integrity, ensuring that communication is transparent and consistent across the entire organization, rather than fragmented through unofficial channels.

Answer

Create the report to maintain good relations.

Answer

Ask the developers to include more detail in tasks.

Answer

Tell the stakeholder they are not allowed access.

Question 3

A Scrum Master is working with an organization that has a long history of blaming individuals for defects found in production. The organization now wants to adopt Scrum. Which action best demonstrates the Scrum Master serving the organization?

Accepted Answer

Encourage the organization to focus on the system and process rather than individual blame when defects are found.. The Scrum Master serves the organization by helping it create an environment where transparency and continuous improvement are possible. A blame culture discourages people from surfacing problems, which undermines Scrum's empirical approach. Coaching the organization to look at the system and process when defects occur helps build safety and supports the team's ability to inspect and adapt.

Answer

Suggest that the organization add a defect-tracking metric to each individual's performance review to increase accountability.

Answer

Advise the organization to hire a separate quality assurance department to find defects before release.

Answer

Recommend that the team stop reporting defects until the blame culture improves.

Question 4

During the Daily Scrum, a Developer begins a lengthy technical debate with the QA engineer regarding the root cause of a complex architectural bug. What is the most appropriate action for the Scrum Master?

Accepted Answer

Intervene immediately to remind the team that the Daily Scrum is for synchronization, and ask them to schedule a separate breakout session.. The Daily Scrum is a strict fifteen-minute timeboxed event for the Developers to synchronize activities and create a plan for the next twenty-four hours. Lengthy technical deep-dives derail the meeting and exclude other team members. The Scrum Master should remind the participants to park the discussion and schedule a separate follow-up session immediately after.

Answer

Allow the debate to continue until a definitive architectural consensus is reached, extending the Daily Scrum timebox accordingly.

Answer

Resolve the technical dispute personally by making a final architectural decision based on your past engineering experience.

Answer

Cancel the remainder of the Daily Scrum and instruct the entire team to join the impromptu technical troubleshooting session.

Question 5

How should a Scrum Master respond to an organizational request to switch to a 'Water-Scrum-Fall' model to meet strict audit requirements?

Accepted Answer

Collaborate with auditors to provide transparency via Scrum artifacts.. The Scrum Master must act as an advocate for the principles of Scrum. While meeting audit requirements is necessary, they should not compromise the integrity of the Scrum framework. By working with the audit team to find ways to satisfy requirements through transparency and empirical evidence rather than traditional documentation, the Scrum Master protects the team while ensuring the organization stays compliant with its legal obligations.

Answer

Agree to the model to ensure legal compliance for the firm.

Answer

Suggest replacing the auditors with agile coaches.

Answer

Ignore the request and continue working as a pure Scrum team.

Question 6

During a Sprint Planning event, the Developers realize they cannot deliver all selected Product Backlog items within the timebox due to a complex technical dependency. What is the most appropriate action for the Developers to take according to Scrum?

Accepted Answer

Collaborate with the Product Owner to renegotiate and adjust the scope of the Sprint Backlog until it fits the realistic capacity.. The Developers own the Sprint Backlog and are solely responsible for estimating their capacity and crafting the Sprint Goal. When they realize capacity is insufficient, they must collaborate with the Product Owner to adjust the scope of the Sprint Backlog before finalizing the plan, ensuring the Sprint Goal remains achievable without lowering quality standards or forcing unauthorized overtime.

Answer

Immediately appeal to management to extend the current Sprint duration to accommodate the newly discovered technical dependencies.

Answer

Commit to all items anyway, intending to work mandatory overtime hours to ensure complete delivery by the end of the Sprint.

Answer

Ask the Scrum Master to unilaterally remove the problematic Product Backlog items without consulting the Product Owner.

Question 7

A newly formed Scrum Team is experiencing intense interpersonal conflict during Daily Scrums, frequently devolving into finger-pointing regarding missed targets. The team looks to the Scrum Master to assign individual accountability and arbitrate disputes. What is the most effective coaching stance?

Accepted Answer

Coach the team to reflect on their collaboration agreements during the Retrospective and take ownership of their interpersonal dynamics.. Scrum Masters coach teams toward self-organization rather than acting as command-and-control managers who resolve conflicts or assign blame. By facilitating root-cause problem solving and encouraging direct peer communication, the Scrum Master builds sustainable psychological safety. This empowers the cross-functional group to address systemic impediments independently and mature their internal collaboration dynamics over time.

Answer

Act as an active mediator during every Daily Scrum to immediately shut down arguments and assign tasks to individual contributors.

Answer

Escalate the behavioral issues directly to the functional engineering managers to implement formal performance improvement plans.

Answer

Suspend the Daily Scrum event indefinitely until the developers complete mandatory corporate conflict resolution training sessions.

Question 8

During Product Backlog refinement, the Product Owner brings items that lack clear acceptance criteria and are too large to fit into a single Sprint. What is the most effective way for the Scrum Master to serve the Product Owner in this context?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate collaborative decomposition sessions and help the Product Owner understand how well-refined items improve flow and predictability.. The Scrum Master should coach the Product Owner on effective Product Backlog management practices, including defining clear slicing strategies and ensuring items meet a shared definition of ready before Sprint Planning. This intervention directly improves the flow of value and ensures the team can inspect and adapt efficiently during execution.

Answer

Cancel the refinement session immediately and rewrite all oversized backlog items personally to save valuable time for the team.

Answer

Allow the Development Team to break down the items arbitrarily during Sprint Planning without the Product Owner's direct involvement or input.

Answer

Force the Product Owner to adopt a strict mandatory template for every user story before scheduling any future refinement events.

Question 9

A Scrum Master learns that a key stakeholder outside the Scrum Team frequently contacts individual Developers directly to request small changes, bypassing the Product Owner. This causes confusion and disrupts the team's focus during the Sprint. What is the most appropriate action for the Scrum Master?

Accepted Answer

Coach the stakeholder and the Product Owner on the importance of a single Product Backlog and the Product Owner's role in ordering it.. The Scrum Master serves the organization by helping everyone understand Scrum roles and the importance of a single Product Backlog. When a stakeholder bypasses the Product Owner, the Scrum Master should coach both the stakeholder and the Product Owner on proper channels. This protects the team's focus and reinforces the Product Owner's accountability for ordering the backlog.

Answer

Ask the stakeholder to send all requests to you, and you will forward them to the Product Owner.

Answer

Tell the Developers to ignore all requests that do not come from the Product Owner.

Answer

Instruct the Developers to implement the stakeholder's requests immediately and inform the Product Owner afterward.

Question 10

A Scrum Master is invited to a quarterly budgeting meeting where department heads allocate funds to projects. The Scrum Master notices that the budget is allocated based on detailed project plans rather than product goals and empirical progress. What is the most appropriate way for the Scrum Master to serve the organization in this context?

Accepted Answer

Offer to present the Scrum Teams' Sprint Reviews and product metrics to help the department heads make more informed funding decisions.. The Scrum Master serves the organization by helping it understand and apply empirical approaches. In a budgeting meeting, offering Sprint Review data and product metrics provides real evidence of progress and value, which can inform funding decisions better than detailed project plans. This approach respects the department heads' authority while gently guiding them toward more agile governance.

Answer

Refuse to attend the meeting because budgeting is not part of the Scrum Master's accountabilities.

Answer

Criticize the department heads for not following Scrum principles in their budgeting process.

Answer

Create a detailed project plan for each Scrum Team and present it as the basis for future budgeting.

Question 11

An organization is transitioning from traditional project management to Scrum, and senior management is struggling to understand why Scrum Teams are self-organizing rather than assigned tasks by functional managers. As a Certified ScrumMaster, what is the best way to serve the organization in this situation?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate workshops for leadership to explain the empirical benefits of self-organization, servant leadership, and how psychological safety drives sustainable business value.. Coaching the organization toward self-organization requires active engagement with leadership to help them understand that Scrum shifts authority for how work gets done to the Scrum Team. True agility relies on intrinsic motivation and autonomy. By facilitating discussions and providing education on empirical process control, the ScrumMaster helps leadership transition from command-and-control to supportive servant leadership, ultimately building a healthier organizational ecosystem that enables Scrum Teams to deliver higher value safely and effectively.

Answer

Escalate the managers' behavior to the executive sponsor and request that management be formally prohibited from talking directly to developers during sprints.

Answer

Advise the developers to ignore management's task assignments and continue working autonomously without addressing the root cause of the misunderstanding.

Answer

Rewrite the organization's human resources policies to strip functional managers of their authority over team members and establish strict reporting boundaries.

Question 12

During a Sprint Planning event, the Developers realize they have overcommitted and selected more items from the Product Backlog than they can realistically complete. What is the most appropriate action according to Scrum rules?

Accepted Answer

The Developers collaborate with the Product Owner to adjust the selected Product Backlog items, reducing the scope to fit their actual capacity.. The Developers are solely responsible for sizing and selecting work during Sprint Planning based on their capacity. If they realize an overcommitment, they must collaborate with the Product Owner to adjust the Sprint Backlog scope before the meeting ends. This protects team sustainability and ensures a realistic Sprint Goal can be achieved without compromising quality.

Answer

The Scrum Master must unilaterally remove the lowest priority items from the Sprint Backlog to protect the team's velocity.

Answer

The team must extend the length of the Sprint to accommodate the extra work without altering the Product Backlog item selection.

Answer

The Product Owner cancels the Sprint immediately and calls an emergency planning session for the following morning.

Question 13

During the Sprint Retrospective, the team identifies that the Product Owner is consistently adding items to the Sprint Backlog mid-sprint. What is the correct way to address this?

Accepted Answer

The Scrum Master must facilitate a conversation about team focus.. The Sprint Backlog is the plan for the Sprint and should not be changed in a way that endangers the Sprint Goal. The Scrum Master must coach the Product Owner on the impact of changing the plan during the Sprint. This ensures that the team maintains a stable environment to meet their commitments and protects the integrity of the Scrum process.

Answer

The Developers should just ignore the new items.

Answer

The team should automatically increase their velocity.

Answer

The Developers should charge the Product Owner for overtime.

Question 14

During a Sprint, a stakeholder approaches a developer directly and asks for a small urgent modification to a user story currently in progress. What is the most appropriate action for the developer to take?

Accepted Answer

Direct the stakeholder to discuss the request with the Product Owner so it can be evaluated, prioritized, and added to the Product Backlog.. The developer should direct the stakeholder to the Product Owner, who is exclusively accountable for managing product backlog items and their ordering. Developers must protect the Sprint Backlog from mid-Sprint scope changes introduced outside the Scrum Team to maintain focus on the Sprint Goal. Engaging directly without the Product Owner risks undermining team predictability and introduces unmanaged scope creep into the active iteration.

Answer

Implement the modification immediately if it takes less than an hour to avoid unnecessary bureaucratic delay for the stakeholder.

Answer

Bring the request to the next Daily Scrum so the entire Scrum Team can vote on whether to swap out an existing backlog item.

Answer

Halt the current Sprint immediately, call an emergency Sprint Planning session, and rebuild the Sprint Backlog with the new requirement.

Question 15

An organization wants to adopt Scrum and asks who is responsible for helping employees and stakeholders understand and enact an empirical approach for complex work. Who serves this need?

Accepted Answer

The Scrum Master, by leading, training, and coaching the organization in its Scrum adoption.. The Scrum Master serves the organization by leading, training, and coaching it in Scrum adoption, helping employees and stakeholders understand and enact empiricism for complex work, and removing barriers between stakeholders and Scrum Teams. Product direction, delivery excellence, and optional external coaching do not carry this accountability.

Answer

The Product Owner, by communicating the product vision and backlog priorities to stakeholders.

Answer

An external agile coach, because Scrum adoption always requires outside expertise.

Answer

The Developers, by demonstrating working software and technical excellence during each Sprint.

Certified ScrumMaster CSM practice test

Three ways to study

Study CSM by domain

Study CSM by topic

Service to the Product Owner practice questions

Scrum Master Core Competencies practice questions

Scrum Team Roles and Accountabilities practice questions

Scrum Events practice questions

Service to the Scrum Team practice questions

Service to the Organization practice questions

CSM fundamentals practice questions

CSM scenario practice questions

CSM troubleshooting practice questions

Certified ScrumMaster practice questions