CSM Service to the Organization Practice Question
Exhibit
EXHIBIT: Organizational KPI Dashboard - Team 1: 95% Code Coverage - Team 2: 90% Code Coverage - Team 3: 85% Code Coverage - Goal: 100% coverage by next quarter.
Refer to the exhibit. The organization is pressuring all teams to reach 100% code coverage. How should the Scrum Master respond?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates choose answers that advise the team to blindly comply with management metrics or mandate the tool usage, ignoring the Scrum Master's duty to protect the empirical process.
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
✓
Challenge the metric-driven goal with leadership.
A Scrum Master serves the organization by ensuring that quality is built in, but also by preventing 'metric-driven' development that ignores the business context. While code coverage is a useful internal metric, mandating a universal, rigid target can lead to 'gaming' the metric. The Scrum Master must help the organization understand that value and quality are multifaceted, and teams should choose practices that maximize overall outcome.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Ensure all teams prioritize coverage above new features.
Why it's wrong here
Mandating a focus on a single metric at the expense of product value misrepresents the Scrum approach. The Scrum Master should encourage teams to balance quality with delivery. Prioritizing coverage over all else might lead to testing trivial code while leaving critical business logic untested and vulnerable to failure.
- ✓
Challenge the metric-driven goal with leadership.
Why this is correct
Leadership often sets metrics to provide a sense of control. The Scrum Master must explain that high coverage does not equate to high quality or business value. By facilitating a discussion on what true quality means to the user, the Scrum Master helps shift the focus to meaningful outcomes.
- ✗
Publish the coverage results to create healthy competition.
Why it's wrong here
Creating competition between teams is rarely healthy in an agile environment. It fosters silos and discourages the teams from sharing knowledge or helping one another. The Scrum Master should promote a culture of collaboration where teams learn from each other to improve quality across the whole organization.
- ✗
Ask the Developers to stop tracking coverage for HR.
Why it's wrong here
Simply stopping the tracking doesn't solve the underlying pressure from leadership. The Scrum Master needs to engage in a conversation about the purpose of the metric. By addressing the root cause of the pressure, the Scrum Master helps the organization align on better ways to measure improvement.
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 Scrum Alliance exam blueprint
This CSM practice question is part of Courseiva's free Scrum Alliance 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 CSM exam.