5 questions for an easy Scrum quiz

Do you want to assess your knowledge about Scrum theory? Here are 5 questions I copied when attending to the MOOC ‘Managing an Agile Team‘ on the Coursera platform.

The 5 correct answers are at the end of the post. Feel free to put a comment and tell me your opinion about this (easy) quiz.

Question 1

How might a Scrum Master’s responsibilities change once a team has some experience with Agile methodologies?

1. As the Scrum Master coaches the team to adopt Agile practices, he or she will likely have less work to do once the team begins to self-organize.
2. The Scrum Master should consistently enforce rules, policing the team.
3. The Scrum Master’s responsibilities don’t change over time.
4. Over time, Scrum Masters spend more time organizing the team.

Question 2

Which of these is the best example of an effective update to share at a stand up meeting?

1. Today I’m going to improve the code for uploading data, and I have no obstacles.
2. Yesterday I finished the deployment script. I have an obstacle because we don’t have resources for the contractor to get started on her work.
3. Yesterday I debugged an issue with time zone changes, and I worked with the UX specialist on the cart functionality.
4. Yesterday I finished writing unit tests for the new search control, and today I’m going to code it. I have a question about the interaction under certain conditions which I need to talk to the Product Owner about after the meeting.

Question 3

You are the Scrum Master of a team working on a solution that requires a lot of new code and technical facets–more than the usual. Several days into the 10-day sprint, the number of completed story points has not decreased. Overall, things are going fine, but some team members and outside stakeholders are anxious about the apparent lack of progress on the burndown chart. What might you do?

1. If the team is being negatively impacted, consider scrapping the burndown chart.
2. Keep the burndown chart displayed. The team needs to be reminded of unfinished items in the backlog.
3. If the story points are difficult to calculate, keep using the chart until it becomes easier.
4. Burndown charts are required for Scrum teams. Keep it up.

Question 4

It’s your first day working as a developer with a company that creates software that deals with medical records. You’ve been getting settled in your new office space and notice that the team is spread out across two large rooms, and everyone has their own cubicles with tall partitions. The common walls in the area feature colorful art but are otherwise bare. You can’t see or clearly hear anyone else on your team. How might this arrangement impact collaboration for a team using XP (Extreme Programming) practices?

1. Other than adding a tool that charts the progress of the team, this set up sounds perfect for an XP environment.
2. Tear down those walls! Frequent and impromptu discussions are critical. It is also important for the team to see displays that increase their understanding of success and value for the user.
3. The ability to quietly reflect and work in this environment will enable you to meet the individual commitments characteristic of teams using XP practices.
4. The only change necessary would be to push the desks closer together and remove the cubicle partitions.

Source: https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/the-secret-to-an-open-floor-office-your-employees-will-absolutely-love.html

Question 5

A team is using a Kanban board and notices that many items are stacking up in a certain stage of the development process. How should they initially react in order to best manage flow?

1. Move items from design to delivery more slowly in order to spread out any potential problems.
2. Calculate the burn up rate.
3. Make sure there are explicit work in progress (WIP) limits at each column/stage of the development process and then experiment with tuning those across iterations.
4. Increase the number of feedback loops.