SM case studies
SM · Put your knowledge to work in context.
The Scrum Master Certification Exam (SM) is an entry-level credential for people who want to demonstrate that they understand Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide and can support a Scrum Team in practice. It is most often taken by aspiring Scrum Masters, but it is also common among product people, project managers moving into agile delivery, team leads, and engineers who want a shared vocabulary with their team. The SM case studies are 5 cases and about 4,174 words.
1The Velocity Mandate
A Scrum Master joins a 40-person product group three sprints into a new quarterly planning model. The VP of Engineering has introduced a target: each of the five teams must raise its average velocity by 15% per quarter, and velocity is reported on a shared dashboard alongside a team ranking.
756 words, about 4 min2The PO Who Cannot Decide
A Scrum Master supports a team building an internal claims-processing tool. The Product Owner is a former business analyst who is well liked but has been in the role for eight months without ever saying no.
834 words, about 4 min3The Sprint Review That Isn't
A Scrum Master observes a team's Sprint Review. The meeting runs 90 minutes.
827 words, about 4 min4The Definition of Done That Isn't
A Scrum Team has a written Definition of Done: 'Code complete, unit tests pass, merged to main.' It has not changed in 14 months. The team's Increment is deployed to production roughly every six weeks, and each deployment requires a two-week manual regression cycle run by a separate QA group.
888 words, about 4 min5The Impediment Nobody Owns
A Scrum Master serves two teams in a 200-person organization. Over six weeks, the same impediment has appeared in both teams' Retrospectives: builds take 4-6 hours, and developers lose most of a day waiting.
869 words, about 4 min