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PST: Scrum Guide Accountabilities, Events, and Artifacts

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Scrum Guide Accountabilities, Events, and Artifacts

This domain checks precise, current knowledge of the Scrum Guide: who is accountable for what, which event serves which purpose and timebox, and how each artifact carries a commitment. Questions often hinge on a single word - accountable, may, must.

Accountabilities

  • Product Owner: one person, accountable for maximizing product value and for effective Product Backlog management (ordering, transparency). May delegate the work but never the accountability.
  • Scrum Master: a true leader accountable for the Scrum Team's effectiveness - coaching self-management and cross-functionality, helping the team focus on valuable increments, causing impediments to be removed, and ensuring events happen and stay within their timeboxes.
  • Developers: create the Sprint plan, instill quality by adhering to the Definition of Done, adapt daily toward the Sprint Goal, and hold each other accountable.
  • The Scrum Team is ten or fewer people, with no sub-teams, and is self-managing and cross-functional.

Events and artifacts

The Sprint is the container for the other four events: one month or less, consistent in length. Sprint Planning addresses Why (Sprint Goal), What, and How. The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute event for the Developers, at the same time and place. The Sprint Review inspects the outcome with stakeholders and adapts the Product Backlog. The Retrospective inspects individuals, interactions, processes, tools, and the DoD, and ends with improvements. Artifact commitments: Product Backlog → Product Goal; Sprint Backlog → Sprint Goal; Increment → Definition of Done.

Worked example

Mid-Sprint, a stakeholder demands an unplanned feature. Correct reasoning: scope may be clarified and renegotiated between Product Owner and Developers, but quality must not decrease and the Sprint Goal must not be endangered. If the Sprint Goal becomes obsolete, only the Product Owner may cancel the Sprint.

Traps

  • Calling the Sprint Review a demo, or a quality gate.
  • Letting anyone other than the Product Owner cancel a Sprint.
  • Treating the Scrum Master as a secretary or a sole impediment remover.
  • Describing the Daily Scrum as a status report to the Scrum Master.