Learning SCRUM and I am confused with Question 218 in our Book: "For which is the Scrum Master responsible" - Can you help me here, please?

You have to be careful with third party study guides and exams.  The Scrum Guide is free and the ultimate source of information on the Scrum framework. 

A4 is not the correct answer per the Scrum Guide.  In fact, A4 goes completely against the Scrum Guide. Primarily because of the use of the word "managing".  Scrum Masters do not manage anything.  The facilitate, coach, foster but not manage. Per the Scrum Guide, the closest "correct" answer would be A1 as you and your class assumed. 

This section of the Scrum Guide explains the role of the Scrum Master. Do you see any mention of managing or being responsible for the effectiveness of the Scrum Team?  

Thanks for the answer.

The reason I posted is because I, my classmates, and our teacher all doubted the correctness of the given answer in our book.

Since we are all learning SCRUM as part as our job-education to become programmers/developers, our school was responsible for selecting our study tools. And they decided to let us learn using the stated book - which is, honestly, a very, very bad one.

There are more obvious mistakes, but this one was leaving us wondering.



I've posted this question to reddit, and I got a quite interesting answer there:

"Scrum prioritises "interactions and people" over "processes and tools". A Scrum Master is there to champions the effectiveness of Scrum - but Scrum focuses on value delivery. If it transpires that the team finds its own method of delivering value delivery, the SM doesn't need to micromanage the team into delivering via strict processes and steps."



This answer SOUNDS good ...

But yeah ... at this point I will just accept that the book we got from our school is a horrible one and has multiple big mistakes in it.



Thanks for your input!

A1 can be excluded because it describes Scrum as a process rather than a framework. A4 is arguably better in so far as the Scrum Master is accountable for the Scrum Team's effectiveness, and thus "manages" what the team and others understand it to be. Of course, I have no evidence that the author had this reasoning in mind.

The answer from Reddit is a rough quote from the manifesto for agile software development as the first of its four values (Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools) This is not from the Scrum Guide. 

This book does not appear to be aligned to the Scrum framework or Scrum Guide based on this question and answers. If the goal is the attempt and pass the Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I) or Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO I) exams, I wouldn’t trust this book. Scrum.org has great learning paths and practice exams that can help you prepare. I suggest exploring these. 

All the best. 

Hey,

As already mentioned take care with 3rd party materials.

I would go for A4. Reason: the accountability of the Scrum Master is the team's effectiveness. The unlucky word in the answer is "manage" (as Daniel pointed out)...

I tend to answer questions using
- empirical process control: how does an answer support transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
- a self-managing and cross-functional team: how does an answer support growing the team's decision mandate, and how does it help growing their skills, and as such their independence from others outside the team.
- Scrum Values: how does an answer align with, or support behavior in line with the 5 Scrum Values.
- Done: how does an answer help with getting to Done each Sprint, so that we can get fast feedback from users.

This question leads me to self-managing, while it does not prevent any of the other aspects mentioned.
All answers, except A4, reduce team self-management and put the responsibility with the Scrum Master. Which is not desired.
A4 allows the Scrum Master to coach and mentor the team so they can take up ownership, and become more self-managing.

Hope this helps.