The Scrum Master’s role is to coach the team toward self-organization and continuous improvement. Facilitating a focused retrospective empowers the team to identify the root cause (e.g., fear of failure, lack of time, unclear value) and commit to their own small experiment. This builds intrinsic motivation and ownership, which is more sustainable than top-down mandates or escalation.

In SAFe, making dependencies and risks visible is a core practice. Option A allows the planning process to continue while transparently highlighting the impediment. This enables the RTE and management to see the risk and help resolve it, rather than causing a full stop or making uninformed decisions. It aligns with the principle of visualizing and limiting WIP.

The Scrum Master serves as a coach and facilitator for both the team and the Product Owner. The core issue is a lack of shared understanding about sprint boundaries and flow. Facilitating a direct conversation helps establish a collaborative agreement (e.g., ‘We will only swap stories mid-sprint for critical production issues, and we will discuss the impact together’). This builds trust and improves the system rather than applying blame or creating conflict.

To understand flow, you need to visualize work in progress, bottlenecks, and the consistency of delivery. A Cumulative Flow Diagram shows WIP and throughput across different states, while a Cycle Time Scatterplot shows the variability and distribution of how long work items take. Together, they provide actionable insights into process efficiency and predictability, which is the goal of flow-based metrics.

The Scrum Master is a servant leader and facilitator for their team. During the Problem-Solving Workshop, their key role is to guide their team through the steps (e.g., using the Five Whys or Fishbone diagram) to ensure a constructive, blameless environment where the team collectively identifies the root cause of their most significant problem and agrees on a practical improvement backlog item.

The IP Iteration serves multiple critical purposes: it acts as a estimating buffer for variability, provides dedicated time for teams to work on innovation (hackathons, prototypes), engage in learning (training, conferences), and prepare for the next PI Planning. It is not intended for delivering regular PI backlog work or being solely a testing period.

The Daily Stand-up is a team synchronization event, not a status meeting for the Scrum Master. The most effective coaching is to reinforce its purpose and change the dynamic. Encouraging the team to talk to each other and visualize work around a board shifts the focus from reporting to collaborative planning, fostering self-organization and peer accountability.

Respect for People requires understanding and addressing individual needs. A private conversation demonstrates psychological safety and allows the Scrum Master to gather specific feedback. Coaching the team on inclusivity (e.g., techniques like round-robin or silent writing before speaking) addresses the systemic issue without singling out the individual or applying rigid, potentially dysfunctional, rules.

The Sprint Review is a feedback loop. New work identified is a natural outcome. The Product Owner’s responsibility is to manage the backlog, which includes capturing and prioritizing all new work items. They will then weigh these new items against the existing backlog to decide what gets pulled into future iterations. This maintains sprint integrity while respecting stakeholder input.

The Scrum Master’s role is to coach the team toward self-organization and continuous improvement. Facilitating a focused retrospective empowers the team to identify the root cause (e.g., fear of failure, lack of time, unclear value) and commit to their own small experiment. This builds intrinsic motivation and ownership, which is more sustainable than top-down mandates or escalation.0