In SAFe, Scrum Masters act as facilitators and coaches. The best approach is to enable the team and Product Owner to collaborate on finding a solution. Option A fosters relentless improvement, innovation, and aligns with the problem-solving workshop practice. Options B, C, and D are avoidance tactics or premature escalations that don’t leverage the team’s collective intelligence or uphold the principle of decentralizing decision-making.

A consistent pattern of finishing early suggests the team’s planning assumptions are off. In SAFe, predictability is key. If a team always has significant spare capacity, they are likely being overly conservative in their estimates or not committing to enough work during planning. This reduces predictability for the ART and means the team could be delivering more value. While D is related, the root cause is the inaccurate planning, not the prioritization of the extra work itself.

This tests understanding of Agile requirements and the role of stories. Stories are the primary artifact for defining small, vertical slices of user functionality. Their purpose is to enable incremental delivery, fast feedback, and adaptation (Principle #3 – Assume variability; preserve options). Option A describes a technical task list. Option C contradicts the collaborative and adaptive nature of stories. Option D misrepresents the Product Owner’s role in actively managing the backlog.

The Five Whys is a powerful root cause analysis technique perfectly suited for digging into systemic problems indicated by quantitative data (like declining quality metrics). It helps move past surface-level explanations (“we didn’t write tests”) to underlying causes (“because we felt pressure to finish the story quickly”). While the other techniques are valid for general retrospectives, they are less targeted for diagnosing a specific, measurable performance issue.

This tests understanding of story slicing and flow. A story that remains in progress for multiple iterations is a major flow impediment. The core Agile practice is to split large work into smaller, valuable pieces that can be completed within an iteration (Principle #6 – Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes). This enables feedback, reduces risk, and improves flow. Option B compromises quality. Options C and D might help but don’t address the fundamental issue of the work item being too large.

This is a classic flow and quality challenge. The solution is to build quality in from the start, not test it in at the end. Coaching the team on shift-left practices like TDD, pairing, and automation (Core Competency of Built-In Quality) addresses the root cause. The work then flows as a whole feature, not a batched handoff. Option A is good but doesn’t solve the sequential workflow. Option C is an anti-pattern in SAFe. Option D is a temporary workaround, not a systemic improvement.

An impediment affecting multiple teams is a systemic issue that hinders the flow of the entire ART. The correct response aligns with the Scrum Master’s responsibility to address systemic impediments. Collaborating to escalate to the RTE (who can facilitate cross-departmental solutions) and proposing a workshop to create a new, leaner agreement (e.g., a legal guide for common terms, a designated legal liaison for the ART) is a proactive, principle-based solution (Principle #9 – Decentralize decision-making).

This scenario is a textbook example of Relentless Improvement, a core element of the Lean-Agile Mindset. It demonstrates a team member proactively identifying waste (non-value-added activity) in their process and implementing a small, incremental improvement. While it contributes to Built-In Quality (C) indirectly by improving the pipeline, the primary behavior being shown is the continuous effort to improve the process itself.

WSJF is used to prioritize jobs (features, capabilities) by calculating the Cost of Delay (CoD) divided by job duration. This scenario presents a classic prioritization dilemma: high value (high CoD) vs. high risk/duration. Guiding the team to estimate the WSJF for this item versus others would provide an economic framework for the decision. While a Spike (D) might be needed to reduce uncertainty, and a DoR (C) would highlight the dependencies, the fundamental question is about priority, which WSJF is designed to answer.

In SAFe, Scrum Masters act as facilitators and coaches. The best approach is to enable the team and Product Owner to collaborate on finding a solution. Option A fosters relentless improvement, innovation, and aligns with the problem-solving workshop practice. Options B, C, and D are avoidance tactics or premature escalations that don’t leverage the team’s collective intelligence or uphold the principle of decentralizing decision-making.0