Answering: “Your organization always stresses the importance of on-time delivery and reliability. A manager has detected that your team’s progress is too slow. They feel that your team’s velocity needs to be 10% higher.”

The Scrum Master should explain that velocity is a forecasting aid for the next Sprint, not a productivity target, and point the manager to the Product Owner for progress information. They should also raise organizational impediments with management and ask for help removing them.

Exam Question

Your organization always stresses the importance of on-time delivery and reliability. A manager has detected that your team’s progress is too slow. They feel that your team’s velocity needs to be 10% higher. The organization expects you, as the Scrum Master, to make it happen. How do you respond? (choose the best two answers)

• A. You explain how a Scrum Team uses the velocity of a Sprint primarily to forecast work for the next Sprint, not to perfectly predict future productivity. You refer the IT manager to the Product Owner for all information concerning the progress of development.
• B. You inform management of organizational impediments that prevent the Scrum Team from being more productive. You enlist their help to remove these impediments.
• C. You educate management that it is the Scrum Team’s responsibility to improve their velocity. You invite management to the next Sprint Retrospective to brainstorm on how they can improve.
• D. You help management understand that it typically takes a few Sprints for a team to gradually increase the velocity up to the level expected. Meanwhile you present this to the team as a challenge and a company goal, leaving it however up to them to figure out exactly how to achieve this.
• E. You tell management that this is not your accountability in Scrum. You direct them to the Product Owner to determine whether the forecast is accurate.

Correct Answer

A and B.

Why This Is the Correct Answer

Velocity is a team’s own historical measure that helps the Developers forecast how much they can take on next. Demanding a 10% increase invites inflated estimates and lower quality, and it says nothing about value. The Product Owner is accountable for the product’s value and for tracking progress toward the Product Goal, so they are the right contact for questions about delivery. At the same time, the manager’s concern about speed is a chance to help. The Scrum Master serves the organization by “removing barriers between stakeholders and Scrum Teams,” and slow delivery often comes from organizational impediments that management is in a position to remove.

Why the Other Options Are Wrong

C. Say velocity is the team’s job and invite management to the Retrospective. The first half is reasonable, but the Retrospective is for the Scrum Team. Bringing management in damages openness and turns it into a status review.

D. Present the 10% increase to the team as a company goal. This treats velocity as a target. Teams under such pressure tend to inflate estimates or cut quality.

E. Say it is not your accountability and send them to the Product Owner. Helping the organization understand empiricism and removing impediments is part of the Scrum Master’s accountability. Simply deflecting misses that.

Exam Tip

PSM II questions on velocity reward two ideas: velocity is for forecasting, not for targets, and the Scrum Master engages management to remove impediments rather than pushing pressure onto the team.

Key Takeaways

• Velocity helps forecast; it is not a productivity target.
• Progress questions go to the Product Owner.
• The Scrum Master enlists management to remove organizational impediments.