Communicating Impediments

Correct Answer: Facilitate a meeting to discuss the impediments with the stakeholder.

The best action for a Scrum Master when a key stakeholder is not addressing reported impediments affecting sprint goals is to facilitate a meeting to discuss the impediments with the stakeholder. This approach ensures direct communication and collaboration, providing an opportunity to understand the stakeholder's perspective, clarify the importance of the impediments, and seek a mutually agreeable solution. It aligns with the agile and Scrum emphasis on face-to-face interactions and resolving issues through direct communication. Sending a detailed email does not ensure engagement or immediate feedback and might lead to misunderstandings or delays in addressing the issue. Advising the team to work around the impediments without stakeholder intervention could lead to suboptimal solutions that might not address the root causes or long-term impacts of the impediments. Requesting a change in stakeholders is a drastic measure that does not foster collaboration and problem-solving within the existing team and stakeholder structure; it should be considered only after all efforts to engage and collaborate with the current stakeholder have failed.

Correct Answer: Communicate the importance of addressing impediments in the daily scrum and restructure the meeting format, if needed.

The best possible course of action for the Scrum Master would be to 'Communicate the importance of addressing impediments in the daily scrum and restructure the meeting format, if needed'. As a Scrum Master, your role is to facilitate communication amongst the team and ensure that members can and are addressing blockers and impediments in a timely manner to maintain progress during a sprint. Instead of 'Canceling the daily scrum', it's better to ensure the team understands the purpose and value of these meetings. 'Belittling team members' is not only unprofessional but also against the principles of Scrum and does not solve the problem. Lastly, 'Ignoring the issue' is unfavorable because as a Scrum Master, you are responsible for helping the team overcome these sort of impediments.

Correct Answer: Facilitate a discussion encouraging everyone to voice their opinion and align on the next steps.

As a Scrum Master, facilitating discussions and encouraging team consensus is one of the main roles. This is why the best solution is to facilitate a discussion where everyone voices their opinion and agrees on the next step. As a Scrum Master, deciding on the issue's importance on your own can be a power overstep and contradicts the democratic norms of the Scrum practice. Therefore, deciding on the importance yourself would be incorrect. Asking the team to vote on the issue can seem like a good solution, but it could result in winners and losers within the team, affecting the team morale. Similarly, eliminating the problem from the backlog and moving forward could ignore a potential significant issue that needs addressing; hence, it's not the best course of action.