Cycle Time

Correct Answer: Track the time from when a user story is started to when it is completed and accepted by the Product Owner

Measuring the Cycle Time for a Scrum team is best done by tracking the time from when a user story is started to when it is completed and accepted by the Product Owner. This approach directly measures the time it takes for a single unit of work (a user story) to move through the team's workflow from start to finish, which aligns with the definition of Cycle Time. The other options, such as measuring the time from sprint planning to sprint review or calculating the average time to complete all user stories in the backlog, do not accurately represent Cycle Time as they include additional activities or aggregate multiple work items. Recording the total time spent by each team member on their tasks is more related to individual capacity and does not reflect the end-to-end flow of work through the team.

Correct Answer: There may be too much work in progress

Increasing Cycle Time in a Scrum Team typically indicates a bottleneck in the process, commonly caused by having too much work in progress. If the team takes on too much at once, they may have to switch between tasks frequently, causing delays and increasing Cycle Time. The other options presented can indeed affect the team's productivity generally, but they are not directly linked to Cycle Time. Periods where the team is not committing to enough work would likely cause a decreased Cycle Time, not an increased one. While unclear definitions from the product owner or ineffective facilitation from the Scrum Master can indeed slow progress, they are more likely to produce issues with quality or consistency, rather than directly causing an increased Cycle Time.

Correct Answer: Increasing the team size dramatically

The correct answer is 'Increasing the team size dramatically'. This is because according to Brooks' Law in software development, adding manpower to a late software project only makes it later. This law highlights the additional coordination and onboarding efforts, and communication complexities that come with adding new team members which could possibly increase cycle times rather than reducing them. Meanwhile, the other options can help to reducing cycle time: 'Breaking down large stories into smaller tasks' would limit complexity and make tasks manageable, 'Limiting work in progress' would reduce context-switching and improve focus which can lead to efficiency, and 'Improving communication within the team' would greatly enhance collaboration and allows for the quicker resolution of impediments.