Affinity Estimating

Correct Answer: Discuss the potential risks and uncertainties, and consider it for higher bucket during sorting.

As a Scrum Master, your aim should always be to guide and assist the team to make informed decisions when it comes to agile practices. The best approach when dealing with user stories that involve an unknown technology is to discuss the potential risks and uncertainties, and consider the unknown technology user story for a higher bucket during sorting. This means to give it a high size relative to other work. Now, looking at the other options: 1) 'Consider the unknown technology user story as the smallest one as learning new thing is interesting' - this is not a correct approach because although learning new things can be interesting, it also brings in a risk factor and uncertainty, which needs to be accounted for during estimation 2) 'Ignore such user story for the current sprint backlog' - Completely ignoring a user story because the technology involved is unknown is not a suitable approach. As a scrum team, the goal should be to tackle challenges and efficiently deliver the product, ignoring a part of that product would not aid in accomplishing that 3) 'Assign maximum story point to such user story to consider the risk' - While it is necessary to consider the risk factor involved, simply assigning the maximum story point to such a user story doesn't take into account other aspects like the complexity of the task or the effort required.

Correct Answer: Advocate for silent sorting followed by group discussion to identify patterns and outliers.

The best course of action for a Scrum Master facilitating an Affinity Estimation session with a large and varied backlog is to 'Advocate for silent sorting followed by group discussion to identify patterns and outliers.' This approach invites the entire team to individually rank items leading to a broader range of perspectives. The following group discussion helps in aligning these perspectives and identifying any noticeable patterns or outliers. Following this approach can help in ensuring that the entire team understands the requirements and can come up with more accurate estimates. The option 'Choose random User Stories and assign average story points.' is not the best because it does not provide an accurate assessment of the backlog. Similarly, 'Speeding up the process and not worrying about accuracy.' contradicts the core principle of Scrum where accuracy and quality are valued over speed. Lastly, 'Avoiding the Affinity Estimation for such large backlogs.' also falls short as the estimation process is crucial in Scrum for planning and strategizing, and should not be avoided.

Correct Answer: Suggest a vote on the story points for each contentious story to democratize the decision.

As a Scrum Master, facilitating team consensus is crucial, but not by making the decisions yourself or avoiding the issue. Suggesting a vote respects team autonomy while democratizing the decision process. Assigning temporary story points or instructing the use of the highest estimation could provide short-term solutions but might not address the root cause of the disagreement or lead to accurate estimations. Encouraging the team to break down stories into smaller items could be helpful in some contexts but doesn't directly assist in resolving the deadlock situation. The goal is to guide the team towards self-organization and effective decision-making.