Scrum Team Collaboration

Correct Answer: Facilitate a meeting where both parties can share their opinions, and guide them to reach a common understanding and decision.

The best solution for a Scrum Master, when faced with contrasting opinions of the Development team and the Product Owner on the order of their product backlog, is to facilitate a meeting where both parties can share their opinions, and guide them to reach a common understanding and decision. This is consistent with the Scrum Master's role as a facilitator. It is important that both parties understand each other’s viewpoints and implications of the decision on project outcome. Making the decision on behalf of the team, as proposed in one of the incorrect answers, defeats the purpose of the Scrum Framework, which values team decisions and interactions. Ignoring the problem, as suggested in another incorrect answer, can lead to escalation of conflict, negatively impacting productivity and team dynamics. Finally, asking the team to blindly follow the Product Owner's decision, as indicated by the last incorrect option, is not a good practice. It will also lead to unhealthy team dynamics and negatively affects the team's morale and productivity.

Correct Answer: Introduce the newcomer to the team, briefly overview the current sprint goal, and make plans for a detailed Scrum induction after the sprint ends.

The best approach is to welcome the newcomer and give a concise overview of the sprint they're joining midway, without overwhelming them or the team's current commitments. Options suggesting immediate, intense training or diversion of existing resources significantly misunderstand the Scrum values of respect, courage, and commitment to the current sprint goals. A detailed induction post-sprint provides a balance between welcoming the new member and maintaining the team's focus and productivity.

Correct Answer: Guide the team to utilize estimation by affinity grouping, allowing for quicker categorization of tasks into different levels of effort.

In Scrum, it is essential for estimation and planning to be a team activity to ensure full understanding and commitment. Hence, the correct answer promotes a technique that involves the entire team in a lightweight, collaborative manner. The first wrong answer undermines the principle of self-organization by suggesting that the product owner should make estimation decisions. The second wrong answer misinterprets Scrum estimation tools, introducing a concept (time-boxed estimation) that doesn't directly apply to task estimation. The third wrong answer, although engaging with a concept from agile practices (velocity), suggests bypassing the collaborative nature of estimation that is central to Scrum, potentially leading to misunderstandings and reduced team commitment.