Empiricism in Scrum

Correct Answer: Encourage the team to reflect on the reasons for the decrease and adapt their approach accordingly in the next sprint.

The principle of empiricism in Scrum revolves around the three pillars of inspection, adaptation, and transparency. In addressing a decrease in the team's velocity, as a Scrum Master, encouraging the team to reflect on the reasons for the decrease and adapt their approach accordingly in the next sprint aligns with this principle. This allows the team to learn from their experiences and make necessary improvements. The answer suggesting to tell the team to work harder to increase their velocity misses the point of addressing the root cause of the issue. Merely altering the velocity metric to reflect higher numbers would be counterproductive and lacks transparency which is against Scrum values. Ignoring the velocity drop until management asks questions is also not a proactive or effective approach.

Correct Answer: Change the retrospective format to include more interactive activities that could spark interest and participation.

Involving the team in more interactive activities during the retrospective can encourage participation by making the meeting more engaging and less of a passive experience. Proposing to cancel sprints goes against the principles of Scrum, which advocates for continual progress. Adjusting the duration of the retrospective does not address the core issue of engagement and may even reduce the opportunity for valuable feedback. Mandating participation through team agreements linked to performance evaluations could undermine trust and the concept of self-organization in Scrum teams.

Correct Answer: Inspect the outputs and processes of past Sprints, identify patterns or obstacles that prevented meeting the Sprint Goal, and adapt the Sprint planning and execution strategy.

Scrum is founded on empirical process control theory, which emphasizes transparency, inspection, and adaptation. The correct answer involves inspecting the team's process and outcomes for continuous improvement without overburdening the team or fundamentally changing its composition or working agreements in a counterproductive way. Increasing the Sprint's length, conducting individual performance reviews, or significantly increasing team size without understanding the underlying problems misses the point of empiricism and does not directly address the repeated failure to meet Sprint Goals.