At the end of the eighth Sprint, the internal sponsors are upset and angry with the progress of the product being built. The current state of the product is not as expected and will require additional Sprints and more budget than originally anticipated at the start of the project.

What factors may have led to this? (Choose three)

A. The Product Owner has not been engaging with sponsors frequently enough and has not been kept aware of the overall progress of the project.
B. The sponsors haven’t been using the Sprint Reviews to actively engage, and inspect and evaluate progress.
C. The scope changes have not been tracked adequately and the change request process has not been followed properly.
D. The stakeholders have not been using the Daily Scrum effectively to track the Development
Team’s progress.
E. The Scrum Master has not ensured transparency.
F. The project plan proposed to the sponsors at the start of the project followed stringently.

Correct Answer: A,B,E

One of the principles of agility includes working closely with business people. In order to manage stakeholder expectation, there must be open communication (through collaboration and transparency) throughout the project cycle. This maximizes alignment, helps with making business decisions, and reduces risk.

Although the Scrum Guide does not directly state that the Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring transparency it is implicit. The Scrum Master is responsible for the process in which Scrum is adopted and enacted. Scrum is founded on empiricism and the Scrum Master helps those inside and outside the team work in an empirical environment which includes transparency (one of the three pillars of empiricism).