A Scrum team failed to meet the Sprint objectives. One of the key members of the team fell ill and was away for two days right at the beginning of the four week Sprint. What is the most likely…

Question

Options

• AThe Product Owner is unable to prioritize.
• BThe team is lacking skills.
• CThe team did not plan the Sprint effectively.
• DThe team is over-worked.

• A
  4% (1)
• B
  4% (1)
• C
  81% (22)
• D
  11% (3)

Explanation

Option C is correct because a four-week Sprint provides enough buffer to absorb a two-day absence - if the team had planned effectively. Resilient Sprint planning accounts for realistic team capacity, including potential disruptions like illness, vacations, or unexpected blockers. The team should have padded estimates or designed tasks so that work could be redistributed when a member became unavailable.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A (Product Owner can't prioritize): The PO's prioritization happens before the Sprint in backlog refinement; a mid-Sprint illness doesn't expose a prioritization failure.
• B (lacking skills): There's no evidence of a skill gap - one person's absence doesn't imply the team lacks competence.
• D (overworked): Being overworked is a capacity issue that should have been caught during Sprint Planning, which circles back to poor planning - making C the root cause.

Memory tip: Think of Sprint Planning as building in a "buffer budget." If a two-day absence over four weeks breaks your Sprint, your plan had no slack - that's a planning failure, not a people failure.

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