SSM SSM (6.0) - SAFe Scrum Master Practice 6.0 Questions and Answers

According to SAFe®, the Iteration Retrospective is a key event that enables relentless improvement, one of the pillars of the SAFe House of Lean. The purpose is to reflect on the previous iteration and identify what went well, what didn’t, and what can be improved.

An essential outcome of this meeting is a set of actionable improvement items that can be added to the team backlog. These items are often captured as improvement Stories, ensuring that process enhancements are visible, prioritized, and implemented in the next iteration.

From SAFe guidance:

“The retrospective concludes with actionable improvement items added to the backlog. These items should be implemented in subsequent iterations to improve performance.”

Therefore, the correct answer is D. Ensure the event ends with actionable improvement items for the backlog, as it ensures continuous learning and measurable improvement.

In the context of SAFe® and Agile Team dynamics, healthy conflict is a defining characteristic of a high-performing team. It allows members to openly challenge ideas, explore different perspectives, and arrive at better decisions collectively.

Healthy conflict is based on mutual respect and a shared commitment to team goals. It is different from destructive conflict—rather than creating division, it fosters creativity, innovation, and stronger collaboration. When teams are psychologically safe and can engage in constructive debate, they can refine solutions and build consensus faster.

SAFe emphasizes servant leadership and coaching behaviors that enable such open communication:

“High-performing Agile Teams engage in healthy conflict, where diverse viewpoints are explored and disagreements are resolved constructively, leading to better decisions and shared commitment.”

While trust, clear goals, and decision-making are also vital attributes, healthy conflict specifically addresses how teams can manage differing opinions productively, making it the correct answer.

According to SAFe, empathy is one of the key traits of effective Scrum Masters/Team Coaches. Empathy means displaying an authentic understanding and concern for a team member’s beliefs or feelings. By being empathetic, Scrum Masters/Team Coaches can build trust and rapport with the team, which are essential for people to accept and welcome coaching. Empathy also helps Scrum Masters/Team Coaches to tailor their coaching style and approach to the needs and preferences of each team member.

One Agile development value is customer collaboration over contract negotiation. This value is one of the four core values of the Agile Manifesto, which states: “We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.” 1 This value emphasizes the importance of building a trusting and collaborative relationship with the customers, rather than relying on rigid and formal contracts that may limit the ability to respond to changing needs and expectations2 Customer collaboration means involving the customers throughout the development process, seeking their feedback, input, and validation, and delivering solutions that meet their requirements and expectations3 Customer collaboration also means respecting the customers’ opinions and perspectives, and resolving any conflicts or issues in a constructive and respectful manner4 Customer collaboration helps the Agile teams to deliver value faster and more effectively, as well as to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty34 

The intended value of the Backlog Refinement event is that the team is able to prepare requirements for Iteration Planning. Backlog Refinement is an ongoing process where the team collaborates with the Product Owner and other stakeholders to review, split, prioritize, and estimate the stories in the Team Backlog1 One of the main objectives of Backlog Refinement is to ensure that the stories are ready for Iteration Planning, which means they are clear, feasible, testable, and small enough to be completed in a single Iteration2 By doing so, the team can improve the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of their work, as well as deliver value to the customers and the organization123

In SAFe®, the team backlog is the source of work for the Agile Team and includes all the user stories, enablers, and defects that represent potential upcoming work. It is owned and managed by the team, often guided by the Product Owner, who ensures the backlog remains prioritized and ready for iteration planning.

A crucial ongoing activity related to the backlog is refinement (or backlog refinement)—the process of reviewing, clarifying, and breaking down backlog items into smaller, well-understood Stories that are ready for implementation. During this activity, the team collaborates to ensure backlog items have sufficient detail, appropriate acceptance criteria, and relative sizing estimates.

From SAFe guidance:

“The team backlog is the source for stories, enablers, and defects planned in iterations. Teams continuously refine the backlog to ensure upcoming work is well understood and ready for planning.”

Therefore, the correct answer is C. The team backlog is where the team refines possible Stories.

During PI Planning, teams are expected to create draft PI Objectives that summarize the business value they intend to deliver. However, a common anti-pattern occurs when teams spend too much time analyzing each Story instead of focusing on higher-level outcomes.

The goal of draft objectives is to express intent, alignment, and expected value—not to finalize every technical detail or task. Over-analyzing individual stories during PI Planning slows progress, distracts from collaboration with other teams, and limits the time available for identifying dependencies and risks.

From SAFe guidance:

“Teams should avoid excessive analysis of stories during PI Planning. The focus should be on creating draft objectives that align with business value and ART goals.”

Thus, the correct answer is A. Too much time is spent analyzing each Story, as it prevents the team from maintaining the right level of planning abstraction.

The key benefit of transitioning from Waterfall to Agile delivery is the ability to deliver value to customers earlier and more frequently.

Traditional waterfall approaches deliver value only at the end of long development cycles, increasing risk and reducing adaptability. In contrast, Agile uses iterative and incremental delivery, allowing teams to release small increments of working solutions regularly. This provides faster feedback loops, improves responsiveness to change, and enhances customer satisfaction.

From SAFe guidance:

“Agile delivery enables teams to deliver value continuously and early, ensuring that customer feedback can be incorporated to improve outcomes and minimize risk.”

Therefore, the correct answer is C. Ability to deliver value to customers earlier, as this encapsulates one of the main advantages of Agile over waterfall.

In SAFe®, the Coach Sync (also known as the Scrum of Scrums or SM/TC Sync) is a coordination event for Scrum Masters and Team Coaches within an Agile Release Train (ART). The main purpose of this event is to gain visibility into team progress, discuss impediments, and ensure cross-team alignment.

Facilitated by the Release Train Engineer (RTE), the Coach Sync promotes transparency across the ART by allowing Scrum Masters to share information about iteration status, dependencies, and challenges that may affect other teams. It also serves as a forum for escalating ART-level impediments.

From SAFe guidance:

“The Coach Sync provides Scrum Masters and Team Coaches with visibility into progress and dependencies across teams and enables them to coordinate and remove impediments at the ART level.”

Thus, the correct answer is C. To gain visibility into progress, as this captures the event’s primary purpose.

According to the SAFe® (Scaled Agile Framework) guidelines, an effective Scrum Master or Team Coach (SM/TC) exhibits several key traits that enable them to support Agile Teams effectively. One of the most emphasized characteristics is the ability to navigate conflict constructively.

A "conflict navigator" refers to someone who helps the team identify and work through disagreements in a productive way. Rather than avoiding or suppressing conflict, a skilled Scrum Master uses it as an opportunity to surface issues, enhance team learning, and drive continuous improvement. This aligns with the servant-leadership stance encouraged both in SAFe and the Scrum Guide.

While traits like being charismatic or ambitious may be personally beneficial, they are not explicitly listed in SAFe or Scrum literature as core attributes for Scrum Masters. Similarly, competitiveness could actually contradict the collaborative, team-focused nature of Agile frameworks.

From the SAFe® Scrum Master role description:

“Effective Scrum Masters are servant leaders who display characteristics such as active listening, empathy, persuasion, and conflict facilitation.”

This highlights the importance of conflict facilitation, making “Conflict navigator” the correct answer.

For full reference, see:

???? SAFe Scrum Master Role – Scaled Agile Framework

According to the SAFe 6 Scrum Master documentation, one of the ways teams can use Iteration planning to stay aligned on their work is by committing to a set of goals to be delivered. Iteration goals are a summary of the business and technical outcomes that the team intends to achieve in the Iteration. They are based on the stories selected from the team backlog, the team’s capacity, and the acceptance criteria. By committing to a set of goals, the team creates a shared understanding of the purpose and scope of the Iteration, as well as the expected value and quality. The team also aligns with the ART vision and objectives, and communicates their commitment to the stakeholders and customers. Iteration goals help the team to stay focused, motivated, and accountable throughout the Iteration.

PI Planning is one of the events that aligns teams on a train. PI Planning is a cadence-based event for the entire Agile Release Train (ART) that aligns teams and stakeholders to a shared mission and vision. PI Planning provides an opportunity for the ART to review the business context and priorities, identify and resolve dependencies and risks, and commit to a realistic and achievable plan for the next Program Increment (PI). PI Planning is essential to SAFe: If you are not doing it, you are not doing SAFe1 

By continuing to stay heads-down on the finalizing Feature delivery work, Team A might miss the chance to reflect on their team work more holistically and identify areas for improvement. The IP Iteration is intended to provide time for the team to participate in the Inspect and Adapt event, where they can review their PI performance, analyze the root causes of any issues, and create an improvement backlog. The IP Iteration also allows the team to engage in innovation and learning activities, such as hackathons, that can foster creativity, collaboration, and experimentation. These activities can help the team generate new ideas, solutions, and feedback that can benefit their future work. By skipping the IP Iteration, Team A might lose the opportunity to learn from their past experiences, improve their processes, and innovate their products. References: Innovation and Planning Iteration - Scaled Agile Framework, Exam Study Guide: SSM (6.0) - SAFe® Scrum Master

One of the recommended practices for Scrum Masters/Team Coaches when facilitating Iteration Review is to begin to consider how and what to demo in Iteration Planning. This helps the team to have a clear vision of the expected outcome and to align their work with the iteration goals. It also facilitates the preparation and execution of the demo, as the team can anticipate the feedback and questions from the stakeholders.

In SAFe®, during PI Planning, each team defines PI Objectives — clear, measurable statements of intended business outcomes. Some objectives carry higher uncertainty or risk due to technical complexity, dependency, or unknown factors.

To manage such uncertainty, teams can classify these as uncommitted objectives. This approach maintains visibility and alignment while signaling to stakeholders that these objectives are goals the team will pursue but cannot guarantee delivery. This helps set realistic expectations without discouraging ambition or exploration.

From SAFe guidance:

“Teams identify some objectives as uncommitted when there is significant uncertainty. These are not included in the committed plan but are made visible to stakeholders.”

Therefore, the correct answer is B. Move it to uncommitted objectives, as this is the recommended SAFe practice for handling objectives with high uncertainty.

One anti-pattern that emerges when teams do not spend enough time refining the backlog is that they enter new Iterations without enough Stories prepared. This can result in several negative consequences, such as: 123

The team may struggle to plan and commit to the Iteration Goals, as they lack clarity, feasibility, and testability of the Stories.

The team may face delays, rework, and waste, as they encounter unanticipated dependencies, risks, or technical issues during the Iteration.

The team may deliver low-quality or incomplete Stories, as they rush to meet the Iteration deadlines or compromise on the Definition of Done.

The team may lose focus, alignment, and motivation, as they work on ambiguous or unrealistic Stories that do not deliver value to the customers or the organization.

To avoid this anti-pattern, the team should dedicate sufficient time and effort to refine the backlog on a regular basis, preferably every Iteration123 Backlog Refinement is an ongoing process where the team collaborates with the Product Owner and other stakeholders to review, split, prioritize, and estimate the Stories in the Team Backlog4 One of the main objectives of Backlog Refinement is to ensure that the Stories are ready for Iteration Planning, which means they are clear, feasible, testable, and small enough to be completed in a single Iteration2 By doing so, the team can improve the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of their work, as well as deliver value to the customers and the organization

A key responsibility of the Scrum Master/Team Coach (SM/TC) in SAFe® is to support Iteration Execution. This involves ensuring that the team adheres to Agile principles, manages dependencies, removes impediments, and maintains focus on achieving iteration goals.

The Scrum Master facilitates team events, promotes collaboration, and helps the team continuously improve. They also assist in managing scope and ensuring transparency by tracking progress through iteration burndowns, Kanban boards, or burn-up charts.

From SAFe guidance:

“Scrum Masters support iteration execution, help the team meet iteration goals, and ensure all Scrum events are productive and within their timeboxes.”

Therefore, the correct answer is B. Supporting Iteration Execution, as it encapsulates a central part of the Scrum Master/Team Coach role.

The Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration is designed to give teams space for innovation, exploration, learning, and improvement, not for continuing regular feature work. When a team misuses the IP Iteration to “catch up” on delivery, it misses the opportunity to experiment, innovate, and explore new ways to deliver solutions more effectively.

This reduces the long-term adaptability and creativity of the team, limiting their ability to introduce process or technical improvements that could increase efficiency in future PIs. The IP Iteration is also a time for the Inspect and Adapt event and PI Planning, both of which are critical to continuous improvement.

From SAFe guidance:

“The IP Iteration provides dedicated time for innovation and planning. Using it for normal work diminishes opportunities to innovate, learn, and explore new approaches.”

Therefore, the correct answer is D. They could lose an opportunity to consider new approaches to Solution delivery.

Without DevOps, organizations often face significant disconnects between development and operations teams. In traditional setups, developers build the software and then “hand it off” to operations teams for deployment and maintenance. This siloed approach creates delays, quality issues, and feedback gaps.

DevOps bridges this divide by integrating development and operations into a continuous delivery pipeline that promotes automation, collaboration, and shared responsibility for outcomes. SAFe emphasizes DevOps as a key enabler of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline, ensuring faster delivery of value, higher quality, and improved customer satisfaction.

From SAFe guidance:

“Without DevOps, organizations experience challenges between teams that build solutions and those who operate them. DevOps practices close this gap, fostering collaboration and accelerating the flow of value.”

Therefore, the correct answer is B. Challenges between teams that build Solutions and those who operate the Solutions.

The first step of the problem-solving workshop is to agree on the problem to solve. This step is important because it helps the teams to clearly state the problem, highlight the what, where, when, and impact of the problem, and avoid addressing the symptoms instead of the root causes. By agreeing on the problem to solve, the teams can focus their investigation and analysis, and save time and effort. The problem statement should be succinct and specific, and should not include any assumptions or solutions.

In the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®), Agile Teams work together as part of an Agile Release Train (ART). One of the defining features that unites all teams within an ART is synchronization to a common cadence. This means all teams follow the same iteration schedule—planning, executing, reviewing, and retrospecting in harmony.

The common cadence provides a steady rhythm that simplifies coordination and dependency management across multiple teams. It ensures alignment by creating predictable, synchronized events such as PI Planning, System Demos, and Inspect & Adapt workshops. This synchronization allows cross-team integration and transparency, enabling teams to deliver coherent system-level increments and support scaled agility.

From SAFe guidance:

“Teams on the Agile Release Train (ART) align to a common cadence and synchronize their iterations, which facilitates system-level integration and provides regular opportunities for assessment and adaptation.”

Therefore, the correct answer is D. Synchronization to a common cadence, as it represents the key organizing attribute shared by all teams on an ART.

A safe environment for taking risks without fear of embarrassment or criticism is one of the characteristics of a high-performing Agile Team. A high-performing Agile Team is a cross-functional group of people that have everything, and everyone, necessary to produce a working, tested increment of product1 They are empowered, collaborative, aligned, and committed to delivering value to the customers and the organization2 One of the factors that enable a high-performing Agile Team is a safe environment where team members can experiment, learn, and grow without fear of failure, blame, or judgment3 A safe environment fosters a culture of innovation, creativity, and continuous improvement, as well as a sense of psychological safety, trust, and belonging among team members4 Team C is demonstrating this characteristic by creating a new workflow to speed up the testing process, even though it did not work out as expected. The rest of the team was excited to hear what was learned from the failed experiment, rather than being disappointed or critical. This shows that the team values learning over perfection, and supports each other in taking risks and trying new things.

The Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration is a vital element of SAFe® that occurs at the end of every Program Increment (PI). It provides intentional space for innovation, exploration, learning, and planning, ensuring a sustainable pace and continuous improvement across the Agile Release Train (ART).

This iteration gives teams the time to focus on innovation and continuing education, such as experimenting with new technologies, attending training, or conducting hackathons. It also includes activities like PI Planning preparation and Inspect and Adapt participation.

From SAFe guidance:

“The IP Iteration provides dedicated time for innovation, education, and planning activities. It supports relentless improvement and a sustainable pace for the ART.”

Therefore, the correct answer is A. It provides dedicated time for innovation and continuing education, as this captures the core benefit of the IP Iteration.

According to the SAFe 6 Scrum Master documentation, one of the elements on the Scrum Master/Team Coach responsibility wheel is to facilitate PI Planning. PI Planning is a two-day event where all the teams and stakeholders of an Agile Release Train (ART) collaborate to align on a common vision, define and commit to the PI objectives, and identify and manage risks and dependencies. The Scrum Master/Team Coach facilitates PI Planning by 1:

Helping the team prepare for the event, such as reviewing the business context, vision, and backlog, and creating draft plans

Supporting the team during the event, such as facilitating breakout sessions, resolving issues, and ensuring alignment and collaboration with other teams

Assisting the team after the event, such as finalizing the plans, updating the PI board, and conducting a retrospective

Facilitating PI Planning is one of the ways the Scrum Master/Team Coach helps the team and the ART achieve their goals and deliver value.