PSM-III 試験問題を無料オンラインアクセス

TheCone of Uncertaintydescribes how the level of uncertainty in a product's requirements, technology, and value is highest at the beginning of a product's lifetime and gradually decreases as knowledge is gained. This concept strongly influences the type of work a development team performs throughout the product's development lifecycle and aligns well with Scrum's empirical approach.
Early Stage: High Uncertainty and Discovery Work
At the start of a product's development lifetime, manyunknownsexist. These may relate to customer needs, technical feasibility, usability, or business value. According to Scrum's empirical nature, teams should not assume certainty where it does not exist. Therefore, early development work focuses primarily ondiscovery.
During this stage, the Development Team works to reduce uncertainty by:
* Conducting research and experiments,
* Building prototypes or spikes,
* Testing assumptions with users,
* Validating technical and business hypotheses.
This type of work helps the team learn quickly and avoid premature commitment to detailed solutions. The goal is not maximizing feature output, butmaximizing learningand reducing risk.
Middle Stage: Reduced Uncertainty and Feature Development
As important unknowns are discovered and addressed, the Cone of Uncertainty narrows. The team gains confidence in what to build and how to build it. At this point, work increasingly shifts toward delivering functional stories and featuresthat provide direct value to users.
Development during this phase focuses on:
* Building usable, integrated product increments,
* Expanding functionality based on validated learning,
* Refining features through feedback and inspection.
Scrum supports this transition by enabling frequent inspection and adaptation through Sprints, ensuring that learning continues while value delivery accelerates.
Late Stage: Low Uncertainty and Operational Work
Toward the end of a product's development lifetime, most significant uncertainties have been resolved.
According toEvidence-Based Management (EBM),Unrealized Value becomes low, whileCurrent Value is high. At this stage, the volume of new feature development typically decreases.
The team's work becomes moreoperationalin nature, such as:
* Maintenance and optimization,
* Improving performance or stability,
* Addressing technical debt,
* Supporting existing users.
Investment decisions increasingly focus on sustaining value rather than discovering new opportunities.

When starting development of a brand new product with fifteen developers, forming effective teams is a critical early decision that significantly influences the success of product development. From a Scrum Master' s perspective, multiple approaches are commonly used in practice. Each approach offers distinct benefits and drawbacks when evaluated against Scrum principles such asself-organization, cross-functionality, and value delivery.
1. Facilitating Teams to Self-Organize
One common approach is tofacilitate the developers in forming teams themselves. This approach aligns strongly with Scrum, as the Scrum Guide states that Scrum Teams areself-managingand decide internally how best to accomplish their work.
Benefits:
Allowing teams to self-organize promotesempowerment, ownership, and accountability. Developers can use their existing knowledge of each other's strengths, weaknesses, and working styles to form balanced teams. This often increases motivation and psychological safety, both of which support high performance.
Hindrances:
For a new product, this process can bemessy and time-consuming, especially if developers lack experience in forming effective teams. Teams may optimize for comfort or familiarity rather than cross-functionality, potentially leading to skill gaps or imbalanced teams.
2. Forming Two or Three Cross-Functional Feature Teams
Another common approach is to deliberately formtwo or three cross-functional feature teams, each containing all the skills necessary to deliver working product increments.
Benefits:
This approach closely matches how Scrum describes teams.Cross-functional feature teamscan independently deliverintegrated, "Done" Incrementsof the product, improving flow, reducing dependencies, and supporting empiricism. All necessary skills are available within the team, enabling faster inspection and adaptation.
Hindrances:
In the context of a brand new product, teams may not yet knowwhich skills are actually required, making it difficult to form truly balanced teams upfront. Additionally, specialists may feel isolated and lose regular interaction with peers who share the same expertise across teams.
3. Forming Teams Based on Specialization (Component Teams)
A third approach is to organize teams according totechnical specialization, such as front-end and back-end teams. These are often referred to ascomponent teams.
Benefits:
This structure allows specialists to work closely together, enablingfast knowledge sharing, technical consistency, and deep expertisein specific components of the system. It can feel efficient, especially in the early stages of development.
Hindrances:
From a Scrum perspective, this approach significantly hindersvalue delivery. Component teams struggle to deliver complete, integrated features independently and introduce dependencies and handoffs. This makes it harder to produce a usable Increment each Sprint and isnot how Scrum describes teams, even though it remains a commonly used strategy in many organizations.
Scrum Master Perspective and Conclusion
As a Scrum Master, my role is not to mandate a single team structure, but tocoach and facilitatethe organization toward structures that best enable Scrum. While all three approaches are seen in practice, Scrum clearly favorsself-organizing, cross-functional feature teamsbecause they maximize learning, transparency, and the ability to deliver value each Sprint.

If not all Development Team members are present at theDaily Scrum, several risks are introduced that undermineempiricism, collaboration, and the team's ability to achieve theSprint Goal.
First,transparency is reduced. The Daily Scrum exists to create a shared understanding of progress, plans, and impediments. When some Developers are absent, their work, discoveries, risks, or impediments are not fully visible to the rest of the team. This results in an incomplete or inaccurate picture of the Sprint Backlog's current state.
Second,inspection becomes ineffective. The Daily Scrum is the primary event where Developers inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal. Missing perspectives means that inspection is based on partial information, increasing the likelihood that important issues-such as integration problems, dependencies, or quality concerns-go unnoticed until later in the Sprint.
Third,adaptation is delayed or suboptimal. Without full participation, the team may make planning adjustments that do not account for all constraints or opportunities. This can lead to rework, misalignment, or duplicated effort, and increases the risk of failing to meet the Sprint Goal.
Fourth, the absence of team members weakenscollective ownership and accountability. The Daily Scrum reinforces that the Developers are jointly responsible for the Sprint Goal. Regular absence can create silos, reduce collaboration, and signal that shared planning and alignment are optional.
Finally, over time, inconsistent attendance can turn the Daily Scrum into astatus meeting for those present, rather than a collaborative planning event for the whole team. This undermines Scrum Values, particularly Commitment, Respect, and Openness.

In Scrum, decisions to optimize value and control risk depend on theperceived state of the artifacts. If artifacts are not transparent, inspection and adaptation become ineffective, leading to poor decisions. Scrum therefore defines specificevents and practicesto improve transparency and support empirical decision- making.
Scrum Events That Improve Artifact Transparency
Sprint Planningimproves transparency by aligning the Scrum Team on the current state of theProduct Backlogand theProduct Increment. The Product Owner explains backlog ordering and objectives, while Developers assess what is feasible based on the current Increment and Definition of Done. This shared understanding reduces risk by creating a realistic Sprint Goal.
Daily Scrumimproves transparency of theSprint Backlog. Developers inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and make visible emerging risks, dependencies, and impediments. Daily inspection ensures that deviations are discovered early, enabling fast adaptation and reducing delivery risk.
Sprint Reviewimproves transparency of theProduct IncrementandProduct Backlog. Stakeholders directly inspect the Increment and provide feedback. This exposes assumptions, validates value, and informs Product Backlog adaptation, helping optimize future value and reduce market risk.
Sprint Retrospectiveimproves transparency ofprocess-related aspectsthat influence the artifacts. By inspecting ways of working, tools, skills, and the Definition of Done, the team identifies improvements that increase artifact quality and reliability over time.
Practices That Improve Transparency
Aclear and shared Definition of Doneensures transparency of the Product Increment. It creates a common understanding of what "complete" means and prevents hidden work or misleading progress.
Product Backlog refinementimproves transparency by clarifying Product Backlog Items, making assumptions explicit, and reducing uncertainty. Although not a formal Scrum event, refinement supports better inspection and forecasting.
Frequent integration and testingimprove transparency by making the real state of the Increment visible early and often. This reduces the risk of late surprises and unintegrated work.
Visible metrics and information radiators(such as Sprint Goals, Sprint Backlogs, and progress toward objectives) help stakeholders and teams understand the state of work without relying on reports or interpretations.

A distant Product Owner represents arisk to value delivery, transparency, and empiricism. While the Product Owner has provided a Product Backlog for the Sprint, lack of collaboration during the Sprint undermines learning and informed decision-making. As a Scrum Master, the focus should be oncoaching, enabling collaboration, and addressing systemic impediments, not substituting for the Product Owner.
1. Make the Impact Transparent
The Scrum Master should help make the impact of the Product Owner's absencevisible:
* Reduced ability to clarify Product Backlog Items,
* Slower decision-making when discoveries occur,
* Increased risk to the Sprint Goal and product value.
This transparency should be established through respectful conversations with the Product Owner and, if needed, through Scrum events such as the Sprint Retrospective.
2. Coach the Product Owner on Accountability
The Scrum Guide states that the Product Owner is accountable formaximizing valueandProduct Backlog management, which requires ongoing collaboration with Developers. The Scrum Master should coach the Product Owner to understand that handing over a backlog at Sprint Planning isnot sufficientand that availability during the Sprint is essential for empiricism.
3. Enable Better Collaboration Without Replacing the Product Owner
The Scrum Master should help create opportunities for collaboration, such as:
* Encouraging regular clarification moments during the Sprint,
* Improving Product Backlog refinement so fewer questions remain unanswered,
* Helping Developers prepare focused questions to use limited Product Owner availability effectively.
However, the Scrum Master mustnot take over Product Owner responsibilities, as this would blur accountabilities.
4. Address Organizational Causes
If the Product Owner's distance is due to workload, role confusion, or organizational pressure, this becomes an organizational impediment. The Scrum Master should raise this issue with leadership and help the organization understand the risk of an unavailable Product Owner to product outcomes.