Scaled Agile SSM - SSM (6.0) - SAFe Scrum Master Practice 6.0

One of the characteristics of high-performing teams is having fun with the work and with each other. According to SAFe, high-performing teams enjoy their work and have a positive team spirit. They celebrate their achievements and learn from their failures. They also have a strong sense of camaraderie and trust, which fosters collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement12.

One of the main responsibilities of a Scrum Master/Team Coach is to facilitate team events, such as Iteration Planning, Daily Stand-up, Iteration Review, and Iteration Retrospective. These events help the team to plan, execute, inspect, and adapt their work throughout the Iteration. By facilitating these events, the Scrum Master/Team Coach ensures that the team follows the Agile principles and practices, collaborates effectively, and delivers value to the customers and stakeholders.

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.

One of the responsibilities of a Scrum Master/Team Coach is to help the team achieve flow, which is a state of continuous and sustainable delivery of value. They do this by teaching and coaching the team on SAFe Scrum and SAFe Team Kanban practices, such as limiting work in progress, visualizing work, managing queues, and reducing batch sizes. They also help identify and eliminate impediments and bottlenecks that hinder the team’s progress and performance.

Hackathons are one of the activities that can be done during the IP Iteration to foster innovation and learning. They allow the team members to work on whatever they want, with whomever they want, as long as the work reflects the mission of the company. The teams then demo their work to others at the end of the hackathon. Hackathons can help the team explore new ideas, technologies, and solutions that can benefit the business and the customers. They can also increase the team’s engagement, creativity, and collaboration. References: Innovation and Planning Iteration - Scaled Agile Framework, Exam Study Guide: SSM (6.0) - SAFe® Scrum Master

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

The CALMR approach to DevOps in SAFe® stands for Culture, Automation, Lean Flow, Measurement, and Recovery. It represents the foundational mindset required to achieve continuous delivery and operational excellence.

The “C” in CALMR stands for Culture, which emphasizes building a culture of shared responsibility between development, operations, and business teams. This shared responsibility ensures alignment, collaboration, and a collective focus on delivering value rather than working in silos.

From SAFe guidance:

“DevOps is founded on a culture of shared responsibility for the delivery of value, encouraging collaboration across all roles and reducing handoffs.”

Therefore, the correct answer is B. Create a culture of shared responsibility, as it reflects the first and most essential principle of the CALMR approach.

SAFe® defines seven core competencies that enable business agility. One of these is Agile Product Delivery, which focuses on building a customer-centric approach to defining, developing, and releasing valuable solutions.

This competency emphasizes Design Thinking, DevOps, continuous delivery, and release on demand to ensure fast, high-quality value delivery aligned with customer needs. While Built-in Quality is a foundational SAFe principle, it is not categorized as a core competency.

From SAFe guidance:

“Agile Product Delivery is a customer-centric approach to defining, building, and releasing a continuous flow of valuable products and services to customers and users.”

Therefore, the correct answer is B. Agile Product Delivery, as it is one of SAFe’s official seven core competencies.

A constructive IP Iteration is one of the recommended practices for Scrum Masters/Team Coaches to help teams avoid burnout, address technical debt, and foster innovation. An IP Iteration is a unique, dedicated iteration that occurs every PI and provides an estimating buffer for meeting PI Objectives and dedicated time for innovation, continuing education, PI Planning, and Inspect and Adapt events. During the IP Iteration, teams can work on activities such as hackathons, research and design, spikes, refactoring, automation, training, and other improvement initiatives that are difficult to fit into a continuous, incremental value delivery pattern. An IP Iteration also allows teams to prepare for and participate in the PI Planning and Inspect and Adapt events, which are essential for alignment, collaboration, and learning across the ART. A constructive IP Iteration can improve the predictability and flow of value delivery, increase employee engagement and satisfaction, enhance the agility and resilience of the teams, and create a competitive advantage for the enterprise.

The problem-solving workshop is the third part of the Inspect and Adapt (I&A) event in SAFe®. Its main purpose is to use structured root cause analysis to develop solutions to recognized problems that blocked or slowed work during the Program Increment (PI).

Teams and ART stakeholders collaboratively identify systemic issues using techniques like the 5 Whys or fishbone diagrams. They then define concrete improvement actions, which are prioritized and added to the improvement backlog for implementation in the next PI.

From SAFe guidance:

“The purpose of the problem-solving workshop is to identify the root causes of systemic issues that impacted performance during the PI and create improvement actions to address them.”

Therefore, the correct answer is D. Developing solutions to recognized problems that blocked or slowed work.