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PSPO II · Scrum.org · Organizational Design and Culture · Bank updated 2026-09-12

PSPO II practice questions: Organizational Design and Culture

5 free questions from 14 on this area · answer and explanation for each · no sign-up

These 5 questions come from the Organizational Design and Culture section of our PSPO II bank (14 questions on this area, which carries 13% of the real exam). Every question is original, with the correct answer explained and linked to the source it is drawn from.

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1/5 · Organizational Design and Culture · easy
A large enterprise is scaling a single product across several feature teams. Per the Scrum Guide (2020), which statement about Product Owner accountability must remain true no matter how large or complex the initiative grows?
AEach feature team should maintain its own Product Backlog reflecting its own local priorities.
BA Product Owner steering committee should be formed so every stakeholder group has equal say in ordering the Product Backlog.
CThe Product Owner role can be rotated weekly among senior business analysts to spread the workload.
DThe Product Owner is one person, not a committee, who remains accountable for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team(s).
Show answer & explanation
D is correct. The Scrum Guide (2020) states the Product Owner is accountable for effective Product Backlog management and 'is one person, not a committee' — the organization may support the Product Owner (e.g., delegating content refinement), but it cannot dilute this single-person accountability, even at scale.
↗ the Scrum Guide (2020) + Scrum.org's Product Owner Learning Path and the Evidence-Based Management Guide — Organizational Design and Culture
2/5 · Organizational Design and Culture
A Product Owner is accountable for one product, but the organization has structured work across three permanent component teams (UI, services, and data), each led by a functional manager who sets that team's priorities independently. The Product Owner cannot get a usable Increment most Sprints because the three teams' outputs rarely integrate cleanly. Which action is most consistent with the Scrum Guide's view of organizational design for agility?
ASchedule additional cross-team status meetings each Sprint so the component teams can report progress to each other.
BAsk each functional manager to increase their team's velocity so more component work is finished before the Sprint Review.
CCreate a separate Product Backlog for each component team so each functional manager can continue setting local priorities.
DAdvocate, using data on integration cost and cycle time, for reorganizing around cross-functional Scrum Team(s) able to independently produce a done, integrated Increment for the product, rather than leaving priority-setting with functional managers.
Show answer & explanation
D is correct. Component teams organized by technical layer are a well-known impediment to agility because no single team can deliver a done, valuable Increment alone; the Scrum Guide's expectation of cross-functional Developers implies the Product Owner should push for structural change, not just coordination workarounds or higher local velocity.
↗ the Scrum Guide (2020) + Scrum.org's Product Owner Learning Path and the Evidence-Based Management Guide — Organizational Design and Culture
3/5 · Organizational Design and Culture
A Product Owner records every request from stakeholders and developers into the Product Backlog and orders items strictly by whoever asked most recently or most loudly, without applying any value-based prioritization. What is the most accurate characterization of this behavior, and what should change?
AOrdering should instead be delegated entirely to the Developers, since they best understand technical dependencies.
BThis is acceptable because the Product Owner should remain a neutral scribe and let the loudest stakeholder voices naturally surface the highest-value work.
COrdering should be delegated to the Scrum Master, who is accountable for the overall health of the Scrum process.
DThis is the 'backlog secretary' anti-pattern; the Product Owner must actively order the Product Backlog based on evidence of value, engaging stakeholders in trade-off conversations rather than transcribing requests.
Show answer & explanation
D is correct. Acting purely as a passive recorder of requests — the 'backlog secretary' anti-pattern — abdicates the Product Owner's core accountability for maximizing value; the fix is to actively engage stakeholders in trade-off conversations and order the backlog based on evidence of value, not recency or volume of requests.
↗ the Scrum Guide (2020) + Scrum.org's Product Owner Learning Path and the Evidence-Based Management Guide — Organizational Design and Culture
4/5 · Organizational Design and Culture
A Product Owner wants a measure reflecting the organization's Ability to Innovate, per the EBM Guide, so leadership can see whether the organization is structurally free to pursue new value or is trapped maintaining what already exists. Which of the following best serves that purpose?
ATotal company revenue for the fiscal year.
BThe total number of production defects reported last quarter.
CThe proportion of team capacity or budget spent on new capabilities versus maintaining or supporting existing functionality (an 'installed capacity vs. innovation capacity' style measure).
DThe number of Scrum Teams currently working on the product.
Show answer & explanation
C is correct. Ability to Innovate is best evidenced by measures of how much organizational capacity is genuinely available for new work versus tied up sustaining existing capability (e.g., technical debt, legacy support load), rather than by output, quality, or purely financial indicators.
↗ the Scrum Guide (2020) + Scrum.org's Product Owner Learning Path and the Evidence-Based Management Guide — Organizational Design and Culture
5/5 · Organizational Design and Culture · hard
The Product Owner discovers that a mandatory legal sign-off step, owned by a department outside the Scrum Team, adds six weeks to every release regardless of change size, materially harming Time-to-Market. The Scrum Master has already raised this impediment in retrospectives for two quarters with no organizational movement. As Product Owner, what is the most appropriate additional action, consistent with the Scrum Guide (2020) and EBM Guide, to drive change here?
AQuantify the business impact of the delay in value terms (e.g., lost Unrealized Value, slower Time-to-Market) and bring that evidence directly to the stakeholders or executives who can change the legal process.
BRedefine the Definition of Done to exclude legal sign-off so the Increment can be called 'Done' without it.
CInstruct the Development Team to bypass the legal sign-off for small changes to protect Time-to-Market, since the Product Owner owns release decisions.
DDo nothing further, since removing organizational impediments outside the Scrum Team is solely the Scrum Master's accountability and the Product Owner should not get involved.
Show answer & explanation
A is correct. When an impediment sits outside the Scrum Team's control and the Scrum Master's process-level escalation has stalled, the Product Owner can add complementary pressure by translating the delay into quantified value terms and taking that case to the stakeholders with authority to change it — a legitimate use of the Product Owner's value-maximizing accountability, unlike bypassing compliance or gaming the Definition of Done.
↗ the Scrum Guide (2020) + Scrum.org's Product Owner Learning Path and the Evidence-Based Management Guide — Organizational Design and Culture
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Other PSPO II areas

The same kind of free sample for every other section of the PSPO II bank:

Product Vision and Business Strategy15 qProduct Value and Backlog Management at Scale16 qForecasting and Release Strategy16 qStakeholder and Customer Engagement15 qEvidence-Based Management16 qPortfolio Planning14 q

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