Certified Scrum Master Practice Test

Who maintains the product backlog and prioritizes work?

1. Scrum Team

2. Development Team

3. Scrum Master

4. Product Owner

The correct answer is: Product Owner

The Product Owner is the role responsible for maintaining the product backlog and prioritizing work within it. This individual serves as the single point of accountability for the backlog, ensuring that it is kept up to date and reflects the needs and priorities of stakeholders as well as customer value. The Product Owner collaborates with stakeholders to gather requirements, assess business value, and make decisions regarding priority based on overall project goals. Maintaining the product backlog involves not just listing all the necessary work, but also continually refining it by adding detail, estimates, and order to the items. This prioritization ensures that the development team focuses on the most valuable items first, which is crucial for maximizing the return on investment for the project. Other roles, such as the Scrum Team or Development Team, play important roles in the Scrum framework, but they do not hold the primary responsibility for the backlog management and prioritization that the Product Owner does. The Scrum Master focuses more on facilitating the Scrum process and ensuring that the team adheres to Scrum practices, rather than managing the backlog itself.