How can a team decide to pick a user story for a sprint, when the Product Manager has already decided on PBI ordering?

Question

An exam asked: who decides to take up a user story for a sprint, Product Manager or Team? The correct answer was Team.

I understand that:

• Product Manager prioritizes the Product Backlog Items (PBI).
• Team members select user stories for a sprint.
• PBIs and user stories seem to be synonymous.

So, how can a team decide to pick a user story for a sprint, when the Product Manager has already decided on PBI ordering?

Answer 1

It is explained well by Jessehouwing.

Only team decides on selecting the User story for a sprint as only team has clear understanding of it's capacity & all other dependencies for implementing the user story. Product owner prioritise the PB and clearly put his/her wish in front of the team. Team selects the PBI as what they can deliver. It will be team's responsibility to deliver whatever they have picked for the sprint. As only team is committed for their deliverables and PO is only involved (chicken & pig).

Answer 2

I'm assuming this was a Scrum exam. And it's a bit of a tricky question. The team selects the work they take into the sprint, as only the team can make a forecast of what they can do. Maybe certain things need to be changed in the codebase first, maybe a team member needs a knowledge transfer or maybe there is a lot of sense in waiting another sprint for one item. A very common reason I see is that one of the last stories simply is too big and that a story below it on the Product Backlog would fit, the team they may opt to skip story 8 and instead pickup 9.

They present their forecast to the product owner and explain why they came up with this selection. The Product owner may simply accept this, or may suggest changes or ask for alternatives.

The team will then consider these requests.

In the end it's important that the team itself decides which work they're going to pick up. The simple reason for that is that they've taken the responsibility to come up with a plan they think is achievable. It usually helps with the commitment to the goal and the other team members, plus it fosters a sense of responsibility, which usually doesn't occur when the product owner simply dictates the work to be done.

Answer 3

• Yes, PBIs and user stories are pretty much synonymous.
• Yes, the Product Owner determines the priority order of the PBIs.
• Yes, the Team Members select user stories (PBIs) from the product backlog into the sprint backlog.

Team Members must, however, select PBIs in order of priority. I.e. they can't "skip ahead" and pick a PBI from further down the list. In this fashion, the PO determines the priorities, and the Team determines how many of the top priority items they will deliver in a given sprint.