How do you help establish a Sprint Goal when the PO hasn't?

WHAT THIS TESTS: This question probes your understanding of the Scrum Team's collective accountability during Sprint Planning and whether you see developers as active planners rather than order takers. The interviewer wants to know if you recognize that the Sprint Goal is created by the Scrum Team, not handed down by the Product Owner, and that your technical perspective is essential for turning a pile of backlog items into a coherent, achievable objective.

A GOOD ANSWER COVERS: First, ask clarifying questions about the value and user impact of the proposed items to surface a common theme. Second, look for dependencies or technical relationships among the items that suggest a unifying outcome. Third, propose a draft Sprint Goal that is concise and business-oriented, then invite the Product Owner and Scrum Master to refine it together. Fourth, verify that the selected Product Backlog items actually support that goal and that the forecast is realistic, pushing back or deferring work that breaks coherence.

COMMON WRONG ANSWERS: A major red flag is saying the Product Owner is solely responsible for the Sprint Goal and that your job is simply to estimate the tickets. Another is suggesting you would accept the items and figure out the goal later, which inverts the 2020 Scrum Guide planning sequence. Passive answers like silently accepting unrelated work or aggressively refusing to start without a perfect goal also signal poor collaboration.

LIKELY FOLLOW-UPS: The interviewer may ask how you would handle a Product Owner who insists the items cannot be changed, or how you would adjust if mid-Sprint you realize the goal is no longer achievable. They might also probe whether you would involve stakeholders or how you balance team capacity against the ambition of the goal.

ONE CONCRETE EXAMPLE: Suppose the Product Owner brings three top items: refactor the payment gateway, update the receipt email template, and add a new fraud rule. Instead of treating these as random tasks, you facilitate a two-minute discussion and learn that all three reduce checkout friction and chargeback risk. You propose the Sprint Goal: harden the checkout experience to reduce payment failures and fraud. The team selects the related backlog items, defers a nice-to-have API cleanup that does not serve the goal, and walks away with a clear target.