A sustainable pace is a level of effort that the Scrum Team can maintain consistently without burnout, chronic overtime, deterioration in quality, or progressively declining effectiveness. Therefore, option C most accurately reflects the concept: Sprint effort should normally be comparable with previous Sprints and remain comfortable and repeatable for the team.
Sustainable pace does not mean continually increasing workload as experience grows. Productivity may improve as the team learns, but that improvement should arise from better collaboration, technical practices, reduced waste, and accumulated knowledge—not from continually demanding greater physical effort.
Likewise, sustainable pace does not imply that effort must steadily decrease. Different Sprint contents will vary, but the team's workload should remain within a manageable long-term capacity.
SCRUMstudy links sustainable pace directly to quality. Excessive overtime and end-loaded testing tend to increase defects and reduce maintainability, while regular development and testing throughout Sprints produce a more stable working environment.
Thus C expresses the central idea: consistent, repeatable, healthy effort across Sprints.
Study Guide reference: Quality - > Sustainable Pace; Scrum Master Responsibilities Relevant to Quality.
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