CAPM Business Analysis Frameworks Practice Question
A global retail company is implementing a new e-commerce platform to replace a legacy system. The business analysis team has identified the following: The legacy system has been customized over 10 years, resulting in many undocumented business rules. The project timeline is aggressive (6 months), and the budget is fixed. The project sponsor insists on using an agile methodology to deliver quickly. The core team includes business analysts, developers, and testers, but the key business stakeholders (e.g., from merchandising, logistics, and customer service) are only available for one hour per week due to their operational roles. After the first sprint review, stakeholders expressed dissatisfaction that the delivered features do not match their expectations. The product owner is overwhelmed and struggles to prioritize the backlog. The business analysts notice that many requirements are still ambiguous and that the stakeholder feedback is inconsistent across different departments. The project is at risk of delivering a solution that does not meet business needs. What is the most effective course of action for the business analysts to take at this point?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Negotiate with the sponsor and stakeholders to extend the sprint duration to two weeks and require a minimum of three hours per week from key stakeholders
The root cause of the problem is insufficient stakeholder availability leading to poor requirements definition and inconsistent feedback. Extending the sprint duration to two weeks and requiring a minimum of three hours per week from key stakeholders directly addresses this by allowing more time for meaningful engagement and clarification. Option B (reducing scope) may help but does not resolve the core issue of stakeholder availability; it might still result in missing critical features. Option C (observation sessions) could uncover undocumented rules but does not directly improve stakeholder engagement in the iterative process. Option D (shifting to waterfall) conflicts with the sponsor's agile mandate and would not necessarily resolve the stakeholder availability constraint.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Negotiate with the sponsor and stakeholders to extend the sprint duration to two weeks and require a minimum of three hours per week from key stakeholders
Why this is correct
This increases stakeholder engagement, allowing for better requirements elicitation and validation.
- ✗
Immediately reduce the project scope to the most essential features and accelerate the next sprint
Why it's wrong here
Reducing scope without resolving the requirements ambiguity will still result in unmet expectations.
- ✗
Conduct a series of observation sessions in the stores and warehouses to uncover undocumented business rules
Why it's wrong here
While useful, observations require time and analysis; stakeholders are still needed to validate findings.
- ✗
Request that the project sponsor approve a shift to a predictive (waterfall) lifecycle to define all requirements upfront
Why it's wrong here
This contradicts the agile mandate and may not be feasible given the timeline.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CAPM practice question is part of Courseiva's free PMI certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CAPM exam.