PMP Process — Managing Technical Aspects Practice Question
A project manager is leading a software development project. During a sprint review, the product owner rejects a feature because it does not meet the acceptance criteria. The development team claims they followed the design documents. What should the project manager do first?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates often jump to corrective action (like instructing rework or escalating) without first diagnosing the root cause of the discrepancy, failing to recognize that clarifying the acceptance criteria is the foundational step in resolving requirements misalignment.
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
✓
Facilitate a meeting with the product owner and team to review the acceptance criteria.
The immediate priority is to clarify the acceptance criteria with both the product owner and the development team. The discrepancy between the design documents and the acceptance criteria indicates a potential misunderstanding or misalignment in requirements, which must be resolved collaboratively before any rework or escalation. Facilitating a meeting ensures that the team understands the exact criteria and can align their technical implementation accordingly, preventing further wasted effort.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Instruct the team to modify the feature to match the product owner's expectations.
Why it's wrong here
Instructing the team to modify the feature without first understanding the root cause of the discrepancy is a reactive and potentially wasteful approach. This action bypasses critical problem-solving steps, such as investigating whether the product owner's expectations changed, if the original requirements were ambiguous, or if the team misunderstood them. Implementing changes based solely on a new directive risks rework and does not address the underlying communication or requirements definition issues.
- ✗
Request that the team attend additional training on requirements analysis.
Why it's wrong here
While continuous improvement through training is a valuable long-term strategy for enhancing team capabilities, requesting additional training on requirements analysis is not an immediate corrective action for an existing feature discrepancy. This approach fails to address the specific, current conflict between the developed feature and the product owner's expectations. The project requires an urgent resolution to the present issue, which training would not provide in a timely manner.
- ✓
Facilitate a meeting with the product owner and team to review the acceptance criteria.
Why this is correct
Facilitating a meeting with the product owner and the team to review the acceptance criteria is the most appropriate and effective immediate action. This collaborative approach directly addresses the discrepancy by fostering open communication and ensuring a shared understanding of what "done" means for the feature. By collectively examining the criteria, all parties can identify the source of the misunderstanding, clarify ambiguities, and agree on a path forward, thereby resolving the conflict efficiently.
- ✗
Escalate to the steering committee for a decision.
Why it's wrong here
Escalating to the steering committee for a decision at this stage is premature and an overreaction. The project manager's role involves empowering the project team and product owner to resolve issues collaboratively before involving higher organizational levels. Such an escalation bypasses the team's ability to resolve the discrepancy, consumes senior management's time unnecessarily, and undermines the project's internal problem-solving mechanisms, indicating a failure to attempt resolution through established project governance.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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