PMP Process — Managing Technical Aspects Practice Question
During a sprint planning meeting, the product owner proposes a user story that the team feels is too large to complete in one sprint. What is the best approach?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common misconception is that large stories can be 'carried over' across sprints, but the PMP exam strictly enforces that each sprint must deliver a complete, potentially releasable increment. Splitting the story into smaller stories that fit within one sprint is the correct approach.
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
✓
Break the story down into smaller, more manageable stories that can be completed within the sprint.
In Agile, user stories that are too large for a single sprint are called 'epics' and must be decomposed into smaller, independently valuable stories that fit within the sprint's timebox. Breaking the story down ensures the team can deliver a potentially releasable increment by the end of the sprint, maintaining velocity predictability and adhering to the sprint's fixed duration.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Break the story down into smaller, more manageable stories that can be completed within the sprint.
Why this is correct
Breaking down a large user story into smaller, independent, and valuable components is the primary agile practice for ensuring work fits within a sprint's timebox. This decomposition allows the Development Team to commit to completing specific, shippable increments by the sprint's end, aligning with the sprint goal and facilitating continuous delivery. It also enhances predictability and enables accurate progress tracking, which are fundamental to agile success.
- ✗
Ask the product owner to remove the story from the sprint backlog.
Why it's wrong here
Asking the Product Owner to remove the story prematurely bypasses the collaborative effort to deliver value. While removal might be a last resort if decomposition proves impossible or the story's priority shifts significantly, the initial focus during Sprint Planning should be on finding a way to deliver *some* part of the desired functionality within the sprint. This approach prioritizes avoiding work over creatively solving the challenge of delivering value to stakeholders.
- ✗
Include the story as is and let the team work on it across multiple sprints.
Why it's wrong here
Allowing a single user story to span multiple sprints fundamentally undermines the core Scrum principle of time-boxing and the sprint goal. Each sprint is intended to deliver a potentially shippable increment of value, and carrying over unfinished work obscures true progress, complicates velocity calculations, and delays critical feedback loops. This practice prevents the team from achieving a 'Done' increment at the end of each sprint, impacting transparency and adaptability.
- ✗
Estimate the story with a high point value and accept that it may spill over.
Why it's wrong here
Estimating a large story with a high point value and accepting spillover contradicts the agile principle of completing committed work within a sprint. While estimates reflect complexity, intentionally accepting that work will extend beyond the sprint boundary negates the purpose of sprint planning and commitment. This approach reduces predictability, makes sprint reviews less effective, and can mask underlying issues with story sizing or the team's capacity planning.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Leading Teams and Empowering Team Members
Key term
Sprint Planning
Sprint Planning is a time-boxed meeting at the start of a Scrum sprint where the team decides what work they can deliver and how they will do it.
Key term
Scrum Methodology
Scrum is a lightweight process framework that helps teams deliver complex projects in small, iterative chunks called sprints.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PMP 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 PMP exam.