PMP People — Leading Projects Practice Question
During a sprint planning meeting, the product owner proposes a user story that the team believes is too vague and lacks clear acceptance criteria. The product owner insists it must be included in the sprint to meet a stakeholder deadline. What should the scrum master do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently think the Scrum Master should enforce strict rules by removing the product owner (Option D) or blindly accept the story to please stakeholders (Option A), but the PMP exam tests the servant-leader role of facilitating collaboration and negotiation, not unilateral action or avoidance.
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 discussion to refine the story with the product owner and team, and suggest splitting it
The Scrum Master's primary responsibility is to facilitate collaboration and ensure the team works with clear, actionable items. By facilitating a discussion to refine the story and suggesting splitting it, the Scrum Master helps the team achieve a shared understanding and create acceptance criteria, while still addressing the stakeholder deadline. This approach aligns with the Agile principle of delivering value incrementally and avoids committing to vague work that could lead to rework or failure.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Accept the story as is to meet the deadline
Why it's wrong here
Accepting an unrefined story "as is" solely to meet a deadline is counterproductive in an agile environment. This approach risks significant rework, technical debt, and delivering a low-quality increment that may not meet the true user need. The Scrum Master's role is to ensure clarity and quality, not to push through ambiguous work that undermines the team's ability to deliver value.
- ✗
Escalate to the project sponsor
Why it's wrong here
Escalating directly to the project sponsor is a premature and inappropriate first step for an issue arising during sprint planning. The Scrum Master's primary responsibility is to facilitate communication and problem-solving within the Scrum team, empowering them to resolve impediments collaboratively. Such an action bypasses the team's self-organizing capabilities and the Scrum Master's role in facilitating internal resolution, which should always be attempted first.
- ✓
Facilitate a discussion to refine the story with the product owner and team, and suggest splitting it
Why this is correct
This is the most appropriate action for a Scrum Master. Facilitating a discussion between the Product Owner and the development team to refine the story ensures shared understanding and clarity, which are crucial for successful sprint execution. Suggesting to split the story, if it's too large or complex, aligns with agile principles of creating smaller, valuable increments, making it more manageable for the team to estimate and complete within the sprint.
- ✗
Remove the product owner from the meeting
Why it's wrong here
Removing the Product Owner from sprint planning is an unprofessional and counterproductive action. The Product Owner is an essential member of the Scrum Team, responsible for clarifying product backlog items and ensuring the team understands the value to be delivered. Such an act would be highly disrespectful, undermine team collaboration, and directly impede the team's ability to effectively plan the sprint and commit to a meaningful Sprint Goal.
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.
About these practice questions
This PMP question is part of Courseiva's 800-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.