PMP People — Leading Projects Practice Question
You are leading a Scrum team. For the past three sprints, the team has consistently completed all committed user stories. The product owner wants to increase the team's velocity by 20%. What should you do?
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 retrospective to identify process improvements that could sustainably increase velocity
Velocity is a measure of past performance, not a target. The team should self-organize to improve their process sustainably through retrospectives. Option A is wrong because reducing the definition of done to skip testing compromises quality, increases technical debt, and is unsustainable. Option B is wrong because instructing the team to commit to more stories forces a target on velocity, which can lead to burnout and does not address process improvement. Option D is wrong because estimating stories with lower story points artificially inflates velocity, masking true performance and hindering accurate planning.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Reduce the definition of done to skip testing activities
Why it's wrong here
Reducing the Definition of Done (DoD) to exclude critical activities like testing is a direct violation of agile principles, which prioritize sustainable pace and quality. This action would inevitably lead to an accumulation of technical debt, increased defect rates in later stages, and a false sense of increased velocity, ultimately undermining product quality and team credibility. A robust DoD ensures that increments are truly shippable and meet necessary quality standards.
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Instruct the team to commit to more stories each sprint
Why it's wrong here
Instructing the team to commit to more stories undermines the fundamental agile principle of self-organizing teams and their autonomy in determining sprint capacity. This top-down directive can lead to overcommitment, burnout, and a decrease in quality as the team rushes to meet externally imposed targets, rather than delivering at a sustainable pace. A Scrum Master's role is to facilitate, not dictate, the team's sprint forecast.
- ✓
Facilitate a retrospective to identify process improvements that could sustainably increase velocity
Why this is correct
Facilitating a retrospective is the most appropriate action, as it empowers the self-organizing team to collaboratively identify root causes for current velocity and brainstorm sustainable process improvements. This aligns perfectly with the Scrum Master's role as a servant leader, fostering continuous improvement and allowing the team to collectively own and implement changes that genuinely enhance their productivity and delivery capability without compromising quality.
- ✗
Ask the team to estimate stories with lower story points to increase velocity
Why it's wrong here
Requesting the team to artificially lower story point estimates is a manipulative and unethical practice that distorts transparency and undermines the empirical foundation of Scrum. Story points are relative measures of effort, complexity, and risk, intended to help the team forecast, not to be a performance metric to be gamed. Such an action provides a false sense of progress and prevents genuine understanding of the team's true capacity and challenges.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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