PMP People — Leading Projects Practice Question
Your agile project is in its third sprint. The product owner has been pressuring the team to deliver more features each sprint to meet stakeholder expectations. Sprint velocity has dropped for two consecutive sprints, and the team seems demotivated. As the project manager, what should you do?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates choose a 'capacity increase' solution (Option A or C) because they mistakenly treat the velocity drop as a resource problem rather than a people and process problem, failing to recognize that agile project management prioritizes sustainable pace and team empowerment over raw output.
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
✓
Coach the product owner on agile principles and facilitate a discussion on sustainable pace and prioritization
The root cause of the velocity drop and team demotivation is a mismatch between stakeholder pressure and the team's sustainable pace. As the project manager, you must coach the product owner on agile principles—specifically that velocity is a measure of capacity, not a target—and facilitate a discussion to reprioritize the backlog so the team can deliver value without burnout. This aligns with the PMBOK Guide's emphasis on servant leadership and protecting the team from external pressure.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Add more developers to the team to increase capacity
Why it's wrong here
Adding more developers to a project already in progress, especially if it's struggling, often invokes Brooks's Law, where "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." New team members require significant onboarding, training, and integration time, which diverts existing team members' focus and increases communication overhead, initially decreasing overall productivity rather than increasing it. This approach fails to address the root cause of the project's state and can exacerbate delays.
- ✗
Extend the sprint duration to allow more time for feature completion
Why it's wrong here
Extending the sprint duration merely postpones the problem and can mask underlying issues like poor estimation, scope creep, or technical debt, rather than resolving them. Agile principles emphasize fixed-length sprints to create a consistent rhythm, facilitate frequent feedback, and expose impediments promptly, allowing for timely inspection and adaptation. Changing sprint length without addressing the underlying issues may not improve productivity and can undermine the team's predictability.
- ✗
Ask the team to work overtime to catch up on the backlog
Why it's wrong here
While seemingly a quick fix, asking the team to work sustained overtime is detrimental to morale, productivity, and product quality in the long run. It leads to burnout, increased errors, reduced creativity, and ultimately an unsustainable pace, directly contradicting the agile principle of sustainable development. A PMP understands that this is a short-term, counterproductive measure that can further reduce morale and lead to more significant problems.
- ✓
Coach the product owner on agile principles and facilitate a discussion on sustainable pace and prioritization
Why this is correct
As a PMP and agile coach, the project manager's role is to educate stakeholders and facilitate effective agile practices. Coaching the Product Owner on sustainable pace, the importance of a refined backlog, and ruthless prioritization empowers them to make informed decisions about scope and value, ensuring the team can deliver high-quality increments consistently without burnout. This addresses potential root causes, fosters a healthy agile environment, and aligns with servant leadership principles.
Go deeper
Related to this question
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.