PMP People — Leading Projects Practice Question
Your agile project team has been consistently delivering high-quality work, but sprint velocity has dropped over the last three sprints. The team reports feeling overworked and demotivated. What should you do FIRST?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse a drop in velocity with a need to adjust scope or push harder, rather than recognizing it as a symptom of deeper team health or process issues that require a collaborative, root-cause analysis first.
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 root causes and collaboratively develop improvements
Facilitating a retrospective is the correct first step because it empowers the team to collaboratively identify the root causes of the decreased velocity and demotivation, such as technical debt, unclear requirements, or process inefficiencies. This aligns with the agile principle of continuous improvement and servant leadership, where the project manager acts as a facilitator rather than imposing solutions. Addressing the underlying issues through team-driven improvements is more sustainable than forcing scope or personnel changes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Facilitate a retrospective to identify root causes and collaboratively develop improvements
Why this is correct
Agile emphasizes inspect and adapt; involving the team fosters ownership.
- ✗
Reduce the sprint scope to increase velocity
Why it's wrong here
This may mask the issue and does not address the team's motivation.
- ✗
Replace the scrum master with a more experienced one
Why it's wrong here
This assumes the scrum master is the problem without investigation.
- ✗
Ask the team to work overtime to regain velocity
Why it's wrong here
This can increase burnout and is not a sustainable solution.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every PMP question from scratch — 800 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or 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.