PMP Process — Managing Technical Aspects Practice Question
Your agile team has been consistently delivering in each sprint, but the product owner is concerned because the customer's needs have changed and some completed features may no longer be valuable. The project uses fixed-price contract. 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
✓
Work with the product owner to reprioritize the remaining backlog and submit a change request to modify the scope
In a fixed-price contract, changes must go through change control to adjust scope, schedule, and cost. The PM should facilitate a discussion about reprioritizing the backlog and submit a change request if needed.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Work with the product owner to reprioritize the remaining backlog and submit a change request to modify the scope
Why this is correct
In an agile environment, continuous collaboration with the Product Owner to refine and reprioritize the backlog is fundamental for maximizing value. When significant changes to the overall project scope are identified, even within a fixed-price contract, formalizing these adjustments through a change request ensures alignment with contractual terms and proper stakeholder communication. This approach allows the project to adapt to evolving needs while maintaining governance and transparency, a core tenet of PMI's approach to managing change.
- ✗
Continue with the current sprint plan since the contract is fixed-price
Why it's wrong here
Continuing with the current sprint plan despite identified changes, simply because the contract is fixed-price, is a rigid and detrimental approach. Fixed-price contracts define the financial terms but do not eliminate the need for managing scope changes or addressing evolving customer requirements. Ignoring legitimate changes can lead to a product that fails to meet current business needs, resulting in significant customer dissatisfaction, potential rework, and costly contract disputes or legal challenges upon project completion.
- ✗
Advise the product owner to accept the current features and add new ones in a separate project
Why it's wrong here
Advising the Product Owner to accept current features and initiate a separate project for new requirements demonstrates a lack of project flexibility and efficiency. Agile methodologies emphasize adapting to change throughout the project lifecycle, and creating an entirely new project for scope adjustments is an overly bureaucratic and resource-intensive solution. Proper change control processes within the existing project are designed precisely to manage evolving requirements and integrate new features without unnecessary administrative overhead or project fragmentation.
- ✗
Stop the project and renegotiate the contract with the customer
Why it's wrong here
Stopping the entire project to renegotiate the contract is an extreme and highly inefficient measure for addressing scope modifications. Contracts typically include provisions for managing changes through formal change requests, which allow for controlled adjustments to scope, schedule, or cost without invalidating the entire agreement. Renegotiating the entire contract would incur significant delays, legal costs, and administrative burden, severely impacting project timelines and stakeholder confidence, making it an inappropriate first response to evolving requirements.
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.