PMP People — Leading Projects Practice Question
Your agile team has recently formed and is struggling to agree on work methods and communication norms. Several team members are frustrated with the lack of consistency. What should you do as the project manager?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates mistakenly equate 'self-organizing' with 'no facilitation needed,' leading them to choose Option A, but the PMP exam expects the project manager to actively guide the team through the forming stage to enable true self-organization later.
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 workshop to develop a team charter that defines working agreements and communication norms
The team is in the forming stage and needs explicit guidance to establish shared expectations. Facilitating a workshop to create a team charter directly addresses the root cause—lack of agreed-upon work methods and communication norms—by providing a structured, collaborative process that aligns with agile principles while still leveraging the project manager's leadership to resolve the impasse.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Let the team work out the issues on their own since they are self-organizing
Why it's wrong here
While agile teams are fundamentally self-organizing, a newly formed team struggling to agree on work methods requires active facilitation, not abandonment. The Project Manager or Agile Coach has a crucial responsibility to guide the team through the 'forming' and 'storming' stages of development, providing tools and processes to establish effective collaboration. Leaving them entirely alone can prolong dysfunction, erode morale, and prevent the team from establishing necessary norms and conflict resolution mechanisms.
- ✗
Assign a team lead to make decisions on work methods
Why it's wrong here
Assigning a single team lead to dictate work methods directly undermines the core agile principle of self-organizing teams, which thrive on collective ownership and decentralized decision-making. This approach can stifle the team's creativity, reduce their sense of autonomy, and prevent them from collaboratively discovering and adapting the most effective processes for their unique context. It shifts accountability away from the whole team, hindering their growth and problem-solving capabilities.
- ✗
Replace the frustrated team members with more collaborative ones
Why it's wrong here
Replacing frustrated team members is an extreme and counterproductive measure that fails to address the underlying systemic issues causing the team's struggles. This action is highly disruptive, destroys trust, and ignores the opportunity for the existing team to learn and grow through conflict resolution and improved collaboration. Effective agile leadership focuses on coaching, mediation, and fostering a supportive environment for team development, rather than resorting to personnel changes that avoid addressing root causes.
- ✓
Facilitate a workshop to develop a team charter that defines working agreements and communication norms
Why this is correct
Facilitating a workshop to collaboratively develop a team charter is a highly effective and proactive strategy for a newly formed agile team experiencing difficulties. This process empowers the team to define their shared purpose, values, working agreements, and communication norms, establishing a clear foundation for self-organization and conflict resolution. It aligns expectations, builds psychological safety, and provides a framework for the team to collectively improve their performance and cohesion.
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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.