PMP People — Leading Projects Practice Question
Your agile team's velocity has dropped for the past three sprints. During the retrospective, team members mention they are overburdened with work from other departments. The project manager is not the team's direct manager. What should you do FIRST?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates often jump to re-estimating or escalating (options A or D) because they focus on the metric (velocity) rather than the people and process issue, forgetting that the PM's first duty is to remove impediments, not adjust plans around them.
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 functional managers to reduce the team's external workload
The correct first step is to address the root cause of the velocity drop—the team's overburden from external work. As the project manager lacks direct authority, you must collaborate with the functional managers who control the team members' assignments to negotiate a reduction in external workload. This aligns with the PMI principle of servant leadership and removing impediments, which is the immediate priority before adjusting plans or escalating.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Re-estimate the backlog to reflect the lower velocity
Why it's wrong here
Re-estimating the backlog merely adjusts the planning to the observed lower capacity without addressing the underlying reasons for the decline. This reactive approach treats a symptom rather than investigating and resolving the root cause of the velocity drop, which is crucial for continuous improvement in agile. It accepts the reduced output instead of striving to restore optimal team performance and remove impediments.
- ✓
Work with the functional managers to reduce the team's external workload
Why this is correct
The team’s overburden from other departments is a systemic impediment that only the functional managers can resolve, as the project manager lacks direct authority over team assignments. Addressing this external workload directly targets the root cause of the velocity drop, satisfying the constraint that the project manager must work through organisational hierarchy rather than command-and-control. This aligns with the agile principle of removing blockers at their source.
- ✗
Ask the team to work faster and increase their hours
Why it's wrong here
Pressuring the team to work faster or increase hours is a counterproductive and unsustainable practice in agile environments. This approach often leads to increased stress, reduced quality, higher rates of technical debt, and ultimately team burnout, further exacerbating the velocity issues in the long run. Agile principles emphasize a sustainable pace to maintain long-term productivity and team well-being.
- ✗
Report the velocity drop to the project sponsor
Why it's wrong here
While communication with stakeholders is important, immediately reporting a velocity drop to the project sponsor without first investigating the root cause and attempting to resolve it internally is premature. The project manager's primary responsibility is to proactively identify and remove impediments impacting the team's performance. Escalating without a clear diagnosis or proposed action plan can lead to unnecessary alarm and does not demonstrate effective problem-solving leadership.
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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.