POPM Product Owner and Product Management Roles Practice Question
A Product Owner is preparing for a System Demo at the end of an Iteration. The team has completed several user stories that meet their acceptance criteria, but a dependent team's API is still returning mock data, so the stories cannot be integrated into the solution demo. What should the Product Owner do?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is assuming that stories meeting their individual acceptance criteria are automatically acceptable even when cross-team integration is incomplete.
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
✓
Coordinate with the other team's Product Owner to resolve the API dependency before the System Demo, and if unresolved, transparently report the integration impediment.
The Product Owner is accountable for ensuring that the work delivered represents real value, which requires integration with dependent components. Coordinating directly with the other Product Owner addresses the root cause, while transparent reporting maintains trust and allows the ART to address the impediment. Accepting unintegrated stories or masking the gap with stubs would misrepresent the increment's actual state.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Coordinate with the other team's Product Owner to resolve the API dependency before the System Demo, and if unresolved, transparently report the integration impediment.
Why this is correct
The Product Owner is accountable for value delivery across team boundaries, so coordinating with the other Product Owner is the right first step. If the dependency cannot be resolved in time, transparently reporting the integration impediment preserves the System Demo's purpose of demonstrating a fully integrated solution. This behavior aligns with SAFe's emphasis on relentless improvement and honest communication of PI risks.
- ✗
Escalate immediately to the Business Owners and request that the dependent team be removed from the Agile Release Train.
Why it's wrong here
Escalation to Business Owners is reserved for significant impediments that cannot be resolved at the team or ART level, and removal from the ART is an extreme, disproportionate response. The Product Owner should first attempt to resolve the dependency collaboratively with the other Product Owner. Jumping to escalation damages trust and bypasses the ART's self-organizing problem-solving mechanisms.
- ✗
Ask the developers to build a temporary stub that mimics the missing API so the stories can be demonstrated as complete.
Why it's wrong here
Demonstrating with a stub creates a false impression of integration and undermines the System Demo's role as an integration event. While stubs are legitimate development techniques, using one to declare stories complete when a real dependency is missing hides risk from stakeholders. The Product Owner must not accept work that does not meet the definition of done, which requires real integration.
- ✗
Mark the completed stories as accepted and ask the Release Train Engineer to exclude the dependency from the System Demo.
Why it's wrong here
Accepting stories that cannot be integrated into the solution hides a critical dependency and misrepresents the actual state of the Increment to stakeholders. The Product Owner owns the decision to accept work, and acceptance must reflect a working, integrated increment, not isolated code. Excluding the dependency from the System Demo would also prevent the train from surfacing and resolving the integration risk early.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Scaled Agile exam blueprint
This POPM practice question is part of Courseiva's free Scaled Agile 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 POPM exam.