POPM PI Planning Preparation Practice Question
A Product Owner is preparing for PI Planning and needs to ensure the team's backlog is ready. Which two actions should the Product Owner take to prepare the team backlog for PI Planning? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is thinking that all features must be broken into stories before PI Planning, when actually story decomposition is part of the event itself.
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
✓
Define acceptance criteria for each user story.
The Product Owner should ensure user stories are estimated, prioritized, and have clear acceptance criteria before PI Planning. These actions make the team backlog ready for planning, enabling the team to understand the work and commit to objectives. They also facilitate dependency identification and capacity planning.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Assign user stories to specific team members based on their expertise.
Why it's wrong here
Assigning user stories to individuals before PI Planning contradicts self-organizing team principles. Teams should collectively decide who works on what during PI Planning or iteration planning. Pre-assignment can reduce flexibility and motivation. The Product Owner should not assign work; instead, the team self-selects tasks.
- ✓
Define acceptance criteria for each user story.
Why this is correct
Clear acceptance criteria for each user story ensure a shared understanding of what 'done' means. This reduces ambiguity during PI Planning and helps the team estimate accurately. It also enables effective testing and validation later. Without acceptance criteria, stories are not ready for planning, and the team may struggle to commit to objectives.
- ✗
Ensure that the team backlog contains only high-priority features for the upcoming PI.
Why it's wrong here
The team backlog should contain a prioritized list of stories derived from features, not just high-priority features. Features are broken down into stories during PI Planning. Limiting the backlog to only high-priority features may exclude necessary enablers or lower-priority items that still require planning. The backlog should be ordered but not artificially restricted.
- ✗
Break down all features into user stories before PI Planning.
Why it's wrong here
Breaking down all features into user stories before PI Planning is not required and can be counterproductive. Story decomposition is often done collaboratively during PI Planning to foster shared understanding. Pre-breaking down all features may lead to over-detailed planning and reduce team ownership. The Product Owner should focus on ensuring features are ready, not stories.
- ✓
Ensure that all user stories are estimated and prioritized.
Why this is correct
Estimating and prioritizing user stories ensures the team has a clear, ordered backlog ready for PI Planning. This allows the team to understand the scope and sequence of work, making it easier to plan and commit to PI Objectives. It also helps identify dependencies and capacity constraints early, facilitating a smoother PI Planning session.
About these practice questions
This POPM question is part of Courseiva's 336-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.