POPM Leadership for PI Planning Practice Question
During the final plan review of PI Planning, a team presents an objective that is business-critical but has low confidence because it depends on a vendor delivering an integration two weeks into the PI. The Business Owners are present. What is the most appropriate leadership action?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is treating the confidence vote as a decision to be manipulated for a stronger-looking plan, when it is actually a risk signal that leadership should use to drive mitigation.
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
✓
Ask the team to split the objective so the portion not dependent on the vendor can be committed with high confidence.
The best leadership response is to help the team restructure the objective so that vendor-independent work can be committed with confidence while the vendor-dependent portion remains visible as a risk. This preserves business value, respects the team's honest confidence assessment, and gives leadership an accurate plan it can act on during the PI rather than discovering the shortfall late.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Accept the objective as written and move on, since the confidence vote will surface any remaining concerns.
Why it's wrong here
Accepting a low-confidence, dependency-laden objective without discussion turns the confidence vote into a formality. The vote is a signal, not a resolution mechanism. If leadership ignores the stated risk, the team's plan remains fragile and the vendor delay will likely cascade into missed PI objectives that could have been anticipated and mitigated during planning.
- ✓
Ask the team to split the objective so the portion not dependent on the vendor can be committed with high confidence.
Why this is correct
Splitting the objective isolates the vendor-dependent work from the portion the team controls, allowing them to commit with confidence to deliverable value while keeping the risky integration visible. This preserves the business-critical intent, improves plan integrity, and gives leadership an accurate view of what will be delivered regardless of vendor timing. It is a practical mitigation owned by the team with leadership guidance.
- ✗
Reject the objective and instruct the team to replace it with lower-risk work already in their backlog.
Why it's wrong here
Rejecting a business-critical objective removes value from the plan rather than addressing the underlying risk. The team has already identified the dependency, which is exactly the transparency leadership needs. The better response is to explore mitigation, such as adjusting scope or timing, while keeping the objective visible so the ART can manage the vendor risk during the PI.
- ✗
Direct the team to commit to the objective at high confidence so the program maintains a strong overall commitment.
Why it's wrong here
Pressuring a team to inflate confidence violates the integrity of the confidence vote and creates a plan leadership cannot trust. The vote is a genuine signal of the team's ability to meet its objectives; overriding it destroys psychological safety and the data quality of the plan. It also masks the vendor risk until it materializes, when it will be far more expensive to address.
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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.