POPM Product Owner and Product Management Roles Practice Question
Exhibit
PI_GOAL: Reduce Latency CURRENT_STORY_POINTS: 40 CAPACITY: 35 TEAM_BUFFER: 5 STATUS: Uncommitted
Refer to the exhibit. The team's planned work exceeds capacity by 5 points. What should the Product Owner do before finalizing the plan?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often choose answers that involve the team working overtime or the Product Owner arbitrarily cutting scope without team agreement, forgetting that capacity planning is a collaborative negotiation.
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
✓
Negotiate with the team to remove 5 points of lower-priority work.
The PO must lead a negotiation to bring the plan within capacity. By re-prioritizing the work and potentially moving lower-priority items to the buffer or out of the PI, the PO ensures the commitment is realistic. This is a critical step in maintaining credibility. A plan that exceeds capacity is destined to fail, and the PO must ensure that the team's commitment is based on a realistic assessment of their actual throughput.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Commit to the full 40 points, as the buffer is intended for emergencies.
Why it's wrong here
Treating the buffer as a capacity expansion tool is a common mistake that defeats the purpose of having a buffer. Buffers are meant to handle uncertainty. Over-committing puts the team at risk of failure and reduces their ability to handle real issues, leading to missed commitments and decreased stakeholder confidence.
- ✗
Ask the team to work faster to cover the 5-point difference.
Why it's wrong here
Demanding increased velocity is unrealistic and often counterproductive. Velocity is an empirical measure, not a variable that can be changed by command. Pressuring the team to 'work faster' leads to quality issues and technical debt. The PO should instead adjust the scope to reflect the team's actual and sustainable velocity.
- ✓
Negotiate with the team to remove 5 points of lower-priority work.
Why this is correct
Removing the lowest-priority work is the most effective way to align the plan with capacity. This ensures that the team only commits to what they can realistically achieve, increasing the probability of success. It is a fundamental part of the PO's role to prioritize and make hard trade-offs during planning.
- ✗
Keep the plan as is and hope for the best during the PI.
Why it's wrong here
'Hoping for the best' is not a strategy. It is a recipe for failure. The PO is responsible for planning that is rooted in reality. By failing to address the capacity gap, the PO sets the team up for inevitable disappointment and damages the team's ability to maintain a consistent delivery cadence.
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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.