Skip to content
PMPMedium

PMP Practice: Define Success Metrics

Question 8 of 11 in Define and Establish Project Governance

Pick an answer below — you'll get the explanation instantly, no signup.

Eleni Papadopoulos-Stavros is establishing governance for a new agile product development initiative at Mesa Verde Robotics, a design software company. The product owner wants to track whether governance overhead is proportional to team capacity. The team has committed to delivering 120 story points per sprint. During Sprint 3, the team spent the following effort on governance activities: daily standups (7.5 hours total), sprint planning (4 hours), sprint review (3 hours), sprint retrospective (2.5 hours), and compliance documentation required by the audit committee (6 hours). The team has 6 members working 40 hours each during the sprint. Priya needs to calculate the percentage of team capacity consumed by governance and ceremonial activities to present to the steering committee, who has expressed concern that governance is becoming excessive. What percentage of total team capacity was spent on governance and agile ceremonies in Sprint 3?
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: 9.6%

Explanation

The correct calculation is: Total governance time = 7.5 + 4 + 3 + 2.5 + 6 = 23 hours. Total team capacity = 6 team members × 40 hours = 240 hours. Percentage = (23 ÷ 240) × 100 = 9.58%, which rounds to 9.6%. This governance percentage is reasonable for an agile team and provides the steering committee with quantitative data to evaluate whether governance overhead is appropriate. In agile governance, tracking ceremonial and compliance time helps ensure that governance structures support rather than hinder value delivery. The 9.6% figure demonstrates that the team spends roughly one day per sprint on governance activities, leaving over 90% of capacity for product development work.

**Why not B:** This results from calculating only the agile ceremonies (17 hours: standups + planning + review + retro) and dividing by 6 team members instead of total capacity, yielding approximately 11.3%. This error occurs when someone treats governance time as 'per person' rather than as total team time.

**Why not C:** This results from miscalculating total capacity as 150 hours (confusing 6 members with 5-day weeks at 5 hours/day instead of 40 hours/week), yielding 23 ÷ 150 = 15.3%. This reflects confusion about how to measure sprint capacity.

**Why not D:** This results from adding governance hours incorrectly (possibly double-counting daily standups as 15 hours instead of 7.5, yielding 30.5 total hours) and then dividing by a reduced capacity figure, or from calculating 23 hours ÷ 120 story points instead of 240 total hours. This represents fundamental confusion between effort-hours and story points as measurement units.

Key Concept

This question covers Define Success Metrics under Define and Establish Project Governance (Business Environment).

Share:

This is 1 of 100 free PMP questions

Unlock 6,300+ PMP practice questions with detailed explanations, progress tracking, and exam readiness prediction.

Unlock All Questions