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PMP Practice: Recommend a Project Execution Strategy

Question 11 of 15 in Develop an Integrated Project Management Plan

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Björn Magnússon is leading an agile project at Ikigai Automation to develop a multiplayer mobile game. The team is three sprints into a planned ten-sprint release. During the latest sprint review, stakeholders from the marketing department express frustration that the game's core social features—initially scheduled for Sprint 5—are not yet visible. They argue these features are critical for upcoming promotional activities and want them prioritized immediately. However, the development team has been focusing on foundational game mechanics and infrastructure, which they believe must be stable before adding social features. The product owner agrees with the developers' technical sequencing but is concerned about marketing's business needs. Velocity has been stable at 32 story points per sprint, and the team has successfully delivered all committed work so far. What should Björn do to address this situation?
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Correct answer: Facilitate a backlog refinement session with the product owner, development team, and marketing stakeholders to re-evaluate priorities, dependencies, and the minimum viable version of social features that could deliver early value

Explanation

In agile environments, the product owner is responsible for prioritizing the backlog, but the project manager facilitates collaboration when stakeholders have competing needs and technical dependencies exist. The scenario indicates both legitimate business concerns from marketing and valid technical reasoning from the development team. The product owner is caught between these perspectives. The most effective recovery approach is to bring all parties together in a structured conversation to explore options—such as breaking social features into smaller increments, identifying a minimum viable version that could deliver early marketing value without compromising technical stability, or finding creative sequencing that addresses both needs. This collaborative refinement honors agile principles of transparency, adaptation, and delivering value while respecting technical constraints. The key closing fact is that the product owner agrees with the technical reasoning but is concerned about business needs—this signals the need for facilitated alignment rather than unilateral decisions.

**Why not A:** Escalating the conflict to the project sponsor for a final decision abdicates the PM's facilitation responsibility. The scenario calls for collaborative problem-solving between stakeholders with competing but valid needs, not a top-down ruling. The PM should bring the parties together to explore options before deferring to executive authority.

**Why not C:** Advising marketing to wait until Sprint 5 as originally planned dismisses their legitimate business concern about upcoming promotional activities. In agile, the backlog should reflect current priorities and new information. Rigidly adhering to an original plan when circumstances have changed contradicts agile principles of adaptation and responsiveness.

**Why not D:** Instructing the team to immediately reprioritize social features to the top of the backlog overrides the product owner's authority and ignores the development team's valid technical reasoning about infrastructure dependencies. The PM should facilitate collaboration, not dictate backlog ordering. Unilateral priority changes undermine both team self-organization and the product owner role.

Key Concept

This question covers Recommend a Project Execution Strategy under Develop an Integrated Project Management Plan (Process).

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