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PMP Practice: Monitor and validate scope

Question 3 of 5 in Plan and Manage Scope

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Sky Tanaka is leading an agile project for Bright Pulse Labs to develop a mobile puzzle game with a planned six-sprint release cycle. At the end of Sprint 3, the product owner realizes that the team has delivered 18 user stories totaling 72 story points, but only 9 of those stories align with the features customers actually requested during recent user testing sessions. The other 9 stories were technical enhancements the development team prioritized on their own. The product backlog still contains 45 high-priority user stories requested by stakeholders, and the team's average velocity is 24 story points per sprint. The product owner is frustrated that customer-facing features are falling behind while technical work was completed without their approval. What should Sky do to get the project back on track?
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Correct answer: Facilitate a backlog refinement session with the product owner and team to re-prioritize remaining stories, clarify the product owner's authority over backlog prioritization, and establish a working agreement about technical debt management

Explanation

When scope delivery deviates from stakeholder priorities in an agile project, the project manager should immediately address both the immediate prioritization issue and the underlying process breakdown. Facilitating a backlog refinement session allows the team and product owner to realign on priorities for the remaining three sprints. More importantly, clarifying the product owner's authority over backlog prioritization addresses the root cause—the team self-selected technical work without proper backlog governance. Establishing a working agreement about managing technical debt creates a sustainable process for the team to propose technical items while respecting the product owner's decision-making authority. This approach balances the need to recover from the misalignment while preventing future occurrences through improved collaboration and role clarity.

**Why not B:** Unrealistic and unsustainable. Velocity is an emergent metric based on team capacity and historical performance, not something that can be arbitrarily increased by 33 percent. Attempting to force higher velocity typically degrades quality and leads to burnout. This also ignores the root cause of unauthorized work prioritization.

**Why not C:** Passive response that fails to address the scope misalignment or the breakdown in backlog governance. While technical enhancements may have long-term value, delivering them at the expense of customer-requested features jeopardizes stakeholder satisfaction and project success. Waiting until retrospective ignores the urgency—three sprints remain and 45 high-priority stories are still pending.

**Why not D:** Punitive and backward-looking rather than collaborative and forward-focused. While the team did overstep their authority, simply reprimanding them and removing stories from reports does nothing to re-prioritize the remaining work or establish a constructive process for managing technical debt going forward. Agile leadership emphasizes addressing process gaps collaboratively rather than assigning blame.

Key Concept

This question covers Monitor and validate scope under Plan and Manage Scope (Process).

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