Your distributed agile team spans three time zones (US West Coast, US East Coast, and India). Team members in India have been increasingly quiet during sprint ceremonies and retrospectives. Your scrum master in India privately shares that the Indian team members feel their opinions aren't valued because decisions seem to be made during US hours, and they're frustrated with being woken up for 'urgent' calls at 2 AM their time. Meanwhile, US team members complain about slow response times and feel the India team isn't collaborative. Team morale is declining and your last sprint failed to meet its goals. What should be your priority action?

Question

Accepted Answer

The correct answer is C. Option C is correct because it addresses both the cultural dynamics and the structural communication issues. Cultural intelligence training helps team members understand different communication styles and builds empathy, while asynchronous processes (like decision logs, recorded standups, or threaded discussions) enable meaningful participation without requiring everyone online simultaneously. This approach respects that distributed teams need different collaboration models than co-located teams while maintaining team cohesion. Option A is the main distractor because establishing core hours seems reasonable, but 3-4 hour overlaps across US West to India is impractical (approximately 13.5 hour difference) and would force someone into very early or very late hours daily. More critically, it doesn't address the underlying cultural and inclusion issues—the Indian team's perspective that their input isn't valued won't be solved by meeting timing alone. The team needs to learn how to include distributed members effectively. Options B and D create other problems without solving the inclusion issue.

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