Your organization operates in a stable industry but is launching an agile innovation initiative to develop new digital revenue streams. You are leading one of three agile teams in this initiative. After six months, your team has successfully launched two minimum viable products that are gaining traction, while the other two teams have pivoted multiple times without market validation. The CFO, who championed this initiative, is being pressured by the board to show ROI. She is considering shutting down the innovation initiative and reallocating resources to core business optimization projects that have more predictable returns. Your Product Owner believes your product is on the verge of significant growth and wants to double team investment. How should you approach this business environment challenge?

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Accepted Answer

The correct answer is A. When business environment pressures threaten project continuation, demonstrating value through empirical evidence while providing organizational learning is critical (ECO Business Environment Task 2). Option A takes a portfolio perspective that serves organizational interests by preserving successful innovation while addressing legitimate ROI concerns, and contributes to organizational capability building through knowledge sharing. This approach balances advocacy for your project with organizational stewardship and systems thinking. Option B is the main distractor because while it advocates for your successful project, it demonstrates narrow thinking that ignores organizational learning and relationship dynamics. Simply shutting down other teams without helping them improve wastes the organization's investment in learning and damages cross-team collaboration. Additionally, positioning yourself against peers may create political resistance even to your successful project. Innovation initiatives succeed through portfolio approaches where learning from failures informs future success, not through individual team competition.

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