Your agile team has completed three sprints of a mobile application development project. During the retrospective, team members report that they consistently struggle to complete stories because dependencies on a third-party API team cause delays. The API team works in a different department and follows a waterfall approach with monthly release cycles. Several stories have been carried over to subsequent sprints, affecting the team's velocity. What should the product owner do to address this impediment?

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Accepted Answer

The correct answer is C. Creating mock API responses (option C) is the best solution because it removes the external dependency as an impediment, allows the team to maintain velocity, and enables continuous progress while preserving the ability to integrate later. This demonstrates adaptive planning and removing impediments, which are core agile principles (PMBOK 8 Principle of Navigate Complexity). Option A, while seemingly collaborative, still keeps the team dependent on external timelines and doesn't resolve the immediate velocity issue. Option B would significantly reduce team productivity and delay value delivery. Option D creates organizational conflict and is unrealistic, as you cannot dictate another team's methodology.

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