Your organization is running multiple agile teams working on different components of an integrated product. Each team has its own product owner who prioritizes their component backlog independently. During integration testing, you discover that Team A built a feature assuming a specific API structure, while Team B simultaneously changed that API for their own feature—neither team coordinated. This is the third time in two months that integration issues have occurred due to lack of coordination. The teams meet their individual sprint goals but integrated product releases are delayed. What is the MOST effective solution?

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Accepted Answer

The correct answer is B. Option B is correct because multiple independent product owners optimizing their own components creates a classic suboptimization problem. A single product backlog with one product owner accountable for maximizing the whole product's value ensures prioritization and coordination across components (Scrum Guide, Nexus framework for scaling). This addresses the systemic issue of misaligned priorities. Option A is the main distractor—while Scrum of Scrums helps with coordination, it's a tactical fix that doesn't solve the strategic problem of competing priorities and lacks decision-making authority to prevent conflicts. Option C creates bureaucracy and slows agile flow without addressing priority misalignment. Option D adds overhead and an intermediary role rather than fixing the root cause of fragmented product ownership.

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