During a release planning session for a regulated healthcare product, your compliance officer insists that all user stories must be fully documented with detailed requirements specifications before development begins, citing audit requirements. Your agile team argues this contradicts their working agreements and will create massive waste, as they've successfully used acceptance criteria and collaborative elaboration for 15 sprints. The compliance officer shows you audit findings from another division that was penalized for insufficient documentation. Your organization has no precedent for agile projects in regulated environments. How do you proceed?

Question

Accepted Answer

The correct answer is D. Hard process questions test judgment in navigating organizational constraints while preserving agile effectiveness. Option D recognizes this is a governance and risk issue requiring expertise beyond the immediate team—bringing in specialized knowledge prevents both compliance violations and agile theater (ECO Process Task 1.2 on governance). The compliance officer has legitimate concerns given audit findings, but lacks agile context. Option A seems reasonable but is actually premature—creating a documentation approach without understanding actual regulatory requirements risks either non-compliance or waste. Option B is philosophically pure but organizationally naive and puts the project at regulatory risk. Option C abandons agile principles entirely when a better solution exists. The key is recognizing when a situation requires bringing in specialized expertise rather than trying to solve complex compliance-agile integration problems ad hoc.

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