Practice Questions
PMP Practice Questions
Scenario-based questions aligned with the 2026 PMP Exam Content Outline. All questions reviewed by a certified PMP before publishing.
175 questions found · page 1 of 7
Your agile team is building a healthcare platform that must comply with HIPAA regulations. The compliance officer insists on reviewing and approving all designs before development begins and all code before deployment, which creates a bottleneck taking 5-7 days per review. The team's sprint cycle is two weeks, and this delay means most stories cannot be completed within a sprint. The compliance officer is unwilling to attend daily standups or sprint ceremonies, stating they are too busy. Team morale is declining as they cannot meet sprint goals. What is the MOST effective approach to resolve this situation?
August 24, 2026
Your agile team has been working on a financial services application for three sprints. During the sprint review, the product owner asks the team to demonstrate a complex regulatory reporting feature that was not part of the sprint backlog. The team lead explains they focused on the agreed sprint goal instead. The product owner becomes frustrated, stating this feature is critical for an upcoming audit and should have been obvious to include. Stakeholders at the meeting appear concerned about the team's ability to deliver. What should the Scrum Master do to address this situation?
August 24, 2026
You are leading a distributed agile team working on an IoT platform across three time zones. The team uses Kanban with WIP limits, and throughput has been consistent at 12 items per week. Recently, a major enterprise client requested a committed delivery date for a specific feature set, which your sales team communicated would take four weeks. The product owner asks you to guarantee this timeline and wants daily status reports to track progress. Your team has historically avoided commitments because of the variability in item complexity. How should you respond to this request while maintaining agile principles?
August 24, 2026
An agile team is delivering a customer-facing mobile application using two-week sprints. After six sprints, velocity has been stable at 40 story points per sprint, but customer satisfaction scores are declining. Analysis shows that while features are being delivered on schedule, they often require significant rework in subsequent sprints after user feedback. The product owner has been accepting all stories that meet the acceptance criteria at sprint reviews. Technical debt is accumulating, and the team's Definition of Done includes unit testing and code review but no user validation. What is the BEST approach to improve customer satisfaction?
August 24, 2026
An agile team working on a cloud migration project has been using story points for estimation with planning poker. After 10 sprints, a new senior developer joins who strongly advocates for switching to ideal hours instead of story points, arguing that hours are more precise and easier for stakeholders to understand. The team is divided—some members agree with the new developer, while others want to keep story points because their historical velocity data would become irrelevant. The upcoming sprint planning is in two days, and the product owner is concerned about any changes that might impact the team's predictability during a critical release cycle. What should you do?
August 24, 2026
During a sprint review, stakeholders see the completed user stories demonstrated but express concern that the features don't align with current market conditions, which have shifted significantly in the past month. The product owner acknowledges the market has changed but states that the product backlog was carefully prioritized at the project start and changing it now would be disruptive. The stakeholders request immediate changes to the roadmap. How should the team respond?
August 24, 2026
An agile project team has been using story points and velocity for sprint planning. After six sprints, a new team member joins who is much more experienced than the rest of the team and significantly increases productivity. The team's velocity jumps from an average of 32 points per sprint to 48 points. The product owner sees this increase and immediately adds more items to the upcoming sprint based on the new velocity. However, two weeks later, the experienced team member accepts a position at another company. What should the team have done differently?
August 24, 2026
A cross-functional agile team is developing a customer portal. After four sprints, the cumulative flow diagram shows that items are moving from 'In Development' to 'In Testing' quickly, but there is a growing bottleneck in the testing column, with an average of 12 items waiting for test completion while only 3-4 items are in development at any time. The testers report they are working at full capacity. What should the team do?
August 24, 2026
Your agile team has completed three sprints of a mobile application project. During the sprint retrospective, team members report that they consistently cannot complete all planned story points because unexpected production support issues from a legacy system consume 30-40% of their capacity each sprint. The product owner is frustrated with the reduced velocity and wants the team to commit to more story points. What should the scrum master do first?
August 24, 2026
Your Scrum team has a definition of done that includes code review, unit testing, and deployment to the staging environment. During sprint planning, the team realizes that one of the high-priority user stories will require changes to the production database schema, which according to organizational policy requires a change control board (CCB) approval that typically takes 5-7 business days. The sprint is only 10 business days long. What is the best approach?
August 24, 2026
You are the project manager for an agile marketing campaign development team. During sprint planning, the team has identified 15 user stories they believe they can complete based on their average velocity of 40 story points per sprint. However, two team members will be on vacation for one week during this three-week sprint. The total story points for the 15 stories equal 40. What should the team do?
August 16, 2026
Your organization is transitioning to agile and you are leading your first Scrum project. At the end of the first sprint, the team has completed 80% of the committed user stories, but none of them fully meet the Definition of Done due to incomplete testing. The product owner is pressuring you to accept the stories as done so they can be demonstrated to stakeholders. What should you do?
August 16, 2026
You are facilitating a daily standup for your agile development team. One team member mentions they are blocked because they are waiting for access to a testing environment that requires approval from the IT security team. This is the third day this issue has been raised. The team member asks what they should work on while waiting. What should you do as the Scrum Master or agile project leader?
August 16, 2026
Your agile team is planning their next iteration. During the planning session, team members are estimating user stories using story points. A new developer on the team asks why the team uses story points instead of estimating in hours or days. The team lead explains that story points help with relative sizing. What is the primary benefit of using story points for estimation in agile projects?
August 16, 2026
You are managing a software development project using Scrum. The team has just completed their second sprint and the product owner wants to see what has been developed. Several features have been coded and unit tested, but integration testing is still pending. The product owner asks when they can review the completed work. What should you do?
August 16, 2026
Your agile team has been consistently meeting sprint commitments, but during a recent retrospective, team members admitted they have been padding estimates significantly to ensure they never miss a commitment. The team's capacity allows them to complete stories early, but they wait until late in the sprint to pull in additional work to avoid looking like they overcommitted. The product owner is frustrated because the team could be delivering more value. What should you do to address this behavior?
August 13, 2026
During a sprint review, your product owner presents a new feature idea that excites stakeholders, and they immediately begin discussing implementation details. Three team members become animated and start volunteering to work on it, while two others remain silent and look uncomfortable. After the meeting, one of the quiet team members tells you privately that they feel their opinions are never heard because the more vocal members always dominate discussions. How should you address this to promote inclusive team participation?
August 13, 2026
Your agile team consists of members distributed across three time zones with only a two-hour overlap in working hours. Team members have reported feeling disconnected and unaware of what others are working on. The daily standup has become a status report where people simply read updates without meaningful interaction. Sprint planning meetings are running long because decisions take time with limited real-time collaboration. What is the most effective approach to improve team collaboration?
August 13, 2026
You are leading an agile team that has been working together for three sprints. During the last retrospective, two team members had a heated disagreement about the definition of done for user stories. The conflict escalated, and other team members became uncomfortable. One developer now refuses to pair program with the other. The team's velocity has dropped by 30% since the conflict began. What should you do first to address this situation?
August 13, 2026
You are coaching a new scrum master who is struggling with their role. During sprint planning, you observe them directing the team on which tasks each member should work on and how long each should take. In the daily standup, they spend time problem-solving individual blockers rather than facilitating team self-organization. When you provide feedback, they explain that they are trying to be helpful because they have the most technical experience and want to ensure the team succeeds. What coaching approach would best help this scrum master develop?
August 13, 2026
Your distributed agile team spans three time zones across North America, Europe, and Asia. Team members have been complaining that the daily stand-up time (9 AM EST) requires the Asia-based developers to join at midnight their time, and they often appear disengaged. Sprint productivity has been declining, and the Asia-based team members recently missed several critical integration issues that could have been caught earlier. The European team members have also expressed concerns about work-life balance. What is the best way to address this challenge?
August 11, 2026
Your agile team has consistently met sprint commitments for the past four iterations, and team morale appears high. However, during a one-on-one conversation, a junior developer confides that they feel overwhelmed and have been working 50-60 hours per week to complete their tasks. They haven't mentioned this in retrospectives because they don't want to let the team down. When you review the sprint metrics, you notice this developer's velocity is significantly higher than other team members. What should you do?
August 11, 2026
During sprint planning, two senior developers on your agile team have a significant disagreement about the technical approach for a critical user story. One advocates for refactoring existing code to improve long-term maintainability, while the other insists on building a new module to meet the immediate sprint goal. The discussion is becoming heated, and other team members are growing uncomfortable. Both approaches are technically valid but require different levels of effort. What is the most appropriate action for you as the project manager?
August 11, 2026
Your agile team has recently added three new developers who are experienced in traditional waterfall methodologies but new to agile practices. During the first sprint, you notice they are hesitant to speak up in daily stand-ups, wait for explicit task assignments rather than self-organizing, and ask for detailed upfront requirements documents. The existing team members are becoming frustrated with the slower pace. How should you best support the new team members' transition?
August 11, 2026
You are leading an agile project team that has been working together for three sprints. During the latest retrospective, several team members express frustration that decisions are taking too long because the product owner is often unavailable for clarification. The team has been waiting 2-3 days for answers to blocking questions, which is impacting sprint goals. The product owner works remotely and supports multiple projects. What should you do first to address this situation?
August 11, 2026