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.
220 questions found · page 2 of 9
Your organization is transitioning a large, multi-year infrastructure program to agile delivery. The program consists of five interdependent product teams, each running two-week sprints. After three program increments, dependencies between teams are causing frequent delays—Team A cannot complete their sprint commitments because they're waiting for API specifications from Team B, while Team C's database changes block Team D's integration testing. The program board shows 47 active dependencies across teams. Teams are becoming frustrated with blocked work and declining morale. What approach would best address these systemic dependency issues?
September 9, 2026
An agile team developing a healthcare platform has maintained consistent velocity at 38 story points for six consecutive sprints. During the retrospective, technical debt items are repeatedly raised but never addressed because the product owner prioritizes new features to maintain competitive advantage. The lead architect warns that accumulated technical debt is increasing the time required for new features by approximately 30%, and estimates two full sprints would be needed to address critical technical debt. Code quality metrics show increasing defect rates and decreasing test coverage. What is the most appropriate action?
September 9, 2026
A distributed agile team across four time zones is developing an API integration platform. During the daily standup conducted via video conference, developers in the Asia-Pacific region consistently remain silent or provide minimal updates. The product owner mentions that several critical defects discovered by APAC developers were not communicated until the weekly status report, causing a two-day delay in resolution. Team velocity metrics show APAC contributions are significantly lower than other regions despite having equal headcount. What is the most effective approach to improve team collaboration and information flow?
September 9, 2026
Your agile team has completed three sprints of a mobile application project. The product owner consistently adds new acceptance criteria during sprint reviews, claiming these represent newly discovered customer needs. The team's velocity has dropped from 45 to 28 story points, and team members are frustrated with rework. The product owner insists all changes are critical for market competitiveness. Sprint planning for the next iteration is scheduled for tomorrow. What should the Scrum Master do first to address this situation?
September 9, 2026
During the eighth sprint of a financial services product, a regulatory compliance requirement emerges that affects the system's data retention architecture. The compliance officer estimates implementation requires 320 hours of effort, equivalent to four full sprints of the eight-person team's capacity. The product owner has a committed release date in six sprints to support a major client contract worth $2.3M annually. The current product backlog contains 180 story points of features promised for this release. The team's average velocity is 45 story points per sprint. How should the team approach this situation?
September 9, 2026
Your organization is implementing SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) across five agile teams working on an integrated product. During PI (Program Increment) Planning, the teams identified 23 dependencies between them. After three sprints, only 30% of planned features are completed because teams are waiting on each other. The Release Train Engineer asks you, as one of the Scrum Masters, how to address the delivery delays. Analysis shows that eight dependencies are technical integration points, ten are related to shared specialist resources, and five involve sequential work that cannot be parallelized. What is the most effective approach to improve flow?
September 2, 2026
You're leading an agile transformation initiative in a financial services company. After six months, eight teams are running sprints, but several dysfunctions have emerged: teams are consistently achieving 100% of sprint commitments but stakeholders report little business value is being delivered; sprint retrospectives focus on minor process tweaks rather than substantive improvements; technical debt is accumulating rapidly with no plan to address it; and teams report they're afraid to raise impediments because previous attempts resulted in blame from management. Velocity metrics are stable and high. Senior management considers the transformation successful based on these metrics. What is the most critical issue to address?
September 2, 2026
Your agile project team is developing a medical device software component that requires FDA regulatory approval. You're using two-week sprints with a definition of done that includes unit tests, integration tests, and code review. The regulatory affairs department insists that no code can be released to production without completing a validation protocol that takes 6-8 weeks and costs $50,000 per validation cycle. Marketing is pressuring for faster feature delivery to respond to competitive threats. The team is frustrated because completed increments sit unreleased for months. How should you adapt your agile approach to balance regulatory compliance with agile principles?
September 2, 2026
Your agile team has been delivering increments every two weeks for six months. The product owner recently left the company, and a new product owner has joined who has minimal agile experience. During the last three sprint reviews, the new product owner has been rejecting completed stories that meet all acceptance criteria, stating they don't align with their vision. The team's velocity has dropped by 40%, and morale is declining. Stakeholders are concerned about the lack of accepted deliverables. What should the Scrum Master do first to address this situation?
September 2, 2026
Your distributed agile team spans three time zones (San Francisco, New York, and London) with 3-4 members in each location. After four sprints, several patterns have emerged: the London team members are disconnected from decisions made during daily standups that occur at 9 AM Pacific; sprint planning sessions run 4-5 hours as teams debate estimates and approach; and sprint reviews lack engagement because stakeholders in Europe attend at 7 PM their time. The team's definition of done includes peer code review, but reviews are delayed 12-16 hours waiting for reviewers in other time zones. One team member has suggested abandoning agile practices in favor of a more asynchronous waterfall approach. What strategy would most effectively address these distributed team challenges?
September 2, 2026
Your agile team has completed a two-week sprint and is preparing for the sprint retrospective. This is the team's first retrospective, and some team members are unclear about the purpose of the meeting. One developer asks why they need to have a retrospective when they already completed a sprint review with stakeholders. How should you explain the PRIMARY purpose of the sprint retrospective?
August 28, 2026
Your team is working on an e-commerce platform using Kanban. The team has a board with columns: To Do, In Progress, Code Review, Testing, and Done. The team notices that work items are piling up in the Code Review column, and the flow of work has slowed significantly. What is the BEST action the team should take to address this bottleneck?
August 28, 2026
You are facilitating a daily standup for your agile development team. One team member begins explaining in detail the technical solution they are implementing and starts discussing code architecture with another developer. The conversation extends beyond 15 minutes, and other team members appear disengaged. As the Scrum Master, what should you do?
August 28, 2026
Your agile team has just completed their third sprint of a mobile app development project. During the sprint review, stakeholders provide feedback and request several changes to features that were demonstrated. The product owner wants to incorporate this feedback. What should the product owner do NEXT with the feedback received during the sprint review?
August 28, 2026
You are managing a software development project using Scrum. During the sprint planning meeting, the development team is estimating user stories for the upcoming sprint. One team member suggests using story points to estimate the relative effort required for each user story. Another team member asks why the team doesn't just estimate in hours instead. What is the PRIMARY benefit of using story points over hours for estimation in an agile project?
August 28, 2026
You are leading an agile project to modernize a legacy insurance claims processing system. The team has completed 6 sprints with an average velocity of 28 story points. During backlog refinement for Sprint 7, the team is reviewing a complex user story estimated at 21 story points. The product owner wants this story included in the next sprint along with other stories totaling 15 points. Several team members express concern that the 21-point story is too large and poorly understood. What should you recommend?
August 28, 2026
Your development team is working on Sprint 7 of a customer relationship management (CRM) system. On day 8 of the 10-day sprint, the team discovers that a critical third-party API they planned to integrate has been deprecated by the vendor, making three of the six committed user stories impossible to complete as planned. The team's burndown chart shows they are otherwise on track. The product owner is concerned about meeting the sprint goal. What should you do?
August 28, 2026
You are managing an agile project for developing an e-commerce platform. At the end of Sprint 5, the team demonstrates the completed user stories to stakeholders. A major stakeholder sees the shopping cart functionality and requests significant changes to the user interface, saying it doesn't match their vision despite the original acceptance criteria being met. The product owner is uncertain because this stakeholder has significant influence. The requested changes would require approximately 2 sprints of rework. What is the best course of action?
August 28, 2026
Your agile team has completed their fourth sprint on a financial software project. During the retrospective, several team members mention that the daily standups have become status report meetings where everyone just talks to you, the project manager, rather than coordinating with each other. Team members seem disengaged, and blockers mentioned during standup often don't get resolved until the next day. The team says they don't find the standups valuable anymore. How should you address this situation?
August 28, 2026
You are leading an agile project to develop a mobile application for a retail client. During sprint planning, the product owner presents 15 user stories, but the development team estimates they can only complete 8 stories based on their historical velocity of 32 story points per sprint. The product owner insists all 15 stories are critical for the upcoming product demo in three weeks. The total estimate for all 15 stories is 60 story points. What should you do first?
August 28, 2026
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