PMI-ACP Practice Questions #3
Your organization has initiated a strategic initiative of high importance, setting a clear goal and budget for the associated project. As an Agile practitioner, what should you do to ensure alignment between the team’s and stakeholders’ goals?
A. Facilitate regular communication between stakeholders and the team to align goals and track achievements.
B. Plan clear milestones as phase gates to periodically assess alignment.
C. Ensure the product owner fully understands the goal and communicates it regularly to the team.
D. Create an information radiator for the goal and collaborate extensively with the team to achieve it.
Analysis
This scenario focuses on ensuring alignment between the team’s goals and stakeholders’ expectations in an Agile environment. Given that the initiative is of high strategic importance with a clear goal and budget, the Agile practitioner must ensure continuous collaboration and feedback to maintain alignment. Agile principles emphasize frequent communication, adaptability, and shared ownership rather than rigid milestones or single-point dependencies like relying solely on the Product Owner.
The best approach is one that ensures regular interaction between stakeholders and the team, promoting alignment through direct communication and collaboration rather than fixed phase gates or unilateral directives.
Analysis of Options
A: Facilitate regular communication between stakeholders and the team to align goals and track achievements.
This is the best option because Agile values individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Regular communication ensures that both the team and stakeholders continuously collaborate, track progress, and adjust as needed. Given that Agile thrives in environments of high variability, this option fosters adaptive planning, transparency, and shared understanding—all crucial for successful alignment.
B: Plan clear milestones as phase gates to periodically assess alignment.
This approach is less Agile as it introduces rigid phase gates that might delay necessary course corrections. While milestone-based reviews can be useful in predictive project management, Agile methodologies prefer continuous, real-time engagement over delayed assessments. This option assumes alignment can be checked only at set intervals, whereas Agile prefers ongoing alignment through frequent interactions.
C: Ensure the product owner fully understands the goal and communicates it regularly to the team.
While the Product Owner plays a crucial role, relying solely on them to maintain alignment creates a bottleneck and limits direct interaction between the team and stakeholders. Agile principles encourage collaboration across all roles, rather than filtering communication through a single individual. This approach, while beneficial, is not as strong as direct team-stakeholder interaction.
D: Create an information radiator for the goal and collaborate extensively with the team to achieve it.
While an information radiator (e.g., a visible board displaying goals and progress) is useful for transparency, it is not sufficient on its own. Agile teams must continuously interact with stakeholders rather than relying solely on visual artifacts to guide alignment. Goals may evolve over time, and without regular discussions, an information radiator alone may become outdated or misaligned with stakeholder expectations.
Conclusion
The best choice is Option A: Facilitate regular communication between stakeholders and the team to align goals and track achievements.
This option directly aligns with Agile principles by ensuring continuous collaboration, adaptation, and shared ownership of goals. It avoids reliance on fixed milestones, single-role dependencies, or passive information sharing and instead focuses on fostering open, regular discussions between all involved parties to maintain alignment.
PMI – ACP Exam Content Outline Mapping
| Domain | Task |
| Leadership | Empower Teams |
| Delivery | Actively engage customers |
Topics Covered:
- Establish an environment of trust.
- Promote collective ownership of goals.
- Encourage collaboration between the team and stakeholders.
- Maintain continuous communication for goal alignment.
- Ensure the product aligns with vision and organizational goals.
- Actively engage customers and stakeholders.
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