PMI-ACP Practice Questions #54
You are facilitating a retrospective for a distributed team that includes members from a culture where openly challenging leadership or offering direct feedback is considered inappropriate. How can you adapt the retrospective process to encourage honest feedback while respecting cultural norms?
A. Use a voting system during the meeting to anonymously collect responses in real time, ensuring immediate participation.
B. Clearly explain that agile requires open and direct feedback, and insist that all team members provide suggestions during the meeting.
C. Leave retrospective questions visible after the meeting, allowing team members to provide private feedback in a more comfortable setting.
D. Avoid asking challenging questions during the retrospective and focus only on celebrating successes to maintain team harmony.
Analysis
Facilitating retrospectives in a culturally diverse team requires balancing psychological safety, openness, and respect for cultural norms. While Agile values transparency and direct feedback, some cultures may find openly challenging leadership or expressing concerns in public uncomfortable.
An ideal approach should:
- Encourage honest feedback while respecting team members’ comfort levels.
- Provide alternatives for sharing concerns if direct confrontation is not culturally appropriate.
- Maintain the retrospective’s purpose of continuous improvement without disregarding cultural sensitivities.
Analysis of Options:
A: Use a voting system during the meeting to anonymously collect responses in real time, ensuring immediate participation.
This option partially addresses the problem by allowing anonymous input, which helps those uncomfortable with direct feedback. However, anonymous feedback can limit transparency and accountability, making it harder to follow up on specific concerns. It is a facilitation tool, but it does not fully solve the cultural sensitivity issue.
B: Clearly explain that Agile requires open and direct feedback, and insist that all team members provide suggestions during the meeting.
This ignores cultural sensitivity and forces an Agile approach without adapting to the team’s diversity. Mandating open feedback can create discomfort for those from cultures where hierarchical respect discourages direct criticism. Agile is about flexibility, so insisting on a strict approach makes this option unsuitable.
C: Leave retrospective questions visible after the meeting, allowing team members to provide private feedback in a more comfortable setting.
This is the best choice because it balances Agile principles and cultural considerations. It allows team members to participate in the retrospective without the pressure of public confrontation. By keeping the feedback mechanism open after the meeting, it respects cultural norms while still ensuring that valuable insights are gathered. This aligns with Agile’s emphasis on psychological safety and transparency.
D: Avoid asking challenging questions during the retrospective and focus only on celebrating successes to maintain team harmony.
This option is too extreme and defeats the purpose of a retrospective. While celebrating successes is important, avoiding tough discussions prevents teams from identifying areas for improvement. Agile retrospectives are meant to foster continuous improvement, and ignoring challenges entirely is not a viable approach.
Conclusion
The correct answer is Option C, as it provides a structured yet flexible approach that accommodates cultural differences while ensuring retrospective effectiveness. It promotes psychological safety, transparency, and respect for diverse communication styles, aligning with Agile values.
PMI – ACP Exam Content Outline Mapping
| Domain | Task |
| Mindset | Build Transparency |
Topics Covered:
- Facilitating Retrospectives in Culturally Diverse Teams
- Recognizing that direct feedback may be uncomfortable in certain cultures.
- Balancing transparency and psychological safety in Agile retrospectives.
- Providing multiple ways to share feedback to accommodate different communication styles.
- Encouraging Honest Feedback While Respecting Cultural Norms
- Using anonymous or private feedback channels to increase participation.
- Allowing asynchronous feedback collection after the meeting to give people time to reflect.
- Ensuring psychological safety so team members feel comfortable sharing insights.
- Avoiding Common Pitfalls
- Forcing direct feedback (which may create discomfort in hierarchical cultures).
- Ignoring difficult topics (which prevents continuous improvement).
- Relying only on anonymous feedback (which can limit accountability and follow-up).
- Alignment with Agile Mindset
- Promoting adaptive facilitation techniques to suit team dynamics.
- Fostering team collaboration while respecting cultural diversity.
- Encouraging continuous improvement through thoughtful retrospective practices.
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