PMP · Question #1264
In an agile project that is about 45% complete, most team members are siloed and lack an understanding of each other's work. What would have most likely caused this communication breakdown?
The correct answer is A. The daily standup meetings were not consistently attended. In an agile project, team members being siloed and unaware of each other's work is most likely caused by inconsistent attendance at daily standup meetings.
Question
In an agile project that is about 45% complete, most team members are siloed and lack an understanding of each other's work. What would have most likely caused this communication breakdown?
Options
- AThe daily standup meetings were not consistently attended.
- BThe weekly project status reports were not published regularly.
- CThe sprint review meetings were not held regularly.
- DThe project manager failed to develop a communications management plan.
How the community answered
(22 responses)- A82% (18)
- B9% (2)
- C5% (1)
- D5% (1)
Why each option
In an agile project, team members being siloed and unaware of each other's work is most likely caused by inconsistent attendance at daily standup meetings.
Daily standup meetings are a core agile ceremony specifically designed for team members to synchronize, share progress, discuss impediments, and understand what others are working on. Inconsistent attendance directly undermines this purpose, leading to communication breakdowns and team members working in silos.
Weekly project status reports are typically for broader communication to external stakeholders or management, not the primary mechanism for daily internal team synchronization and understanding of individual work in an agile context.
Sprint review meetings focus on demonstrating completed work to stakeholders and gathering feedback on the product increment, not on facilitating daily team coordination or preventing internal work silos.
While a communications management plan is important for large projects, in an agile project, daily standups are the primary communication mechanism for internal team alignment; a lack of a formal plan is less likely to be the direct cause of daily siloing than the failure of a core agile ritual.
Concept tested: Agile daily standup purpose
Source: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/scrum/standups
Topics
Community Discussion
6
Samuel O.Jul 5, 2026Confirmed A on my exam last month. The daily standup is exactly where team members share what they are working on and surface blockers, so when folks skip it or treat it as optional, you get silos forming fast. I have seen this happen on my own teams when we got sloppy about attendance and within a couple sprints nobody knew what anyone else was doing. B and C are important but they do not drive day-to-day cross-team awareness the way the standup does, and D is a red herring because agile relies on built-in ceremonies rather than a formal comms plan.
Fatima Z.Jul 8, 2026Co-sign A, and here is my sticky trick for remembering it: Standups = Share, Surface, Stay-synced, so if you Skip them you get Silos, the five S's of daily scrum.
Brenda K.Jul 5, 2026A, saw this on exam, siloed team equals missed standups, flag and move.
Ingrid P.Jul 5, 2026Confirmed A. Standups are the daily sync that prevents silos in agile.
Samuel O.Jul 6, 2026Agreed on A, and in my experience the standup only prevents silos if someone actually follows up on the blockers people raise, otherwise it is just a status report everyone tunes out.
Fatima Z.Jul 5, 2026Picked A, but the phrasing bugged me a little, since "consistently attended" sounds like a blame-the-team trap. The real issue is that the daily standup is the heartbeat where silos get busted, so if folks arent showing up or arent actually swapping updates, nobody knows what anybody else is doing. D is the tempting PMI-style distractor, but agile runs on ceremony over paperwork, and a comm plan wont fix a team that skips the one meeting built for cross-pollination. Picture it this way: SILOS dissolve when Standups Link Info