You lead a distributed product team: four people in Skopje, two in Tetovo, one working remotely from Prilep.
Over the past three Sprints the Prilep developer's contribution has dropped. They keep their camera off, answer in the Daily Scrum with a single sentence, and no longer join the Sprint Retrospective. The team lead in Skopje tells you the rest of the team is "carrying" them and wants them replaced before the next release; two developers have started leaving the person out of design discussions.
The developer's work, when it arrives, is still of good quality.
What should you do first?
Pick the option that looks best to you, then reveal the answer.
Answer revealed. The best answer is C. Have a private one-to-one with the developer to understand what is happening, before any decision about the team or the release.
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Best answer
CHave a private one-to-one with the developer to understand what is happening, before any decision about the team or the release.
A change in one person's behaviour, with their work still good, is a signal about the person - health, home, a conflict on the team, or the isolation of being the only one in Prilep. Emotional intelligence means noticing, then finding out, in private, before acting.
The question is not whether the situation needs the team's attention - it does - but what comes first. A private conversation costs an hour and changes every other decision: if the developer is unwell, the release plan changes; if the problem is the two colleagues excluding them, it is a team matter and belongs, carefully, in the Retrospective; if it is the isolation of remote work, the virtual-team practices are yours to fix. Two items are already on your list after the one-to-one - the exclusion that has started, and the release risk, which is real but is a Product Owner and Sprint Planning conversation, not a personnel one. Doing them in that order is the difference between leading a team and processing it.
Why the other options are tempting but wrong
A. The Retrospective is where the team improves how it works together. It is not a place to examine one person's behaviour in front of colleagues who have already started excluding them - and that person has stopped attending, which tells you something about how safe it would feel.
B. This executes the team lead's diagnosis without checking it. Good work arriving late from someone who has gone silent is not a performance problem until you know what it is - and a replacement mid-release costs more than the release risk it is meant to remove.
D. Everyone will know who it is about, including the developer, and it converts a person's situation into a rule enforcement. It is the manager avoiding a conversation, dressed as fairness.
Where this sits in PMI
PMBOK Guide 7th ed., Team performance domain; PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct - Respect 3.2.1-3.2.2 (we inform ourselves about the norms and customs of others; we listen to others' points of view, seeking to understand them). Agile Practice Guide, servant leadership. PMP ECO, People domain: emotional intelligence and virtual teams.
Exam Content Outline tasks (PMP ECO) · 2026
- People 3 - Lead the project team
- People 8 - Plan and manage communication