Transit leadership wants a nine-month build of a trip-planner overhaul based on an internal slide. No rider has been interviewed about the current planner's failures. What should the Product Owner do?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Building a new trip planner from a slide is remodeling the kitchen before asking who cooks. Talk to riders first. A big unvalidated build is just a confident guess with a long receipt.
Full Explanation
Large unvalidated builds should not precede customer discovery. When transit leadership wants a nine-month trip-planner overhaul based on an internal slide and no rider has been interviewed about current failures, the Product Owner should run discovery interviews with riders before committing to that spend. Funding the nine-month build immediately so the team does not lose the budget window prioritizes budget timing over learning. Writing a complete specification from the slide so Developers can start without riders hardens assumptions. Skipping interviews and comparing versions only after the full overhaul ships delays feedback until cost is sunk. Exam caveat: discovery can be thin and parallel with tiny spikes; it is not an excuse for endless research with no Increment—but nine months without rider evidence is the wrong extreme. Operational check: interview riders on planner failure modes, form hypotheses and success measures, order a thin experimental Increment before any nine-month commitment, and refuse slide-driven scope as a substitute for empiricism. Keep civic stakeholders focused on inspectable outcomes for residents and operators rather than inbox politics or vanity metrics.