A key team member is on sick leave during a critical project iteration. The sponsor is concerned a delayed release will upset business stakeholders. Team members are cross-functional but are near full capacity. What should the project manager do?

The best action is to meet with the team to reprioritize critical tasks. This empowers the team to find a solution within their capacity, focusing on essential work to maintain the release target. While the team is near full capacity, reprioritization allows them to adapt. Discussing with the team to complete the absent member's work might lead to burnout or quality issues if they are already at capacity. Meeting with the sponsor and stakeholders to explain all challenges, or discussing the unavailable resource and workload with the sponsor, are premature. These options escalate the problem without first attempting to resolve it internally with the team, which is a key responsibility of the project manager in agile environments. The project manager should facilitate problem-solving with the team first.