A project manager has team members across many time zones. Work frequently stalls because one office must wait for another to be awake to answer questions. What should the project manager have done to prevent this?

The correct answer is to plan and schedule tasks and work packages to overcome geographical and time zone challenges. Proactive planning is crucial for distributed teams. This involves structuring work so that dependencies between time zones are minimized, or by creating overlapping work periods, clear hand-off procedures, and comprehensive documentation to reduce the need for immediate, synchronous communication. Making the project the top priority for all team members is a general good practice but doesn't specifically address the time zone issue. Determining communication preferences is helpful but doesn't solve the fundamental problem of needing real-time answers across significant time differences. Using communication tools like video conferencing is a good enablement, but it doesn't eliminate the need for people to be available at the same time, which is the core problem.