A project manager is leading a newly formed agile team. The functional manager has assigned tasks to team members, but the team does not feel empowered. How can the project manager promote empowerment and accountability?

Giving the team autonomy to decide how to perform tasks directly addresses the lack of empowerment. In agile, self-organizing teams are empowered to determine the best way to achieve their goals, fostering ownership and accountability. Assigning tasks individually, even based on expertise, reinforces a top-down approach and doesn't empower the team to self-organize or make decisions about how the work gets done. While customer demos are valuable for feedback and transparency, they don't directly empower the team in how they execute tasks. Involving the product owner is good for clarifying requirements and priorities, but the team's empowerment comes from their ability to decide on the implementation strategy, not just the requirements.