The project team has had delivery delays for two consecutive weeks. The lead proposes three hypotheses: unclear task descriptions, insufficient test environment resources, and priority conflicts with another project. Which of the following approaches is both the lowest cost and most effective in distinguishing among these hypotheses?

Answer: AB

• AReview existing task tickets and check whether each task specifies delivery standards and deadlines.✓ Correct. This uses existing records at nearly zero cost. If standards and deadlines are complete, the "unclear tasks" hypothesis becomes much less credible, allowing you to rule it out and narrow the focus to the other two—this is what distinguishing means.
• BArrange a fifteen-minute interview with a key team member, asking them to walk through the timeline of where last week's work got stuck.✓ Correct. A single interview is low cost; reconstructing the timeline reveals whether waiting on environments indicates a resource issue, being pulled off temporarily indicates a priority conflict, or repeated requirement changes point to unclear tasks—each hypothesis is differentially tested.
• CDirectly request two additional developers and expand test server capacity to see if the delays disappear.✗ Wrong. This reflects a misconception of treating a hypothesis as a conclusion and committing large resources upfront. It presupposes the "insufficient resources" hypothesis is true, and it is costly without verification; if the real cause is unclear tasks, adding people and capacity would mask the problem.
• DIn an all-hands meeting, directly ask everyone: "Don't you think the task assignments are unreasonable?"✗ Wrong. This corresponds to the defensive questioning issue (like asking employees in public if they want to quit). Requiring people to take a public stance puts them on the defensive, yielding unreliable attributions and failing to discriminate among the three hypotheses.