PMI-ACP : PMI Agile Certified Practitioner : Part 27

PMI-ACP : PMI Agile Certified Practitioner : Part 27

1. Midway through a sprint, a team member discovers that the product design fails to adhere to the organization’s enterprise architecture standards. Since this required escalation to the architecture team for further analysis and resolution, the team was unable to deliver its sprint goal and the sprint was cancelled.

   What should the team have done to avoid this?

   • Escalated the issue to management
   • Ensured the early engagement of key stakeholders
   • Provided feedback to the architecture team to change the enterprise architecture standards
   • Raised an exception for non-adherence to the enterprise architecture standards for this product

2. A project’s first iteration contains item A, and its second iteration contains item B. The first iteration is behind schedule, which will impact the second iteration. Since items A and B are similar, a team member suggests beginning the design of item B.

   What should the agile practitioner do?

   • Defer starting the design of item B until the second iteration is being planned
   • Proceed with the design of item B, since it will hasten the second iteration
   • Escalate the issue to the customer, and obtain their approval before starting the design of item B
   • Log the issue in the risk register, and request change control board (CCB) approval

3. During a team meeting, members who are subject matter experts (SMEs) mention that they are continuously working on repetitive tasks, which has lowered motivation.

   What should the agile practitioner do?

   • Organize a team-building activity to improve team morale
   • Have team members work in pairs to learn from each other and develop new skills
   • Ask team members to perform a value stream analysis of their activities
   • Add more resources to the team to help with the tasks

4. An agile team is working on a new product. To ensure that all unknown issues are clarified before committing to the scope, the team plans to work only on spike user stories for the next three sprints.

   What should the agile coach do in this situation?

   • Ensure that the spikes identify the risks early in the project to increase the chances of success
   • Ensure that the business sponsor accepts the proposal and agrees to fund the additional spike sprints
   • Recommend that, in the first sprint, user stories with higher priority be executed in addition to the spike
   • Support the decision, because release planning will be improved, and the product backlog can be better groomed after all spikes are executed

5. A product owner feels that the last sprint failed to sufficiently deliver what was valuable to their organization’s overall project goals.

   What should the scrum master mention at the next retrospective?

   • Solutions to project problems that were built into the last sprint
   • Problems that arose
   • Solutions that saved the organization the most time and money
   • Problems that were solved

   Explanation:

   Reference: https://www.greycampus.com/opencampus/agile-certified-practitioner/sprint-plan-meeting

6. The product owner of an agile project is frustrated because the team is unable to deliver as many features as expected. The product owner asks the team to reduce test-automation levels, since the quality assurance team will test the product at project completion. The product owner expects that more features will be delivered in each iteration using this approach.

   What should the agile practitioner do?

   • Ask the opinion of key stakeholders and the client to ensure the correct approach is being used
   • Work with the team to use this approach, and request a quality assurance iteration after every three iterations
   • Propose to completely eliminate test automation, since this is a quality assurance function
   • Suggest merging the quality assurance and delivery teams to enhance each iteration’s test-automation levels and reduce redundancy

7. An agile team is under pressure to deliver an application. The product owner anticipates many change requests from customers once the product is released.

   What should the agile team do?

   • Demand frequent product reviews by the product owner
   • Continuously work with the product owner to do backlog refinement and product reviews
   • Have the product owner provide detailed requirement specifications to ensure the proper features are delivered
   • During the planning session, ensure the team is committed to deliver within the specifications

8. A team using Kanban identifies that their cycle time has significant variation. After brainstorming, the team determines that the root cause is the stories’ varying sizes and risks.

   What should the team do?

   • Reduce work in progress (WIP) limits to accommodate slack for riskier stories
   • Create a triage step on the Kanban board to pre-identify risky stories
   • Set a policy to break down stories larger than a specified complexity, then adjust the WIP
   • Create a dedicated overflow swimlane on the Kanban board for stories that are too large

9. A seven-member agile team’s composition varies considerably in age, gender, culture, personality type, and professional background.

   When planning a team-building event, what type of interpersonal skills should the project leader use?

   • Networking
   • Social awareness
   • Communication
   • Leadership

10. Trend analysis shows that velocity is significantly higher than predicted and the release can be completed one month ahead of schedule. The team recommends changing the end date to reflect this.

    What should the agile practitioner do?

    • Jointly meet with the team and product owner to discuss options and determine the end date
    • Announce that the team has exceeded the predicted velocity, and that the end date will be earlier than planned
    • Ask the product owner to include additional features in the product backlog, then replan subsequent iterations
    • Ask the team to decrease velocity to meet contractual obligations and document this decision

11. During a sprint review, the product owner identifies a required improvement for a feature’s user interface (UI) delivered during the sprint.

    What should the product owner do next?

    • Create a user story for this new improvement and put it in the product backlog for prioritization and validation by the customer
    • Create a user story for this new improvement and prioritize it for the next sprint
    • Document it as a requirement creep
    • Ask the team to take on additional story points to improve the UI

12. A newly formed scrum team wants to foster an environment of transparency and experimentation. The team decides to use a Kanban board to record and track encountered impediments. Emphasis is placed on how issues are resolved and the strategies for preventing them in the future.

    Over time, what will be the result of this approach?

    • Kaizen
    • Specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time-based (SMART) goals
    • Key performance indicators (KPIs)
    • Muda
    Explanation:
    Reference: https://www.digite.com/kanban/what-is-kanban/

13. An agile coach is assigned to help a project team that was recently co-located close to a very popular business. Many team members visit this business during working hours which affects team performance.

    What should the agile coach do to mitigate this issue?

    • Speak with the functional managers and come to an agreement that will resolve the issue
    • Explain to functional managers that too much control will inversely impact team morale
    • Meet with the team to discuss the issue and identify specific actions to reduce or eliminate the issue
    • Inform the team there will be penalties to anyone who visits that business during working hours

14. During a planning session, four out five team members vote to include eight story points in a particular story, while the fifth member votes for five story points.

    How should this be handled?

    • The story should be assigned eight story points as per the majority vote
    • The story should be added to the backlog and reassessed later
    • The story should be assigned points after a discussion with the fifth team member to see if a consensus can be reached
    • The decision for the number of story points should be made by the customer

15. When a team member encounters an issue in an agile environment, what should they do?

    • Limit communication between the team members and the customer to prevent unnecessary anxiety
    • Manage communication between all team members and the customer to promote effective and transparent collaboration
    • Manage communication between a few team members and the customer so that they may convey information to other team members
    • Facilitate one-on-one communication between team members to reduce conflict and inefficiencies

16. During sprint planning the product owner wants the team to prioritize and deliver a number of features which have the highest business value. Due to technical dependencies, the team does not agree with the prioritization.

    What should the project leader do?

    • Encourage the product owner and team to reprioritize the features and select ones which can be delivered without any dependencies
    • Encourage the team to continue with the current plan, do what they can, and carry forward the work not done to the next iteration
    • Ensure the team captures the technical dependencies as issues within the backlog and prioritize based on value optimization
    • Ensure that the required subject matter experts (SMEs) are engaged by the product owner to help with backlog prioritization

17. A new team member asks what changes could accelerate a change to the project plan.

    What should be the proper response?

    • Competitors joined forces with the team
    • The customer changed requirements
    • Project team members obtained additional certifications
    • Technology which did not interfere with the final product

18. During its first sprint, a new scrum team realizes that it has insufficient team members with test automation skills to effectively complete its stories.

    What should the team do?

    • Cross-train some members in the automation framework to broaden their capacity with that skill
    • Ask the product owner to add team members to boost this particular skill set
    • Send a member to automation framework training when funds are available
    • Avoid using test automation by swarming on the testing tasks and using manual testing

19. A team member has spent 5 days on a spike and the first set of experiments has not been successful. The issue is the development team member has determined a short-term rather than a long-term solution.

    What should the project leader do?

    • Assign the spike to another resource to continue research for the long-term solution
    • Re-establish the spike, encourage experimentation and collaborate with the team
    • Stop experimentation and negotiate the short-term solution with the customer
    • Schedule a root-cause analysis with the development team on the main issues with the spike

20. A product owner asks a newly formed scrum team how many story points will be completed in a sprint.

    What should the scrum master do?

    • Engage the team to determine the sprint velocity based on previous agile projects
    • Average the sprint velocity based on input from team members
    • Share the sprint velocity obtained from the sponsor with the team
    • Run multiple sprints before determining the sprint velocity with the team