PMI-ACP : PMI Agile Certified Practitioner : Part 28

PMI-ACP : PMI Agile Certified Practitioner : Part 28

1. During product development, changes in technology and regulations require the team to reassess product architecture.

   How should this technical debt be captured?

   • Include it in the product backlog and use a new indicator to annotate that it is technical debt
   • Include it in the product backlog as a low-priority issue
   • Since it is not a part of agile methodologies, it should not be tracked
   • Have team members maintain personal lists of issues and consolidate the lists during review

2. An agile project leader notices that the team’s velocity has decreased. In examining data provided by team members, the project leader discovers that one team member has been slow to enter story statuses.

   What can happen as a result?

   • The team will be unable to understand the iteration’s status
   • The team will be unable to judge the project design’s validity
   • The team cannot give accurate updates to management
   • Team collaboration cannot be measured effectively

3. An agile project manager notices that the product owner manages team members’ day-to-day tasks in a way that distracts them from their core responsibilities. In addition, the team believes that their questions on product backlog prioritization are not being answered on time.

   What should the agile project manager do?

   • Discuss and address this in the iteration retrospective
   • Let the product owner know it is the project manager’s responsibility to drive a team’s tasks
   • Discuss the roles and responsibilities of the project team with the product owner
   • Ask the product owner to work extra hours to answer the team’s questions

4. During iteration planning, it was determined that an epic should be decomposed.

   What was the determining factor?

   • Size and priority
   • Minimum marketable features
   • Release plan
   • Sprint mapping

5. A team member on a new scrum project previously provided support to another application. Due to issues with that application, the team member’s former supervisor continues assigning them tasks related to that project. The new project’s scrum master includes this issue in the risk register.

   What should the scrum master do next?

   • Monitor the threats and risks while allowing the team member to multitask on both projects
   • Assign more resources to the sprints to compensate for the absences of the team member
   • Ensure that the threats and risks are communicated and addressed
   • Assign fewer stories to the sprints so that the team member can still meet sprint goals

6. An experienced product owner presents the epics and corresponding stories during a release planning session with the established team. The executive sponsor asks the team when the features will be delivered.

   What should the agile team do?

   • Evaluate how much can be delivered based on the Scrum Master’s estimation
   • Identify a set of user stories based on the team’s velocity
   • Initiate an estimation session
   • Consult historical data for project completion

7. During a retrospective, the agile practitioner discovers that a team member’s process improvement idea has worsened the outcome.

   What should the agile practitioner do?

   • Commend the team on trying the idea, then encourage discussion regarding alternatives
   • Ask a manager to direct the team on fixing the process
   • Encourage the team to continue executing the idea to see if it improves
   • Privately speak with the team member to convey that their idea worsened the outcome

8. Why should a project team reduce the work in progress?

   • It indicates poor project quality
   • It represents team members’ utilization
   • It represents unrealized value
   • It shows that the project is behind schedule

9. A team’s technical lead believes that manual testing tasks should be conducted by junior team members below their level. The junior team members think it is unfair and refuse the tasks.

   What should the scrum master do?

   • Tell the technical lead to do the testing
   • Facilitate an open and focused team discussion that reinforces team agreements
   • Ask the team manager to advise the technical lead that all tasks are important
   • Encourage the team to take ownership of the delivery

10. A team is transitioning from a predictive approach to an agile approach. Historically, the team has delivered work products that did not meet customer expectations.

    What agile practice can help the team to alleviate this?

    • Test-driven development (TDD)
    • Clear definition of done and regular demos
    • Collaborative team planning games
    • Consistent team velocity

11. During an iteration review, the agile team asserts that a product is complete because development and review were finished. The product owner disagrees, since the product has not been tested.

    What should the agile practitioner do?

    • Work with the agile team and product owner to agree on the definition of done
    • Ask the project sponsor to determine whether the product is completed
    • Plan another review after the product has been tested
    • Add testing to the backlog, and have the product owner reprioritize

12. An agile project manager is planning the initial scope, schedule, and cost range estimates on a new project. The team will be using Kanban to control work.

    What metrics should the team use to measure performance?

    • Lead time, throughput, and due date performance
    • Work in progress limits, Kanban board, and time boxes
    • Work item types, sprint cadences, and defect classes
    • Burndown charts, scatter diagrams, and throughput

13. Due to its complexity, a new team member struggles with developing a concise user story.

    What advice should the agile practitioner give to assist with developing the story?

    • Hand the story over to a more experienced team member
    • Break the story up and focus on the most valuable parts
    • Discuss the story at the next retrospective
    • Pick another story from the product backlog

14. Based on the burndown chart, what is the iteration’s status?

    

    • It trended ahead of schedule and completed everything on time
    • It look more time than expected and had to be lengthened
    • It trended behind schedule and did not complete everything on time
    • It took less time than expected and had to be shortened

15. What role should a servant leader perform to reduce team distractions and improve progress toward project goals?

    • Managing: To ensure compliance with the project plan
    • Mentoring: To share their knowledge with the team
    • Controlling: To ensure compliance with the scope, budget, and schedule
    • Auditing: To ensure adherence to organizational compliance policies

    Explanation:

    Reference: https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/manage-servant-leadership

16. A new product owner shares the product vision during the team launch event. The team asks for clarification on the product roadmap and its high-level features.

    What should the product owner do?

    • Determine the required tasks for implementing the high-level features
    • Identify the detailed design for the high-level features
    • Prioritize the product backlog for the upcoming release
    • Estimate the user stories in the iteration backlog

17. A team identifies the number of threats and lists them in the order in which they were identified. After analyzing a cause-and-effect diagram, the ownership of the threats and their treatment is assigned, and a number of risk cards are placed on the Kanban board.

    What approach should be used to manage these threats?

    • Create a risk register detailing the threats, their causes, and their treatment strategies; and complete ownership to provide tighter risk control and a stakeholder communication tool
    • Focus on the threats during the daily stand up and ensure they are visible to the entire team and other interested parties
    • Prioritize the risks based on their criticality and timing, and track actions to closure
    • Ensure that the prioritization of threats is complete, and that ownership actions are assigned and visible to everyone

18. A newly formed development team experienced difficulty with accurately estimating product backlog items. As a result, the team failed to deliver all of the features in the sprint backlog for the past two iterations.

    What should the team do to improve the accuracy of their estimates?

    • Decrease the sprint time box until the team is able to deliver the entire agreed-upon sprint backlog in a single sprint
    • Discuss estimating techniques in the daily scrum meeting
    • Increase the size of the development team until the team is able to deliver the entire agreed-upon sprint backlog in a single sprint
    • Begin tracking estimated effort metrics as an input to performance evaluation

19. Following a successful product release, senior management asks an agile team how to improve the value of the product for the next release.

    What should the team do?

    • Conduct frequent demos and obtain feedback from users throughout the development of the next release
    • Inform senior management that since the product was successfully released, the project is considered delivered and should be closed
    • Request additional budget to implement a Scrum of Scrums approach to scale the teams and add capacity
    • Implement a better definition of done to ensure that continuous integration processes are managed effectively

20. Midway through a sprint, the scrum master identifies that reassigning a certain task could help the team meet its sprint goals.

    What should the scrum master do next?

    • Alert the team that sprint goals might not be met and create an alternative plan
    • Obtain team buy-in to perform modifications to the sprint backlog
    • Have the sprint proceed as planned
    • Ask the team to decide if the task should be reassigned