ACP_01_60

1. A product owner on a government-sponsored project is implementing the project using both traditional and agile project management principles. One recurring issue he has been struggling with is how to convince the more traditional project stakeholders to change how they react to changes in the project plan. Which of the following should the product owner recommend if he wants to lean more toward agile project management principles when dealing with changes to the project plan?. A. Corrective action. B. Adaptive action. C. Preventive action. D. Comparative action.

2. The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the company asked an agile practitioner to explain why using agile project management methods is more beneficial than using traditional project management methods, specifically how return on investment (ROI) can be improved. Which of the following responses would be most appropriate?. A. Agile project management methods improve product time-to-market for the customer. B. Agile project management methods eliminate all time and effort spent on documentation. C. Agile project management methods develop a comprehensive set of features. D. Agile project management methods involve multitasking between several different projects to maximize utilization of available resources.

3. An agile project sponsor has requested to see the impact of the scope changes requested by the customer throughout the lifecycle of the project. What information radiator would an agile practitioner recommend to the sponsor to examine?. A. Burndown chart. B. Burnup chart. C. Velocity chart. D. Scope baseline.

4. An agile practitioner is working on a hybrid project where her responsibilities include both acting as the project scrum master, and providing periodic project performance reports to senior management. The project sponsor has just suggested that to monitor project progress, the individual velocity of each project team member should be tracked rather than the velocity of the team as a whole. What should the agile practitioner do?. A. Track and report both team velocity and individual velocities to monitor project team performance. B. Track and report only team velocity to monitor project team performance. C. Track only average individual velocity to monitor project team performance. D. Track either team velocity or individual velocities to monitor project team performance.

5. A software developer creating a crowd-funded role-playing smartphone game is also a partner in the company. This developer loses a lot of time that should be dedicated to developing the software due to constant task switching because he must also handle daily marketing and fundraising updates to the project's sponsors. Which of the following best describes how task switching affects the agile development process?. A. Task switching is beneficial because if you become blocked on one task, you can switch to another. B. Task switching in agile environments allows you to deliver constant value because each feature can progress incrementally. C. Task switching is a core component of Kanban to keep work in progress moving in a pull system. D. Task switching is detrimental because it causes project team members to lose focus on their assigned tasks.

6. The agile triangle provides a different way of looking at project success and addresses the real goals of projects, which are represented by the three sides or parameters of the agile triangle. Two of the sides are value and quality. Which of the following represents the third side of the agile triangle?. A. Constraints. B. Stakeholders. C. Retrospective. D. Resources.

7. An agile team was almost done with the release when they determined that the application was not scalable to the 100,000 users as expected. What could the team have done differently?. A. Prioritize functional features ahead of non-functional features. B. Emphasize security and reliability over scalability. C. Design the system to accommodate one million users. D. Devote more time to non-functional requirements.

8. An agile coach reflects on his past agile projects and realizes that his ability to understand human motivation, expression and dynamics played a large part in his success. What interpersonal skill is being described here and was most likely responsible for the agile coach’s success?. A. Servant leadership. B. Conflict resolution. C. Emotional intelligence. D. Adaptive leadership.

9. Effective scrum masters demonstrate excellent meeting facilitation skills. Which of the following activities should the scrum master manage while facilitating a sprint retrospective?. A. Grooming the backlog. B. Demonstrating the increment to the product owner. C. Meeting timeboxes. D. Meeting content under discussion.

10. An agile team has just completed their iteration retrospective meeting. After the meeting concluded, the project manager suggested that the team get together later that day to determine the cause of a major problem that was discussed during the iteration retrospective meeting. Which of the following would be the best tool for the team to use to determine the root cause of the problem discussed?. A. SWOT analysis. B. Tornado diagram. C. Kano analysis. D. Fishbone diagram.

11. Agile Manifesto Principle #9 states, "Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility." Which of the following concepts is the most important when measuring the degree of technical excellence that a team should demonstrate on an agile project?. A. Ensuring that technical debt is paid off before the end of the project. B. Achieving technical perfection to deliver consistent customer value. C. Ensuring that technical excellence is the primary project objective. D. Delivering customer value today and creating an adaptable product for tomorrow.

12. An important key performance indicator (KPI) used in Agile to measure the performance of the team's progress is velocity. Which of the following metrics is most often used to measure an agile team's performance in terms of velocity?. A. The number of user story points completed by the team per day. B. The number of user story points completed by the team per iteration. C. The number of iterations completed by the team per release. D. The number of story points planned to be completed in the next iteration.

13. As an agile best practice, under what circumstances can a team re-estimate the size or level of effort it takes to complete a user story during an iteration?. A. Re-estimate a user story when it takes a shorter amount of time to complete than originally estimated. B. Re-estimate a user story when its relative size has changed. C. Re-estimate a user story when it takes a longer amount of time to complete than originally estimated. D. Re-estimate a user story if the product owner requests to do so.

14. A company has recently lost a significant number of customer accounts due to the poor quality of the company's software applications. An agile practitioner reviews the development process and concludes that technical debt was the main cause of the poor quality. Which approach would the agile practitioner least likely recommend to help improve the quality in upcoming projects?. A. Maximizing technical excellence through good technical design. B. Including technical debt reduction user stories in the backlog. C. Implementing software code refactoring best practices. D. Ensuring quality through the use of automated testing tools.

15. Agile team members understand that if by the end of the sprint, the product increment that they are building does not meet the criteria specified at the beginning of the sprint, this work is not included in the velocity for the current sprint. What are these criteria?. A. Estimate to complete. B. Definition of done. C. Testing and usability. D. Retrospective.

16. A facilitator for a sprint retrospective is currently setting the stage for the meeting. She decides to use the focus on/ focus off activity in order to prepare the agile project team for the work that they will be performing during the retrospective meeting. On a blank flip chart, she writes down the four phrases that will be used during the focus on/ focus off activity. Which of the following should be listed on the activity flip chart?. A. Debate rather than dialogue. B. Argument rather than conversation. C. Understanding rather than defending. D. Advocacy rather than inquiry.

17. An agile coach has made sure to create a collaborative environment for her team members by colocating them and providing the opportunity for osmotic communication. She also made some private workspaces available in case some team members wished to meet privately without disturbing other team members. What is the name of this colocated and collaborative environment where team members can perform osmotic communication?. A. Common area. B. Colocated area. C. Cubicle area. D. Collaborative area.

18. During iteration planning, the product owner meets with the project stakeholders to determine the criteria by which a given product backlog item will be judged as a success or failure by the project stakeholders so the product owner can effectively communicate these criteria to the development team. What will be the output of this discussion?. A. Working agreements. B. Conditions of satisfaction. C. A product increment. D. A prioritized backlog.

19. An agile practitioner is modifying some of the processes to ensure the success of the current project. Which of the following is the agile practitioner currently performing?. A. Process adjusting. B. Process fashioning. C. Process priming. D. Process tailoring.

20. A product owner is giving an agile presentation at a meeting for some senior project stakeholders. One of the attendees asks him what he believes is the main benefit of using an agile method on a project. The product owner explains that following agile principles when executing a project helps the project team to detect problems early and often, and allows more opportunities and time to address problems before they become even bigger issues. What aspect of Agile enables this type of problem detection?. A. Relying on documentation, process, and formality. B. Performing incremental development with reflection. C. Adopting a random organizational paradigm for the project team's structure. D. Avoiding failing early.

21. An agile team created a Kanban board containing five columns. One of the software developers is determining the work in process (WIP) limit for each column to optimize the team’s performance. What should the agile team consider when determining an appropriate WIP limit for each column?. A. The limit, if set incorrectly, can cause either people or work to be idle. B. The WIP limit should be removed for large projects. C. A higher limit is generally better than a lower one. D. Finishing early or starting late impacts how you set the limit.

22. A software development company had to make a number of adjustments in how financials are captured in order to report on agile projects. The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) wants to make sure that the same set of financial metrics are used across all projects before, during, and after the project in order to track the project’s benefit realization. The internal rate of return (IRR) is on the CFO's list of proposed financial metrics. What is an argument against using IRR for all of their projects?. A. The organization's discount rate needs to be established when calculating the IRR. B. The IRR cannot be calculated by hand. C. IRR cannot be used to compare different projects directly. D. IRR cannot be used in all situations.

23. A team is trying to determine whether to implement use cases or user stories to develop a new video game. Which of the following relationships between use cases and user stories should the team consider while planning their project?. A. A use case contains data and user interface design information and always capture a single user story. B. A use case does not contain data or user interface design information and may contain multiple user stories. C. A user story and use case are the same thing and therefore can be implemented by the team as necessary. D. A user story must consist of multiple use cases and be small enough to be implemented in less than an iteration.

24. An agile coach is encouraging the development team to look for and implement small incremental improvements in the processes being used. Which of the following is the agile coach recommending to the team?. A. Muda. B. Kaizen. C. Ishikawa. D. Kanban.

25. An agile project team is conducting a release retrospective. The current discussion is focused on some disruptive risk events that occurred in the last few weeks, prior to the release, that were difficult to resolve and threatened the release date. These risks were identified early in the planning process but were associated with user stories that were relatively low in value to the customer. What could have been done to avoid having these risks occur so close to the scheduled release date?. A. The product owner could have authorized overtime and added additional resources in the weeks leading up to the release to mitigate the impact of the high-risk user stories. B. The product owner could have written the user stories in the backlog in such a way as to minimize or remove any risk. C. There is really nothing the product owner could have done because risk events always occur just before the scheduled release date. D. The product owner could have scheduled the completion of high risk user stories in the product backlog sooner rather than later in the release cycle.

26. An agile team used a simple change management process where the product owner could reprioritize user stories based on the customer feedback. New user stories would need to be the same relative size as those being replaced in order to maintain a fixed budget and schedule. The final product included the highest value customer features, and the project was completed on schedule and budget. What Agile Manifesto value did the team emphasize to ensure project success?. A. Responding to change over following a plan. B. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. C. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. D. Working software over comprehensive documentation.

27. The Agile Manifesto's 4 values and 12 principles form the foundation of all agile methods. Although all of these values and principles are critical to the success of any agile project, one principle stands out as the top priority for all agile projects. Which of the following describes this top priority?. A. Delivering working product frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. B. Welcoming changing requirements, even late in development. C. Satisfying the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable product. D. Building projects around motivated individuals.

28. The product owner wants to assign users stories for the next iteration. The customer tells the product owner which user stories hold the highest value, while the product owner indicates which have the highest risk level and dependencies on other user stories. By the end of the meeting, they have a prioritized list of user stories in the product backlog, the most important of which will be discussed in the next iteration planning meeting. What process have the product owner and the customer just performed?. A. Backlog filtering. B. Kano analysis. C. Backlog refinement. D. Minimum viable product.

29. An agile practitioner is attending a scrum meeting where the team is demonstrating some individual product components to the customer via video conference in anticipation of a major feature release coming up in two weeks. What scrum meeting is the team currently attending?. A. Daily standup meeting. B. Sprint review meeting. C. Release review meeting. D. Sprint retrospective meeting.

30. An agile team is using the acceptance test-driven development (ATDD) approach in their project. Which of the following would the team ideally be doing?. A. Writing the acceptance tests at the same time as developing the functionality to be tested. B. Writing the acceptance tests before developing the functionality to be tested. C. Using the user interface as a method to test the functionality. D. Consulting developers on how best to test the functionality.

31. When the team lead was asked how the team intended to mitigate the risks associated with their upcoming high-risk project, the team lead replied that the team would do its best to fail fast during the initial sprints. What did the team lead mean by that?. A. Since the project has a high risk of failure, it is better to fail soon so that the team can start working on a different project. B. It is better to fail at the beginning of the project rather than at the end for the company to save some money. C. The team should develop the most difficult features first, thus forcing an early failure, to figure out possible solutions sooner. D. Fast failure at the beginning of the project allows the team to spot problems early and try to solve them as soon as possible.

32. One of the stakeholders suggests that it would be best for them only to attend release demonstrations and skip iteration demonstrations since so many meetings are required to review and verify the product increments. Which of the following statements might the product owner use to defend this common agile practice?. A. It decreases cycle time. B. It prevents any misunderstanding between the stakeholders and the development team. C. It helps the team predict and decrease defects. D. It reduces the cost of fixing issues.

33. During a sprint planning meeting, the scrum team is arguing over 115 story points' worth of user stories that the product owner is pushing to be completed in the upcoming sprint. However, the development team’s average velocity is only 100 story points. Who makes the final decision on how many story points will be targeted for completion during a sprint?. A. The project manager. B. The development team. C. The scrum master. D. The product owner.

34. The agile team coach receives an email request for a copy of the project management plan. How should the team coach respond to this request from a stakeholder who is unfamiliar with agile?. A. Send the stakeholder a story map or project roadmap. B. Explain the adaptive planning approach used by agile projects. C. Suggest the stakeholder attend an iteration retrospective and ask their planning questions. D. Ask the product owner to address the stakeholder's questions.

35. A software developer is writing code in an eXtreme Programming (XP) environment and discovers an error in another developer’s code, and he believes he knows how to correct the error. Which of the following is the developer's best course of action?. A. Document the error and report it to the original developer so that it can be corrected. B. Make the necessary correction to the code himself and document as needed. C. Report the error to the product owner and let them decide how to proceed. D. Ignore the error because it will be discovered and corrected during testing.

36. An agile practitioner met with the team to decide the technology for the system to be developed. At the end of the meeting, she obtained consensus from the team on the choice of technology. Which of the following agile activities did the agile practitioner and her scrum team demonstrate in this situation?. A. Cross-functional training. B. Self-organization. C. Participatory decision making. D. Collaboration.

37. An agile team has moved past the pleasantries of being a new team to its current state where many conflicts have begun to arise. Tensions are running high, and the dialogue has gotten harsh. Using Paul Hersey's situational leadership model, what actions should the team leader take in order to remove impediments while keeping the team from imploding, so they can perform better as a team?. A. Share the decision making on how tasks should be accomplished and how to resolve the conflicts. B. Provide direction as well as support for the team to resolve the conflicts. C. Stay involved in decisions and monitor progress, while passing the responsibility and process to team concerning how to resolve these conflicts. D. Provide clear and frequent directives to team members as to what, how, why, when and where to perform their tasks and how to resolve these conflicts.

38. An agile practitioner needs to establish an objective range of values to be displayed on an information radiator to indicate whether a process is stable. Which of the following should the agile practitioner use?. A. Process boundaries. B. Specification limits. C. Process metrics. D. Control limits.

39. During a daily standup meeting, a software developer suggested a change to the database design and raised a question about configuring the database. The tester reported on some research and started to discuss the pros and cons of using a particular automated testing tool. Another team member reported having to wait for the delivery of hardware and equipment to complete performance testing. Which discussion topic was appropriate for a daily standup meeting?. A. Suggesting a change to the database design. B. Asking a question about configuring the database. C. Discussing the pros and cons of using the latest automated testing tool. D. Waiting for hardware and equipment to complete performance testing.

40. An agile coach understands the importance of effectively using emotional intelligence to lead and develop the member of her agile project teams. Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand your own emotions and the emotions of others in order to successfully interact with them and is characterized by four major attributes. In what order should an agile project leader master these attributes to get to the point where they can effectively lead and develop other team members?. A. Self-management, self-awareness, social awareness, social skills. B. Social skills, self-awareness, self-management, social awareness. C. Self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, social skills. D. Social awareness, self-awareness, self-management, social skills.

41. A two-year project to create a state-of-the-art drivetrain for the latest model of a global automobile production company has just come to an end. The team is engaged in the final project closeout activities. Which of the following might be included in these activities?. A. Conducting a kick-off meeting to celebrate the successful completion of the project. B. Project closure is not performed on an agile project as it does not produce value for the customer. C. Release of the final product to the operations team. D. Preparing the project definition of done.

42. In line with valuing "individuals over processes and tools," an agile coach wants to streamline processes and tools by implementing COCOMO. How will the team benefit from a tool such as COCOMO?. A. Help teams work together in the same space. B. Automate testing. C. Reverse engineering similar projects to estimate future projects. D. Promote knowledge sharing.

43. A company is looking to outsource some work for an agile project. What is most important to emphasize and ensure when selecting and contracting with prospective vendors?. A. Ensuring vendors are all agile certified. B. Establishing contracts as fixed-cost with incentives. C. Maintaining regular contact and feedback with customers. D. Enforcing strict coding standards.

44. An agile team is midway through the current sprint when a key stakeholder approaches the scrum master with a 'must' new requirement. Which of the following would be the scrum master’s best response?. A. Add the new requirement to the current sprint backlog. B. State that the sprint is currently underway and that new requirements cannot be added without written approval from management. C. Add the new requirement to the product backlog so that the product owner can review it for possible inclusion in a future sprint. D. Ask the stakeholder to discuss the new requirement with the product owner and let them decide whether to include it in the product backlog.

45. A scrum master is facilitating the daily scrum meeting when one of the team members brings up a problem accessing a database that is impeding his progress. Another team member offers a possible solution, which in turn begins a conversation between the two team members. After a minute or two, the scrum master cuts off their conversation reminding them that the daily scrum meeting is not the appropriate venue for their discussion. What should the scrum master do next?. A. Ask the team member who mentioned the problem to create a change request regarding the database roadblock and let the individuals responsible for the database resolve the problem. B. End the daily scrum meeting and focus the team on resolving the database problem since it seems to take priority over the remainder of the daily scrum meeting. C. Continue the daily scrum meeting and when it is complete dismiss the rest of the team and ask the appropriate people to remain in the parking lot to help resolve the database roadblock. D. Allow the conversation between the two team members to continue until the issue is resolved because problem solving is one of the primary objectives of the daily scrum meeting.

46. Due to a lack of expertise, an agile practitioner aims to outsource the development of a particular software module. All of the vendors that the procurement department has contacted so far use traditional project management methods. What is the best course of action for the agile practitioner to take in this situation?. A. Ensure that the RFP process includes information on the preferred project management method as part of the vendor selection criteria. B. Educate the procurement office to make sure that all vendors are required to be familiar with agile methods. C. Perform the necessary work in-house since none of the vendors use agile practices. D. Set up agile training for the vendors.

47. An agile team has limited wall space to be used to indicate the project progress or status, so they are debating whether to use a software tool for which their company has an unlimited user license, or whether to use their wall space to display post-it notes or index cards that reflect what they are currently working on. What should they do?. A. Go with the software tool since the company has an unlimited user license, and cost is not an issue. B. Use the post-it notes and index cards since the low-tech/high-touch solution is always better than the high tech/low-touch one. C. Follow the same practices of communicating the project status used by other agile teams in the company. D. Use post-it notes and index cards since this will provide the stakeholders with the real-time updates on the project status.

48. A product owner is conducting the initial strategy meeting with the agile project team and is reviewing the agile project charter. The product owner notices that although it includes the project vision and mission, another critical element of a typical agile charter is missing. Which element of the project charter is missing?. Assumptions. B. Milestones. C. Constraints. D. Success criteria.

49. An agile team meets to create the initial release plan for the project. Which of the following is the lowest level of detail considered when developing a release plan?. Tasks. Products. Iterations. User stories.

50. The technical leads on an agile team were heavily debating the best approach for what user stories from the product backlog to develop first. One technical lead wanted early wins by leaving the most difficult code to the end, while the other argued that complex stories should be developed as early as possible with the belief that even if the team failed at first, these initial failures would make the team more resilient. In what order should the team complete the user stories?. A. Schedule the easiest user stories first. B. Schedule the most difficult user stories first. C. Schedule the most difficult user stories first if the team is confident they can solve any related issues. D. Schedule the easiest user stories last.

51. A senior developer on an agile team is very technically competent, but he finds it very difficult to concentrate in the war room area where his team is co-located. His desk is also located near the break room area, which makes matters worse, so he is getting very frustrated. The developer makes a request to the scrum master that he be allowed to use a small isolated office, away from the rest of the team. What should the scrum master do?. A. Provide the developer with noise-canceling headphones and a "do not disturb" sign to be displayed at all times. B. Do nothing. The developer should understand that noise is a part of a team working environment on agile projects. C. Suggest creating a working agreement where team members can use a "do not disturb" sign and noise canceling headphones while working. D. Provide the developer with the private office away from the rest of the team to be used on occasion.

52. An agile team is having difficulty optimizing the flow of information and materials required to complete a process. One of the team members recalled an exercise that was used to help improve the process by providing the context of the process and its importance. Which of the following tools or techniques will allow the team to see the big picture, verify and question assumptions, as well as deliver value?. A. Fast flexible design. B. Just in time. C. Build quality into the product. D. Value stream mapping.

53. Understanding the various metrics that are generated during an agile project allows agile practitioners to more accurately gauge the scope, time, and resources needed to complete a project and deliver incremental value with each iteration. For the purposes of gauging the number of iterations needed to complete a project, a correct understanding of throughput is essential. Which of the following statements describes what is meant by throughput in agile terms?. A. The length of time it takes for a feature to deliver value, from the moment that the team begins to work on it, to when it is finished and accepted. B. The number of iterations that can be successfully completed by a team during a single release. C. The amount of time it takes for a feature to go through the entire process from requirements gathering to deployment. D. The number of user story points that can be successfully processed by a team during a single iteration.

54. Three hours before the end of the sprint a major bug was found in one of the user stories’ code. What is the next logical step the team should take in keeping with agile best practices?. A. Have the team swarm on the user story to get it completed before the sprint review meeting. B. Do not demonstrate this portion of the user story during the sprint review meeting. C. Cease work on the user story and at the sprint review meeting indicate that it was not completed. D. Wait until after the sprint review meeting and fix the bug only if found by the customer during their testing.

55. An agile coach is managing a distributed project team. Which of the following tools is the most effective for the project team to use to maximize virtual colocation?. A. Video conferencing. B. Email. C. Post-it notes. D. Teleconferencing.

56. An agile team’s first iteration included daily standups that lasted over 30 minutes. During the retrospective meeting, the team agreed to use the Shu-Ha-Ri model to make future daily standup meetings more focused and reduce their duration. During the second iteration, the team was able to focus on the three basic questions, followed the agenda, and ensured that no daily standup meetings lasted more than 15 minutes. Which level of the Shu-Ha-Ri model had the team completed by the end of the second iteration?. A. The Ri level. B. The Ha level. C. The Shu level. D. The pre-Shu level.

57. An agile team needs to produce a simple visual representation of the user interface that will display the content, layout, and intended functionality of a new community center website. Which of the following should they develop and demonstrate to the customer or product owner for feedback?. A. A prototype. B. A wireframe. C. A screen design. D. A mock-up.

58. A scrum master is helping the development team understand and embrace the five scrum values to ensure their success. The product owner has brought the team a daunting quantity of user stories that need to be completed during the current project. Which specific scrum value should the scrum master emphasize for the team to deliver the most valuable items to the client as quickly as possible?. A. Courage, by feeling supported and having more resources at their disposal. B. Focus, by working on only a few things at a time. C. Respect, by working together and sharing successes and failures. D. Commitment, by having control over their own destiny.

59. An aircraft manufacturer is executing two projects, each of which are run independently to create two sub-assemblies that together make up a new type of engine cover. Although the projects are run separately, they have many inter dependencies. A senior manager has suggested that the number of joint product tests between the teams be reduced since these tests create a major bottleneck. What agile best practice would this approach violate?. A. Project flexibility and agility maintenance. B. Prototyping. C. Continuous integration. D. Continuous user engagement.

60. One of the project’s objectives is to be the first to market with a new product. In a discussion, the product owner mentioned that there is another aspect of product development that is even more important. To which aspect of product development was the product owner referring?. A. Meeting the customer requirements as specified in the project scope. B. Hitting the project deadline at any cost to satisfy the customer needs. C. Delivering a high-quality product that is scalable to any number of users. D. Delivering a high-quality product that is easily adaptable to future needs.