PMI ACP: Domain V - Adaptive Planning

An agile project manager has contracted with another party to develop some of the work required for the project. The external contractor is also using agile project management. How should the progress of the contractor be assessed?

• Review the weekly progress reports from the contractor

• Review the contractor's release plans and attending the contractors daily stand up meetings

• Review the contractor's iteration plans

• Review release versions of the work

Answer explanation

Correct. The seventh guiding principles of the agile manifesto indicates "working software is the primary measur of the progress".

A team has several costly risks which may soon arise on a project. What is the best way for the team to communicate these risks so they can be addresses as impediments to progress?

• Daily stand up meetings

• Burndown charts

• Risk registers

• Risk Management Plan

Answer explanation

Correct. During the daily standup meeting, each team member identifies obstacles that impede their work. These obstacles can include risks, and mentioning them in the daily meeting communicates that a risk has occured and becoma an issue, an impediment that need attention.

An agile team is using rolling wave planning and progressive elaboration to plan work on their new project. Which of the following choices aligns with this method of planning?

• Building wireframes and prototypes

• Planning at multiple levels

• Creating a work breakdown strucure

• Reviewing product increments

Answer explanation

Correct. By planning at multiple levels (release, iteration, day), agile teams implement the concepts of the rolling wave planning and progressive elaboration approach to plan their work on upcoming projects.

An agile team wants to use a quick method using relative size to estimate the user stories. Which metric should they use?

• Ideal time

• Real time

• Velocity

• Story Points

Answer explanation

Correct. a story point is an arbitrary measure used by scrum team. It is used to measure the effort required to implement a story (a number that tells the team how difficult the story is). A story point value is defined on a relative range o values.

Before starting actual development of a new software system, an agile team is testing different technical approaches to understand the viability of their potential solutions. What are the team members doing?

• Software spike

• System spike

• Architectural spike

• Technical spike

Answer explanation

Correct. There are 2 types of spikes: architectural and risk-based. Architectural spikes are used to test different technical approached and understand the viability of potential solutions before starting the actual development.

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

Answer explanation

Correct. The lowest level of detail during release planning is the features or capabilities the stakeholders want to be included in the release, which described in user stories.

In a recent iteration, an agile team completed 15 user stories out of 20 planned. The project stakeholders were unhappy and demanded answers. The team members responded that they had to do the routine work of supporting prior releases which caused them to miss the iteration goal. Should the routine work of supporting prior releases be included in the iteration?

• No, routine work of supporting prior releases should not be included in the iteration

• Yes, routine work of supporting prior releases should be included in the iteration

• Yes, routine work of supporting prior releases should be included, but only in iteration Zero

• It depends on how many user stories have to be removed by including the work of supporting prior releases.

Answer explanation

Correct. Routine work of supporting prior releases should be included as part of any iteration.

An agile coach is explaining to the product owner that implementing agile best practices on his projects will offer many benefits, such as timeboxing, which helps to mitigate the effects of Parkinson's Law. Which of the following describes Parkinson's Law?

• Waiting until the last minute to start a task that was planned weeks before

• When assigned tasks interrupt each other, and they need to be worked on simultaneously

• When transferring work that is finished earlier than expected, is delayed because the next process or team member is not ready to accept it

• When tasks expand to fill the time that has been allocated to complete them

During an agile project chartering session, the project takeholders were developing a procudt vision and created two artifacts. The first one was the vision box. The second one was just a couple os sentences that indicated the target customer, the key benefit, and competitive advantage. What was the second artifact created by the project stakeholders?

• Project charter

• Project elevator statement

• Business case

• Statement of work

Answer explanation

Correct. The product vision is defined by two agile artifacts: the poduct vision box and the elevator statement. The elevator statement is a brief explanation that can be described to someone within 2 minutes (in an "elevator / lift") that indicate the target customer, key benefits, and competitive advantage.

An agile project manager and the business sponsor were discussing the need for an iteration zero for the new project that was to be initiated. Which of the following is an activity commonly performed during this iteration?

• Hiring new team members for the project

• Conducting a spike

• Setting up a development environment

• Developing the product

Answer explanation

Correct. Iteration zero allows the tam to perform "critical start-up activities / setting up a development environment" within timeboxed period, before iteration one.