Agile PM#1 Quiz

After successfully completing several one-week iterations, an agile team is in agreement that the weekly iteration retrospectives have not been productive as the team is already working very efficiently. The team members say that holding weekly retrospectives is not the best use of their time. What is the best course of action for the project leader?

• Advise the team that iteration retrospectives are a best practice and should always be adhered to

• Cancel the retrospectives for the remainder of the project and use the freed up time to deliver value

• Suggest having a monthly retrospective with the option to hold ad hoc retrospectives as needed

• Thank the team for their input and refer the issue to the project sponsor for review and approval

Just after the daily scrum, the project sponsor stops by the war room and introduces a new member of the organization whose role will be impacted by the project. Now that a new stakeholder has been identified, what should the agile leader do next?

• Seek to understand the stakeholder's feelings, emotions, beliefs, and values

• Perform stakeholder analysis by using a power/influence grid

• Monitor the stakeholder to ensure that they have the appropriate level of engagement

• Prioritize the stakeholder to determine the level of engagement needed going forward

Due to strong growth, a company with five agile teams has hired a new agile leader and development team, which have been assigned to their first agile project. The new development team members are struggling in dealing with the demeanor and attitudes of some of the key stakeholders as they continually introduce conflicting requirements. What might the new agile leader do to help navigate this complexity?

• Revise the charter to reflect the complexity related to the key stakeholders

• Prioritize the least controversial user stories in the project backlog

• Check with the other project leaders to see how they have dealt with the stakeholders

• Reduce the complexity of the project by decreasing the project scope

An agile team has to implement a new payroll system. The product owner is a payroll expert but is not familiar with agile planning. What advice should an agile coach offer to the product owner?

• Create an environment that facilitates face- to-face planning events involving relevant project stakeholders

• Generate a requirements document for the team to develop the product exactly per customer specifications

• Draft a project plan and send it to stakeholders for approval to ensure everybody are on the same page

• Develop a Gantt chart listing project deliverables to get necessary resources from the project sponsor

You are using an agile approach to manage a console game based on a new children's television show. The studio executives approved your high-level summary timeline based on the product vision. Your team is getting ready to produce an iteration plan. At the conclusion of that meeting, what are you likely to show to executives as a summary of the upcoming iteration plan?

• Product roadmap

• Task list

• Prioritized features

• User story

Which of the following is not true about iteration planning meetings?

• The recommendation is a high-level summary timeline of the release schedule based on the product roadmap and the vision for the product's evolution.

• The goal is to commit to working on prioritized product backlog items in the upcoming iteration.

• The task is to break down user stories into tasks, validating the time estimates for them are achievable based on team capacity.

• The outcome is an iteration backlog, as well as assumptions, concerns, risks, dependencies, decisions, and actions

During an iteration review, the customer requests a change to the product that will enable it to connect with and send/receive data to/from external systems rather than relying solely on user inputs. The change will significantly increase the project's complexity and add unknown risks related to interconnection with those external systems. What may help the team deal with this complexity?

• An increased iteration length

• Better customer collaboration

• A larger project team size

• Knowledge of system interactions

An agile team delivers the product to the customer several weeks earlier than initially planned. However, the customer is unpleasantly surprised by the outcome and indicates that the product does not meet their expectations. What might the agile leader have done differently to avoid or, at least, mitigate this situation?

• Included the customer as a member of the change control board (CCB)

• Assured better engagement with the customer during initial requirements gathering

• Performed value stream mapping during the iteration retrospectives

• Proactively ensured the customer's active participation in the iteration reviews

You are the product owner for a retail mobile shopping application developed using an agile approach. You have envisioned seasonal promotional content and new features based on user requests. At an upcoming user conference, your customers expect to learn what features have already been released and what is planned going forward. What should you present?

• The features being developed in the iteration plan

• The user stories included in the iteration plan

• The developer tasks that comprise the user stories

• The product roadmap of features in each iteration

As part of continuous improvement, the team members are looking for ways to optimize the process they use to conduct the work. At the iteration retrospective, an agile coach suggests using a lean production method, which would allow the team to analyze the process and identify and subsequently remove waste. How should the team implement the agile coach's suggestion?

• Apply value stream mapping

• Utilize Wideband Delphi technique

• Develop a prototype of the process

• Conduct what-if scenario analysis