Agile Risks, Problems and Resolutions Flashcards
Fill in the blanks:
According to the PMI Risk is defined as “an __________ event or condition that if it occurs, has a __________ or ___________ effect on a project’s objectives.
Uncertain
Positive
Negative
The dual nature of risk means that there are negative risks, or _________ and positive risks or ____________.
Threats
Opportunities
True or false: Risks happen in the moment and can be foreseen.
False. Risks happen in the future and can be foreseen or unforeseen.
The three characteristics of risk that follow the acronym PIE are:
P: Probability (likelihood to occur)
I: Impact (the effect on the project if it occurs)
E: Event the identification of the risk.
Define uncertainty.
Something that nobody can predict or guarantee.
What is the PMI’s definition of a project?
A Project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. It is inherently more risk than day to day work.
True or False:
Uncertainty and Information are inversely related.
True. As information increases, uncertainty decreases.
According to the authors Marco and Delister, the five core risks common to most projects are:
- Intrinsic schedule flaw (estimates that are wrong/not feasible)
- Specification Breakdown (failure to achieve consensus on what to build).
- Scope Creep
- Personnel Loss
- Productivity Variation (difference between planned and actual results)
True or False:
Agile organically addresses risk of intrinsic schedule flaw through short iterations, incremental delivery and relative sizing.
True.
True or False:
Agile organically addresses the risk of specification breakdown by stakeholder collaboration and detailed lists of requirements.
False: It addresses the risk of specification breakdown through customer collaboration and prioritized user stories.
Fill in the blanks:
Agile organically addresses the risk of scope creep by ________________ and ________________ planning events and product centric testing and product demoing.
Release
Iteration
Fill in the blanks:
Agile organically addresses the risk of personnel loss by using ___________ _______________ teams, ____________ ________________________________, and ___________ ________________.
Engaged, self-organized
Collective Ownership
Sustainable pace.
True or False:
Agile organically addresses the risk of productivity variation by using process-centric events like retrospectives, daily stand-ups, team velocity, and burn-up and burn-down charts.
True.
How does agile planning help to identify risk?
All stages (Product Vision, Product Roadmap, Release Planning, Iteration Planning and Stand-up Meeting) provide a line of site to the objectives, help to prioritize requirements and discuss potential and realized risks.
True or False:
Iteration 0 happens after planning the first iteration to address risks that impact or impede an agile project.
False. Iteration 0 happens before planning the first iteration.
Fill in the blanks:
Common Iteration 0 activities include _________ __________, __________ _________ set up, ___________, ________ _________ , _________ _________ and any training.
Product Vision
Environmental set up
Team Set-up
Investigations
Agile Practice
What is Iteration H?
Iteration H is called the hardening iteration, and it is employed as a risk mitigation to stabilize and solidify the final shippable product.
True or False:
Common iteration H activities may include:
Final Integration tests
Load testing
Fixes
Environment setup
Rollout activities
Documentation
Training
True.
A spike in Agile is a time-boxed research activity used to explore and gather information about a specific issue or uncertainty in the project. True or False?
True
The outcome of a spike should always be a working product increment. True or False?
False (The outcome of a spike is typically knowledge or understanding, not a working product increment.)
When is a spike performed?
During set up or “iteration 0”, or during the project.
The two common types of spikes are _________ __________ and ________ ________.
Architectural spike (e.g., proof of concept)
Risk-based (e.g., proof of technology).
What is the primary purpose of an MVP in Agile?
A) To create a fully functional product
B) To release a product as quickly as possible with minimal features to gather user feedback
C) To ensure the product has all the features needed for final release
D) To test the product’s marketing strategy
B
Which of the following is NOT typically included in an MVP?
A) Basic core functionality
B) User feedback collection
C) All possible features planned for the final version
D) Early adopter engagement
C
What is the definition of a risk-adjusted backlog?
The practice of adding risk activities (i.e., responses) to a team backlog items (i.e. stories)
How are problems identified and solved in agile projects?
Agile projects use daily stand-up meetings, iteration reviews, and retrospectives to identify and solve problems.
The benefits of engaging an Agile team in problem solving are:
A) Promoting consensus, modeling desired agile values and behaviors, generating practical solutions, and increasing knowledge base
B) Reducing the need for feedback and collaboration
C) Focusing only on individual contributions rather than team input
D) Ensuring that all decisions are made by the project manager
A
Describe the Impediments list technique.
An impediments list if a type of problem solving that engages the team to idenitfy impediments at daily stand-up meetings and to track the resolution and actions.
In Agile, defect identification refers to the process of:
A) Detecting and addressing issues in the product as early as possible through continuous testing, feedback, and collaboration.
B) Waiting until the end of the project to find and fix defects
C) Focusing solely on functionality without considering usability or design
D) Ignoring defects until they become critical problems
A) Detecting and addressing issues in the product as early as possible through continuous testing, feedback, and collaboration.
An escaped defect in Agile refers to a bug or issue that was not identified during the development or testing phases and is discovered only after the product is released. True or False?
True
An escaped defect is typically identified [Fill in the blank] the product has been released to customers or end-users.
after
True or False:
The analysis of escaped defects can help to improve internal processes to reduce the number of future escaped defects.
True
Technical debt in Agile refers to the practice of taking shortcuts in development to meet deadlines, which may lead to the need for future refactoring or fixing. True or False?
True
Technical debt should always be ignored in Agile projects to speed up delivery. True or False?
False (Technical debt should be managed carefully to avoid long-term issues and maintain code quality.)
What is overt risk management?
Overt risk management is the explicit (or overt) use of traditional project management techniques to identify and manage risks. This differs from the organic form of risk management in Agile projects.
A project pre-mortem is a practice in which the team imagines the project has failed and works backward to identify potential risks and issues. This helps in [Fill in the blank] before the project begins.
proactively addressing possible problems
The primary goal of a project pre-mortem is to:
A) Celebrate the success of the project
B) Identify and plan for potential risks and obstacles before the project starts
C) Assign blame for past mistakes
D) Set up a project management framework for the team
B) Identify and plan for potential risks and obstacles before the project starts
The four steps in a project pre-mortem are:
Imagine Failure
Generate Failure Reasons.
Consolidate List
Revisit the Plan
The common failure modes are:
Mistakes, uncertainty/fear, reinventing the wheel, habits, inconsistency.
The common success modes are:
Observing/reviewing
Learning/Innovating
Being Malleable
Pride in our work
Agile projects prioritize regulatory work over regular development work by adding additional regulatory deliverables such as:
A) Compliance documentation, requirements traceability, Quality Procedures, Covered testing, and tools
B) Simplified code refactoring and feature enhancements
C) Increased sprint durations and extended deadlines
D) Reduced collaboration and stakeholder engagement
A) Compliance documentation, requirements traceability, Quality Procedures, Covered testing, and tools
Variance analysis is used to [fill in the blank] versus actual project risk. Variance measures [fill in the blank] or how much they vary from each other.
proactively deal with expected
how far things are apart
A trend analysis is a visual analysis that:
A. Tries to predict the future based on past data.
B. Provides insights into future issues before they occur.
C. Serves as a strong tool for proactive problem detection.
D. All of the above.
D. All of the above.
What are control limits and what are they used for?
Control limits use upper and lower limits to illustrate the acceptable variations in a process and are most commonly used to measure velocity stability.
What is risk severity?
Risk severity is the Risk probability x Risk impact
