Certification Flashcards
What is one Guardrail on Lean Budget spend?
a) Investment horizons
b) Lean Portfolio Metrics
c) Customer participation in PI Planning
d) Centralized decision-making
Answer: a) Investment horizons
Which two areas are part of the SAFe Core Values? (Choose two)
a) Program execution
b) Responding to change over following a plan
c) Build-in questioning
d) Transparency
e) Working software over comprehensive documentation
Answer: a) Program execution and d) Transparency
What is this statement defining: “A series of activities that have proven to be effective in successfully implementing SAFe?
a) The Scaled Agile Framework
b) The SAFE Implementation Roadmap
c) SAFe’s CALMR approach to DevOps
d) A PI Planning agenda
Answer: b) The SAFE Implementation Roadmap
What is one key purpose of DevOps?
a) DevOps focuses on automating the delivery pipeline to reduce transaction cost
b) DevOps joins development and operations to enable continuous delivery
c) DevOps enables continuous release by building a scalable Continuous Delivery Pipeline
d) DevOps focuses on a set of practices applied to large systems
Answer: b) DevOps joins development and operations to enable continuous delivery
Who is responsible for managing the Portfolio Kanban?
a) Epic Owners
b) Lean Portfolio Management
c) System Team
d) Solution Management
Answer: a) Epic Owners
According to SAFe Principle #10, what should the Enterprise do when markets and customers demand change?
a) Create a Agile Release Train to focus on value
b) Reorganize the network around the new value flow
c) Create a reliable decision-making framework to empower employees and ensure a fast flow of value
d) Apply development cadence and synchronization to operate effectively and manage uncertainty
Answer: a) Create a Agile Release Train to focus on value
What is the primary focus of Lean Portfolio Management?
a) Establish lean budgets
b) Align Lean-Agile development with business strategy
c) Create enterprise strategy
d) Ensure program and portfolio execution
Answer: a) Establish lean budgets
Why is it important to decouple deployment from release?
a) To release only on a cadence
b) To enable deploying upon demand
c) To enable releasing upon demand
d) To deploy only on a cadence
Answer: c) To enable releasing upon demand
During the PI Planning event, when are planning adjustments communicated back to the Agile Release Train?
a) During the draft plan review
b) During the breakout sessions
c) At the beginning of day two
d) At the end of day one
Answer: c) At the beginning of day two
Who facilitates Solution Train events?
a) Release Train Engineer
b) Solution Management
c) Agile PMO
d) Solution Train Engineer
Answer: d) Solution Train Engineer
What is one tool used to focus on users in Design Thinking?
a) Role definitions
b) Indirect customer market analysis
c) Solution spaces
d) Story Maps
Answer: d) Story Maps
Where are Strategic Themes in the SAFe Big Picture?
a) Portfolio Level
b) Team Level
c) Program Level
d) Large Solution Level
Answer: a) Portfolio Level
How does SAFe recommend using a second operating system to deliver value?
a) Create teams to focus on innovation and growth and break down the existing organizational structures
b) Build a small entrepreneurial network focused on the Customer instead of the existing hierarchies
c) Organize the Enterprise around the flow of value while maintaining the hierarchies
d) Leverage Solution with economies of scale
Answer: a) Create teams to focus on innovation and growth and break down the existing organizational structures
A team has just adopted the SAFe Implementation Roadmap and is in the process of training executives, managers, and leaders. What is their next step?
a) Coach ART execution
b) Identify Value Stream and Agile Release Trains
c) Train teams and launch Agile Release Trains
d) Train Lean-Agile change agents
Answer: c) Train teams and launch Agile Release Trains
What statement is a value from the Agile Manifesto?
a) Individuals and interactions over contract negotiation
b) Individuals and interactions over tools and documentation
c) Individuals and interactions over teams and contracts
d) Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Answer: d) Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
At the end of PI Planning after dependencies are resolved and risks are addressed, a confidence vote is taken. What is the default method used to vote?
a) Planning estimates
b) Planning poker
c) Majority voting
d) Fist of five
Answer: d) Fist of five
What are the top two reasons for adopting in an organization? (Choose two)
a) Reduce changes
b) Enable changing priorities
c) Centralize decision-making
d) Reduce project cost
e) Accelerate product delivery
Answer: b) Enable changing priorities and e) Accelerate product delivery
What are the two ways to describe a cross-functional Agile Team?(Choose two)
a) They deliver value every six weeks
b) They can define, build and test a Feature or component
c) They release customer products to production continuously
d) They are optimized for communication and delivery of value
e) They are made up of members, each of who can define, develop, test, and deploy the system
Answer: b) They can define, build and test a Feature or component and
d) They are optimized for communication and delivery of value
Which two types of decision should remain centralized even in a decentralized decision-making environment (Choose two)
a) Decision that require local information
b) Decision that deliver large and broad economic benefits
c) Frequent decisions
d) Time-critical decisions
e) Decisions unlikely to change in the short term
Answers: b) Decision that deliver large and broad economic benefits and d) Time-critical decisions
Which core competency of the Lean Enterprise helps drive Built-in Quality practices?
a) Lean Portfolio Management
b) DevOps and Release on Demand
c) Business Solutions and Lean Systems Engineering
d) Team and Technical Agility
Answer: d) Team and Technical Agility
Which statement is a value from the Agile Manifesto?
a) Customer collaboration over ongoing internal conversation
b) Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
c) Customer collaboration over feature negotiation
d) Customer collaboration over a constant indefinite pace
Answer: b) Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
What is defined as the ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative solutions?
a) Organizational Agility
b) Team and Technical Agility
c) Business Agility
d) Lean Portfolio Management
Answer: c) Business Agility
The analyzing step of the Portfolio Kanban system has a new Epic with a completed Lean business case. What best describes the next step for the Epic?
a) It will be moved to the Portfolio Backlog if it receives a “go” decision from Lean Portfolio Management
b) It will remain in the analyzing step until one or more Agile Release Trains have the capacity to implement it
c) It will be implemented if it has the highest weighted shortest job first (WSJF) ranking
d) It will be implemented once the Lean business case is approved by the Epic Owner
Answer: a) It will be moved to the Portfolio Backlog if it receives a “go” decision from Lean Portfolio Management
If small batches go through the system faster with lower variability, then which statement is true about batch size?
a) Batch sizes cannot influence behavior
b) Good infrastructure enables large batches
c) Large batches can cause projects to miss targets
d) Low utilization increases variability
Answer: c) Large batches can cause projects to miss targets
Optimizing flow means identifying what?
a) Delays
b) Activities that lack innovation
c) Key performance indicators
d) Predictability issues of the train
Answer: a) Delays
What SAFe Principle includes working with purpose, mission, and minimum constraints?
a) Organize around value
b) Base Milestones on an objective evaluation of working systems
c) Build projects around motivated individuals
d) Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
Answer: d) Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
What is part of the role of the Scrum Master?
a) To escalate ART impediments
b) To prioritize the Team Backlog
c) To facilitate ART events
d) To coach the Agile Team
Answer: d) To coach the Agile Team
Why do Business Owners assign business value to team PI Objectives?
a) To ensure the teams do not work on architectural Enables
b) To provide guidance on the business value of the team objectives
c) To override the decisions made in WSJF
d) To determine the highest value using WSJF
Answer: b) To provide guidance on the business value of the team objectives
What are the three dimensions of Lean-Agile Leaderships? (Choose three)
a) Lead the change
b) SAFe Core Values
c) Lead by example
d) Support organizational change
e) Emotional intelligence
f) Mindset and principles
Answers: a) Lead the change and c) Lead by example and f) Mindset and principles
What is the SAFe House of Lean foundation?
a) Program Execution
b) Business Agility
c) Lean-Agile Leadership
d) Built-in Quality
Answer: c) Lean-Agile Leadership
What statement is true about program events?
a) Team events run inside the program events, and the program events create a closed-loop system
b) The Inspect and Adapt is the only program event required to create a closed-loop system
c) The daily stand-up is a program event that requires the scrum of scrums and Program Owner sync involvement in the closed-loop system
d) Program events run inside the team events, and the team events create a closed-loop system
Answer: a) Team events run inside the program events, and the program events create a closed-loop system
How does SAFe describe Customer Centricity?
a) As a strategy
b) As a priority
c) As a way of working
d) As a mindset
Answer: d) As a mindset
Which statement is true when continuously deploying using a DevOps model?
a) It increases the transaction costs
b) It removes the need to automate processes
c) It lessens the severity and frequency of release failures
d) It alleviates the reliance on the skill sets of Agile Teams
Answer: d) It alleviates the reliance on the skill sets of Agile Teams
How can trust be gained between the business and development?
a) Automate the delivery pipeline
b) Deliver predictability
c) Maintain iterations as a safe zone for the team
d) Release new value to production every day
Answer: c) Maintain iterations as a safe zone for the team
The program board shows which two items? (Choose two)
a) Epics
b) Risks
c) Features
d) Stories
e) Significant dependencies
Answers: c) Features and e) Significant dependencies
Which role serves as the servant leader for the Agile Release Train?
a) Business Owner
b) System Architect
c) Scrum Master
d) Release Train Engineer
Answer: c) Scrum Master
SAFe’s first Lean-Agile Principle includes “Deliver early and often” and what else?
a) Apply cadence
b) Decentralize decision-making
c) Deliver value incrementally
d) Apply systems thinking
Answer: c) Deliver value incrementally
What is one pillar of the SAFe House of Lean?
a) Quality
b) Innovation
c) Transparency
d) Agile
Answer: b) Innovation
When should new approaches be anchored in an organization’s culture?
a) When starting a SAFe implementation
b) Culture should not be changed because SAFe respects current culture
c) Culture change comes last as a results of changing work habits
d) Right after a sense of urgency is created in the organization
Answer: a) When starting a SAFe implementation
What is an example of applying cadence and synchronization in SAFe?
a) Creating cross-functional teams
b) Using a Portfolio Kanban system
c) Allocating budgets to Agile Release Trains
d) Conducting a PI Planning meeting
Answer: d) Conducting a PI Planning meeting
During which event are the team PI Objectives agreed upon?
a) Pre-PI Planning
b) PI System Demo
c) PI Planning
d) PI Management Review
Answer: c) PI Planning
What does the Continuous Delivery Pipeline enable?
a) Increased technical debt
b) Ongoing learning
c) Delivery of large batches
d) Continuous refactoring
Answer: b) Ongoing learning
During the final plan review, Program risks are addressed using ROAM. What do the letters in ROAM represent?
a) Owned, Mitigated, Resolved, Accepted
b) Owned, Mitigated, Active, Resolved
c) Resolved, Owned, Approved, Mitigated
d) Resolved, Assigned, Mitigated, Owned
Answer: c) Resolved, Owned, Approved, Mitigated
What is an attribute of an application built with DevOps in mind?
a) It includes mainly legacy code
b) It overlays measurements with events (deployments, releases)
c) It ensures manual deployment
d) It has a long manual testing processes
Answer: b) It overlays measurements with events (deployments, releases)
What is one way Lean-Agile leaders lead by example?
a) By applying empathic design and focusing on Customer Centricity
b) By mastering the Seven Core Competencies of the Lean Enterprise
c) By using the SAFe Implementation Roadmap to script the way for change
d) By modeling SAFe’s Lean Agile Mindset, values, principles, and practices
Answer: d) By modeling SAFe’s Lean Agile Mindset, values, principles, and practices
What is one issue when organizing around hierarchical functions?
a) It reduces political tensions
b) It is not how value flows
c) It moves the decision to where the information is
d) It creates Agile business teams
Answer: b) It is not how value flows
What is the impact of Customer Centricity?
a) To build small, systems just in time
b) To understand the Customer’s needs
c) To design custom-built Customer Solutions
d) To interpret market rhythms
Answer: b) To understand the Customer’s needs
Which statement is true about the Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration?
a) It is used as a weekly sync point between the Scrum Masters
b) The Scrum Master can decide if the IP Iteration is necessary
c) It is used annually when the team needs to refocus on work processes
d) Without the IP Iteration, there is a risk that the tyranny of the urgent” outweighs all innovation activities
Answer: d) Without the IP Iteration, there is a risk that the tyranny of the urgent” outweighs all innovation activities
Which statement is true about DevOps?
a) Lean-Agile principles are not necessary for a successful DevOps implementation
b) DevOps automation of testing reduces the holding cost
c) Measurements are not a top priority for DevOps
d) DevOps is an approach to bridge the gap between development and operations
Answer: d) DevOps is an approach to bridge the gap between development and operations
Which statement correctly describes one aspect of the team’s comment at the end of PI Planning?
a) A team commits to all the Features they put on the program board
b) A team commits to all the Stories they put on their PI plan
c) A team commits only to the PI Objectives with the highest business value
d) A team does not commit to uncommitted objectives
Answer: d) A team does not commit to uncommitted objectives
What is the basic building block when organizing around value?
a) Hierarchies
b) Individuals
c) Agile Teams
d) Agile Release Trains
Answer: c) Agile Teams
Which statement accurately characterizes Strategic Themes?
a) They are requirements that span Agile Release Trains but must fit within a single Program Increment
b) They are large initiatives managed in the Portfolio Kanban that require weighted shortest job first prioritization and a lightweight business case
c) They are business objectives that connect the SAFe portfolio to the Enterprise business strategy
d) They are a high-level summary of each program’s Vision and are updated after every PI
Answer: c) They are business objectives that connect the SAFe portfolio to the Enterprise business strategy
What is found on a program board?
a) Tasks
b) Epics
c) Features
d) User Stories
Answer: c) Features
What can be used as a template for putting SAFe into practice within an organization?
a) SAFe Implementation Roadmap
b) SAFe Core Values
c) SAFe House of Lean
d) SAFe Principles
Answer: a) SAFe Implementation Roadmap
Which two statements are true about uncommitted objectives? (Choose two)
a) The work to deliver the uncommitted objectives is not planned into the iterations during PI
b) Uncommitted objectives are extra things the team can do in case they have time
c) Uncommitted Objectives do not get assigned a planned business value score
d) Uncommitted objectives are not included in the teams commitment
e) Uncommitted objectives help improve predictability
Answer:
d) Uncommitted objectives are not included in the teams commitment
e) Uncommitted objectives help improve predictability
In the Program Kanban some steps have work in process (WIP) limits. Why is this necessary?
a) To ensure large queues are not being built
b) To enable multitasking
c) To keep time box goals
d) To help Continuous Deployment
Answer: d) To help Continuous Deployment
What is Business Agility?
a) How Lean-thinking people and Agile Teams optimize their business processes, evolve strategy with clear and decisive new commitments, and quickly adapt the organization as needed to capitalize on new opportunities.
b) The ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to mark changes and emerging opportunities with innovative business Solutions.
c) Applying Lean-Agile principles and practices to the specification, development, deployment, operation, and evolution of the world’s largest and most sophisticated systems.
d) A customer-centric approach to defining, building, and releasing a continuous flow of valuable products and services to customers and users
Answer: b) The ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to mark changes and emerging opportunities with innovative business Solutions.
The Agile Release Train uses which type of teams to get work done?
a) Management teams
b) Cross-functional teams
c) Phased-review-process teams
d) Solution teams
Answer: b) Cross-functional teams
What are the three primary keys to implementing flows? (Choose three)
a) Address the systemic problems
b) Reduce the batch sizes of work
c) Visualize and limit work in process (WIP)
d) Increase capacity
e) Frequent context switching
f) Manage queue lengths
Answer b) Reduce the batch sizes of work and c) Visualize and limit work in process (WIP) and f) Manage queue lengths
How does SAFe provide a second operating system that enables Business Agility?
a) By focusing on customers, products, innovation, and growth
b) By achieving economics of scale
c) By building up large departments and matrixed organizations to support rapid growth
d) By creating stability and hierarchy
Answer: a) By focusing on customers, products, innovation, and growth
Product Management has content authority over the Program Backlog. What do Product Owners have content authority over?
a) Portfolio Vision
b) Team Backlog
c) Value Streams
d) Portfolio Backlog
Answer: b) Team Backlog
If a program repeatedly show separate Feature branches rather than a true System Demo, which practice should be reviewed to address the issue?
a) Continuous Integration
b) Scrum of scrums
c) Roadmap creation
d) Test first
Answer: a) Continuous Integration
On day two of PI Planning, management presents adjustments based on the previous day’s management review and problem solving meeting. What is one possible type of adjustment they could make?
a) Create new User Stories
b) Adjust the length of the PI
c) Adjust business priorities
d) Change a team’s plan
Answer: c) Adjust business priorities
What is one benefit of unlocking the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers?
a) To centralize decision-making
b) To provide autonomy with purpose, mission, and minimum constraints
c) To lower work in process (WIP) limits
d) To strive to achieve a state of continuous flow
Answer: b) To provide autonomy with purpose, mission, and minimum constraints
What is the last step in Kotter’s approach to change management?
a) Consolidate gains and produce more wins
b) Generate short-term wins
c) Sustain and improve
d) Anchor new approaches in the culture
Answer: d) Anchor new approaches in the culture
Which of the core competencies of the Lean Enterprise helps align strategy and execution?
a) DevOps and Release on Demand
b) Team and Technical Agility
c) Lean Portfolio Management
d) Business Solutions and Lean Systems Engineering
Answer: c) Lean Portfolio Management
What is a minimum viable product?
a) A minimal Story a team can deliver in an Iteration
b) A minimal product that can be built to achieve market dominance
c) A minimal version of a new product used to test a hypothesis
d) A prototype that can be used to explore user needs
Answer: d) A prototype that can be used to explore user needs
What is an example of applying cadence-based synchronization in SAFe?
a) Teams decide their own Iteration length
b) Teams align their Iterations to the same schedule to support communication, coordination, and system integration
c) Teams meet twice every Program Increment (PI) to plan and schedule capacity
d) Teams allow batch sizes across multiple intervals
Answer: b) Teams align their Iterations to the same schedule to support communication, coordination, and system integration
What statement is a principle of the Agile Manifesto?
a) Measure everything
b) Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths
c) Simplicity “the art of maximizing the amount of work not done” is essential
d) Respect for people and culture
Answer: c) Simplicity “the art of maximizing the amount of work not done” is essential
Who has content authority to make decisions at the User Story level during Program Increment (PI) Planning?
a) Product Owner
b) Scrum Master
c) Agile Team
d) Release Train Engineer
Answer: a) Product Owner
What is the best measure of progress for complex system development?
a) Prioritized backlog
b) System Demo
c) Inspect and Adapt
d) Iteration Review
Answer: b) System Demo
What is used to capture the current state of the Portfolio and a primer to the future state?
a) Portfolio Canvas
b) Portfolio Backlog
c) Portfolio Kanban
d) Portfolio Vision
Answer: a) Portfolio Canvas
Which two quality practices apply to Agile teams? (Choose two)
a) Decentralized decision-making
b) Providing architectural runway
c) Establishing flow
d) Using nonfunctional requirements
e) Peer review and pairing
Answer: c) Establishing flow and e) Peer review and pairing
When basing decisions on economics, how are lead time, product cost, value, and development expense used?
a) To recover money already spent
b) To limit work in process (WIP) through the system
c) To take into account sunk costs
d) To identify different parameters of the economic framework
Answer: d) To identify different parameters of the economic framework
What are the last three steps of the SAFe Implementation Roadmap?
a) Launch trains, coach Agile Release Train execution, train executives and managers
b) Launch more Agile Release Trains and Value Streams, extend to the portfolio, accelerate
c) Train Lean-Agile change agents, extend to the portfolio, accelerate
d) Train Lean Agile change agents, identify Value Streams and Agile Release Trains, extend to the portfolio.
Answer: c) Train Lean-Agile change agents, extend to the portfolio, accelerate
Which statement is a value from the Agile Manifesto?
a) Respond to change
b) Limit work in process
c) Respect for people and culture
d) Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles.
Answer: a) Respond to change
The House of Lean is a classic metaphor describing the mindset essential for Lean thinking.
a) Respect for people and culture
b) Innovation
c) Relentless improvement
d) Flow
Answer: b) Innovation
How is the flow of Portfolio Epics managed?
a) In the Program Backlog
b) In the Portfolio Backlog
c) In the Portfolio Kanban
d) In the Program Kanban
Answer: c) In the Portfolio Kanban
Which statement fits with the SAFe Core Value of Built-in Quality?
a) Quality is not part of the SAFe Core Values
b) You cannot scale crappy code
c) Quality depends on the scale of the project and should be implemented from the top down
d) Quality should only be worked on during the Innovation and Planning Iterations
Answer: b) You cannot scale crappy code
What must management do for a successful Agile transformation?
a) Commit to quality and be the change agent in the system
b) Strive to think of adoption as an area they can control
c) Send someone to represent management, and then delegate tasks to these individuals
d) Change Scrum Masters in the team every two weeks
Answer: a) Commit to quality and be the change agent in the system
What can be used to script the change to SAFe?
a) The Implementation Roadmap
b) The Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) charter
c) The Program Kanban
d) The portfolio canvas
Answer: a) The Implementation Roadmap
What is one of the Agile Release Train sync meetings?
a) Iteration Retrospective
b) Solution Demo
c) Iteration Review
d) Scrum of scrum
Answer: d) Scrum of scrum
Design Thinking identifies at least four new ways to measure success. What are two of those ways? (Choose two)
a) Sustainability
b) Scalability
c) Marketability
d) Reliability
e) Desirability
Answer: a) Sustainability and e) Desirability
What is considered an anti-pattern when assigning business values to team PI Objectives?
a) Business Owners assign high values to important Enabler work
b) All PI Objectives are given a value of 10
c) Assigning business values to uncommitted objectives
d) Business Owners assigning the business value
Answer: b) All PI Objectives are given a value of 10
What is one Guardrail on Lean Budget spend?
a) Learning Milestones as objective measurements
b) Continuous Business Owner engagement
c) Spending caps for each Agile Release Train
d) Participatory budgeting
Answer: b) Continuous Business Owner engagement
What is one component of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline?
a) Continuous Cadence
b) Continuous Improvement
c) Continuous Exploration
d) Continuous Planning
Answer: c) Continuous Exploration
What is the foundation of the SAFe House of Lean?
a) Flow
b) Value
c) Leadership
d) Relentless improvement
Answer: c) Leadership
What is part of the role of Product Management?
a) To prioritize Enablers
b) To assign business value to Features
c) To prioritize the Program Backlog
d) To facilitate backlog refinement sessions
Answer: c) To prioritize the Program Backlog
What is the biggest benefit of decentralized decision-making?
a) Ensuring strategic decisions are not made in a vacuum
b) Creating better visualization
c) Removing accountability from leaders
d) Delivering value in the shortest sustainable lead time
Answer: d) Delivering value in the shortest sustainable lead time
Which is an aspect of systems thinking?
a) Cadence makes routine everything that can be routine
b) The length of the queue impacts the wait time
c) Optimizing a component does not optimize the system
d) Mastery drives intrinsic motivation
Answer: a) Cadence makes routine everything that can be routine
