Focus Area Test: Agile Foundation Flashcards
- A software vendor has recently hired you to manage some of its key projects. During your orientation at the organization you were told that the organization has recently adopted Agile practices for project management. A chart was then shown to you where Agile and Kanban were shown as subset of Lean. What is your view on this?
Agile and Kanban are subsets of Lean because they are named instances of Lean thinking.
Explanation: Agile and Kanban are subsets of Lean because they are named instances of Lean thinking that share Lean concepts such as “focus on value”, “small batch sizes”, and “elimination of waste”. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 11]
- You have recently been hired by a major airport operator to head its project management office. The PMO has been following a waterfall-based project management approach consistently across all projects. You want to pilot Agile approaches on a couple of new projects and see how these approaches can benefit the organization. However, the team members are not experienced in the use of Agile approaches. What should you do first?
Train the team members in the fundamentals of the Agile Mindset and principles.
Explanation: Consider starting by training team members in the fundamentals of the Agile Mindset and principles. If the team decides to use a specific approach such as Scrum or Kanban, provide a workshop on that approach so that team members can learn how to use it. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 32]
- You have been assigned a new project. The project involves disruptive technologies. The project scope is not clear which has introduced a lot of risk into the project. You have requested to use Agile to manage this project. Why?
Agile techniques and approaches effectively manage disruptive technologies, scope changes and project risk.
Explanation: Agile techniques and approaches effectively manage disruptive technologies, scope changes and project risk. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 2]
- You are an Agile process analyst and are assigned to work for Anu who is leading a complex Student Services Design project for a university. Anu insists that the team create highly detailed project plans before commencing the work. What should you do?
Show Anu how you have had success in the past using Agile approaches and why they are better.
Explanation: The best thing to be done at this stage is help the project manager understand and realize the benefits of Agile approaches and why these are better than traditional approaches if there is a significant degree of change associated with the project work. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 7]
- When introducing Agile methods to an organization that has historically managed all its project using predictive life cycles, which of the following approaches is more likely to succeed?
Trying the new techniques on a less risky pilot project.
Explanation:
Trying the new techniques on a less risky project with a medium to low degree of uncertainty is advisable. The lower the risk, more the chances of success. You need some quick wins to help smooth transition to the new approaches. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 30]
- A project team is currently building a warehouse management system. Due to the complexity of the project and ambiguous requirements, the team decided to adopt an Agile management approach. If a higher rate of management process improvement is required by the project team, which of the following can help achieve this objective?
Frequent retrospection and selecting improvements.
Explanation: Deferring the development until the design is complete is a waterfall approach. Using a Kanban board can help managing the work but frequent retrospectives can really facilitate process improvement by allowing the team to brainstorm on what went well and what went wrong. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 32]
- You are responsible for designing and a new handheld gadget followed by a mass rollout to the market. The project has been requested as a result of your organization’s blue ocean strategy, and if successful, will creating a market for its own. However there is a high degree of uncertainty around the requirements which can only be uncovered through prototyping. Which of the following approaches is most likely to succeed?
Using a hybrid model; Agile approaches for the design phase followed by a predictive approach for the rollout.
Explanation: Since the product requirements are not known upfront and can only be discovered through a series of prototyping iterations, an Agile approach is suitable for the design phase. Once the product is developed, the mass rollout can be manage using a predictive life cycle. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 26]
- Your organization has been awarded a contract to develop and implement a new resource management system for a client based in Asia. Your development team is distributed across Europe. You are also planned to relocate the implementation team to the client location. What would be your biggest challenge in such a setup?
Efficient and effective communication.
Explanation:
The most efficient and effective method of communication is face-to-face conversation. When a project has a virtual team, the biggest challenge is ensuring efficient and effective communications. None of the other choices are more significant than this. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 9]
- You are responsible for deploying a new supply chain management system for a client organization. You need to analyze the client organization’s current processes and procedures, design future-state processes in consultation with the subject matter experts at the client organization, and customize the supply chain system to suit these processes. According to the contract, all prototypes presented to the client must accompany user instruction sets. Your team is objecting to this documentation requirements and insist in developing a user manual only at the very end of the project. What should you do?
Let the team know that producing the user instruction set with the released prototype is a contractual requirement
Explanation: Although according to the Agile Manifesto a working software is preferred over comprehensive documentation, that doesn’t not mean Agile approaches do not allow documentation. It is the project manager’s duty to conform to all contractual requirements and that needs to be communicated to the team. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 8]
- You have been hired by an organization to introduce Agile to its project management office. During one of your initial presentations to the team you have been asked a tough question: Is Agile an approach, a method, a practice, a technique, or a framework? What should be your response?
Any or all of these terms could apply depending on the situation.
Explanation: Agile can be viewed as an approach, a method, a practice, a technique, or a framework depending on the context of use. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 11]
- You and your team are executing the first Agile project in the organization. This is a special project for the organization as Agile is being piloted for the first time. You are nearing the end of the first iteration on the project and not all of the assigned user stories are complete. Can the team extend the iteration duration by a couple of days in order to complete all assigned stories in the iteration plan?
No; the iterations are time-boxed.
Explanation: Iteration durations are time-boxed and cannot be extended. All incomplete stories need to be returned to the product backlog where they will get re-prioritized along with the other stories in the backlog. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 25
- You are leading a massive knowledge work project. Some team members have complained they have to work overtime in order to complete some of the assigned work. What should you do to resolve this issue?
Establish a Kanban board and set WIP limits
Explanation: The problem is hand is unmanageable WIP. The solution is to limit the WIP based on team capacity. A Kanban board can be really helpful in setting this up. A Kanban board provides a means to visualize the flow of work, make impediments easily visible, and allow flow to be managed by adjusting the work in process limits. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 31]
- You have asked a publisher to print some Agile principles on posters. When the posters were delivered, you found out that some of them had incorrect Agile principles printed on them. Which of the following posters has an incorrect Agile principle printed on it?
“Plan conservatively and deliver aggressively”.
Explanation: “Plan conservatively and deliver aggressively” is not a valid Agile principle. The rest of the choices are all valid Agile principles. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 9]
- You are responsible for designing a new lessons learned management system for an organization. As a part of the project, you need to consult with a number of senior stakeholders and assess their needs and requirements. You then have to facilitate consensus on the system features, workflows, processes and procedures. Once the system is developed, it has to be rolled out across the organization and all employees have to be trained in effective use of the system. You have chosen to use a hybrid project life cycle. Which of the following life cycles should be adopted for the user training phase of the project?
Predictive
Explanation: Once the system is successfully designed and built, user training may be an extensive task but this can well be planned in advance. Predictive life cycle should be the most structured approach for this phase of the project. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 26]
- The project sponsor took over the leadership of your Agile project while you were away on a holiday. In your absence, the sponsor asked for a detailed project schedule and the team developed a detailed task-level, resource loaded Gantt chart. What should be your next step now?
Revoke the detailed schedule and explain your reasons to the sponsor.
Explanation: Agile projects are not plan driven and do not follow detailed plans as this compromises the team agility in responding to changes. You need to revoke the detailed schedule and explain the reason to the project sponsor. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 17]
