Leading SAFe 5.0 Flashcards

1
Q

What is meant by Lean-Agile principle “Take an economic view”

A
  1. Sequence for maximum benefit
    • Work on the highest value work that can be completed in the shortest time
  2. Ignore sunk costs
  3. Make economic choices continuously
    • Balance costs vs value delivered
  4. Empower local decision making
  5. If you quantify one thing, quantify the Cost of Delay
    • Why??
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2
Q

What values and principles make up the Continuous Learning Culture competency?

A

Encouraging individuals, and the Organization as a whole, to continually increase knowledge, competence, performance, and innovation.

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3
Q

What is the purpose of the Program Backlog?

A

It is a holding area for upcoming features that will address customer needs and deliver business benefits for a single ART

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4
Q

What should ARTs be designed around?

A
  • The Flow of Value
  • Synchronization is the key to value flow
  • Synchronization must be on a common cadence across all Agile teams
  • An ART has a SINGLE program backlog
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5
Q

What are the responsibilities of an Agile team?

A
  • Create and refine User Stories and acceptance criteria
  • Define, build, test, and deliver stories
  • Develop and commit to team PI objectives and Iteration plans
  • Typically 5-11 members
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6
Q

List the first 6 principles of the Agile Manifesto.

A
  1. Highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable solutions.
  2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s advantage.
  3. Deliver working solutions frequently.
  4. Business people and developers must work together on a daily basis.
  5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment they need and trust them to get the job done.
  6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a team is face-to-face conversation.
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7
Q

Lean-thinking people and Agile teams are supported by what 3 documents?

A
  1. House of Lean 2. SAFe Principles 3. Agile Manifesto
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8
Q

How can you live the Program Execution core value?

A
  1. Participate as an active business owner in PI execution 2. Celebrate high quality and predictably delivered PIs 3. Aggressively remove impediments and demotivators
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9
Q

What are PI Objectives and their purpose?

A
  • Objectives align the teams to the mission/vision of the Program
  • Objectives are business summaries of what each team intends to deliver in the PI
  • They often map directly to Features in the backlog
  • They are written in Business Langauge
  • They are defined by the team and flow up
  • They NEVER have just one or two words
  • They ALWAYS include nouns and verbs
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10
Q

Do you need to start with Essential SAFe before implementing other SAFe levels? Why or Why Not?

A

No. Any level of SAFe can be implemented. Most successful implementations, however, start with Essential SAFe as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

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11
Q

What are the 6 elements of the House of Lean?

A
  1. Leadership is the foundation 2. Flow is a pillar 3. Respect for people and culture is a pillar 4. Innovation is a pillar 5. Relentless Improvement is a pillar 6. Value is the roof. The foundation and pillars support the delivery of value.
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12
Q

What are the attibutes of Systems Thinking?

A

The solution and the enterprise are both affected by:

  1. Optimizing a component does not optimize the system
  2. For the system to behave well as a system, a higher-level understanding of behavior and architecture is required
  3. The value of a system passes through its interconnections
  4. A system can evolve no faster than the slowest point of integration
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13
Q

Why Story Points?

A
  • Humans are very poor at estimating absolute measures
  • We are hard-wired for comparative estimating
  • Points are abstract and which helps with the comparisons
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14
Q

What must a Program Backlog have to align everyone?

A

A clear Vision that:

  • Describes the future state of the product
  • How it will solve customer problems
  • The features
  • How it differentiates (not as useful for USI)
  • The NFRs that it delivers
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15
Q

What is meant by “Built-in Quality”?

A
  • Ensures that every increment of the solution reflects quality standards
  • Is required for high, sustainable development velocity
  • Many practices apply to every team
    • Establish flow
    • Peer review and pairing
    • Collective ownership and standards
    • Automation
    • Definition of done

YOU CAN’T SCALE CRAPPY CODE (OR HARDWARE, OR ANYTHING ELSE)

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16
Q

List the 2nd 6 principles of the Agile Mainifesto

A
  1. Working solutions is the primary measure of progress
  2. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely
  3. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility
  4. Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential
  5. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
  6. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
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17
Q

Why do Integration Points control product development?

A
  1. Integration points accelerate important learning through implementation of the PDAC cycle in each iteration.
  2. Development cannot proceed any faster than the slowest integration point.
  3. Improvement comes through synchronization of design loops and faster learning cycles.

Each level is an integration point – Team, ART, Value Stream or Enterprise

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18
Q

Business Agility requires ___________ and a business-level commitment to _________ and ________ ________ thinking.

A
  1. technical 2. product 3. value stream
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19
Q

What are the 3 dimensions of the Enterprise Solution Delivery competency?

A
  1. Lean systems and solution engineering 2. Coordinating Trains and Suppliers 3. Continually Evolve Live Systems
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20
Q

What are the 3 dimensions of the Organizational Agility competency?

A
  1. Lean-thinking people and Agile teams 2. Lean business operations 3. Strategy Agility
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21
Q

Why base Milestones on objective evaluation of working systems?

A

At each milestone we are eliminating options based on feedback/data. In order to get that feedback/data you must have a working system.

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22
Q

What is the goal of the Lean-Agile Leadership competency?

A

The goal is to drive and sustain organizational change and operational excellence by empowering individuals and teams to reach their highest potential.

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23
Q

An Innovation Culture has what attributes?

A
  1. Innovative people 2. Time and space 3. A Go See mindset 4. Experimentation & feedback mindset 5. Pivot without guilt or mercy 6. Innovation riptides
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24
Q

What 3 elements support the Strategy and investment funding dimension of Lean Portfolio Mgmt?

A
  1. Enterprise executives 2. Business Owners 3. Enterprise architects
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25
Q

Why is Customer Centricity a mindset?

A

Whenever a customer-centric Enterprise makes a decision, it fully considers the effect it will have on its end users.

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26
Q

What are NFRs?

A

Non-functional Requirements

  • Quality standards
  • Response times
  • Technology requirements (e.g. use Oracle DBs)
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27
Q

What are the responsibilities of the Product Owner

A
  1. Defines and accepts Stories
  2. Acts as the Customer for developer questions
  3. Works with Product Mgmt to plan PIs
  4. Be ready to roll up sleeves and write stories (epics, features, user)
  5. Support pushing decision making down
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28
Q

SAFe for Lean Enterprises is a knowledge base of proven, integrated principles, practices, and competencies for achieving __________ _______ by implementing ______, ______, and ________ at scaled

A
  1. Lean 2. Agile 3. DevOps
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29
Q

What are the 3 dimensions of the Continuous Learning Culture competency?

A
  1. A learning organization 2. Relentless improvement 3. Innovation culture
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30
Q

What is the fastest way to reduce “time to market”?

A

Reduce delays in the system

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31
Q

What are the 3 dimensions of Lean Portfolio Mgmt?

A
  1. Strategy and investment funding 2. Lean governance 3. Agile portfolio operations
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32
Q

Whare are the responsibilities of the Scrum Master?

A
  1. Coaches the agile teams and facilitates team meetings
  2. Removes impediments and protects the team from outside influence
  3. Attends Scrum of Scrum meetings
  4. Makes sure User Stories are done and have good acceptance criteria
  5. Makes sure the team doesn’t burn out
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33
Q

What is the Team and Technical Agility competency?

A

Describes the critical skills and Lean-Agile principles that high-performing Agile teams use to create high quality solutions for their customers.

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34
Q

What are the 4 things of value in the Agile Manifesto?

A
  1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools 2. Working solutions over comprehensive documentation 3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiations 4. Responding to change over following a plan
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35
Q

What are the 7 SAFe Core Competencies?

A
  1. Enterprise Solution Delivery 2. Agile Product Delivery 3. Team and Technical Agility 4. Lean Portfolio Mgmt 5. Organizational Agility 6. Continuous Learning Culture 7. Lean-Agile Leadership
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36
Q

What 3 elements support the Agile Portfolio Operations dimension of Lean Portfolio Mgmt?

A
  1. Agile PMO 2. LACE 3. RTE and SM CoP
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37
Q

Which individuals should be at PI Planning sessions?

A
  • Executives to set the program vision
    • Usually just a few slides
  • Product Mgmt
    • Defines the How of achieving the work
  • Agile Teams
  • Architects/engineering
    • What structural foundations are needed
    • What debt can we pay down
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38
Q

How many SAFe Core Values exist? Name them.

A

There are 4. 1. Alignment 2. Transparency 3. Built-in Quality 4. Program Execution.

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39
Q

What is the goal of the Organizational Agility competency?

A

Optimizing business processes and evolving strategy, and to quickly adapt to capitalize on new opportunities.

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40
Q

What is a Feature?

A
  1. They represent the work of the ART
  2. They have a Benefits Hypothesis
  3. They have Acceptance Criteria
  4. They include functional and nonfunctional requirements
  5. They fit within 1 PI
    1. 10 week Features are NOT the norm
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41
Q

How can you live the Alignment core value?

A
  1. Provide the relevant briefings and participate in PI Planning. 2. Help with backlog visibility. 3. Help with Value Stream organization and coordination. 4. Constantly check for understanding 5. Communicate the mission, visions, and strategy at every opportunity.
42
Q

What is a Benefit Hypothesis?

A

States, at a high level, the expected benefits to come from a Feature and includes the Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance Criteria should include both Leading and Lagging indicators

Example: Get into better Physical condition

  1. Lagging – After 3 months is my weight down?
  2. Leading – How many walks did I take today, the week, the month?

Try to find proxies for an indicator – especially important in non-profits

43
Q

How many principles support the Agile Manifesto?

A

12.

44
Q

What 3 elements support the Lean Governance dimension of Lean Portfolio Mgmt?

A
  1. Agile PMO 2. Enterprise architects 3. Business owners
45
Q

What are the roles on an ART?

A
  • RTE
  • Prod mgr/Prod Owner – one for each team
  • System Team
  • Sys Arch/Engr
  • Business owners (it can be hard sometimes to identify just 1)
    • They have final say
      • Especially important if there are several product owners
46
Q

What is the Continuous Delivery Pipeline?

A

It is composed of overlapping focus on Continuous Exploration, Continuous Integration, and Continuous Deployment.

47
Q

What are ideas around finding the optimal batch size?

A
  1. Finding the optimal batch size is a Utility function with Transaction and Holding costs.
    • Holding costs tend to be linear
    • Focus on reducing the Transaction Costs as greater efficiency and predictability are more easily achieved.
      • Also, as transactions costs go down, the holding costs also go down so it become as a self-reinforcing system.

Example,

  • Making 1 BMW car is very expensive transaction cost but I send it out the door immediately so no holding costs
  • Making 100 per batch
    • Lowers the transaction costs but my holding costs go up
    • Total cost, however, is lower than making 1 at a time.
48
Q

What are some ways to support Innovation?

A
  1. Give people time and space to learn and grow 2. Do GEMBA walks 3. Pivot without mercy!
49
Q

How can you live the Built-in Quality core value?

A
  1. Demonstrate quality by refusing to accept or ship low-quality work 2. Support investments in capacity planning for maintenance and reduction of technical debt. 3. Ensure UX, architecture, operations, security, compliance, and others are part of the flow of work. ** If necessary, modify the definition of DONE to maintain quality **
50
Q

What are some ways to Lead by Example?

A
  1. Use decentralized decision-making 2. Emotional intelligence 3. Grow others
51
Q

What are some techniques to help understand the customer?

A
  1. Create Personas that depict important groups of stakeholders to convey the problems they’re facing in their context and key triggers. Should capture rich, concise information that inspire without unnecessary details
  2. Create Empathy Maps to help develop deep, shared understanding and empathy for the customer in order to better design experiences and Value Streams
  3. Create Customer Journey maps. Similar to process maps but specific to a stakeholder and the stages they go through in needing a service or buying a product.
  4. Create Story Maps
52
Q

How do you apply fast learning cycles to support the Lean-Agile Principle of “Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles”

A
  1. Apply fast learning cycles
  2. Plan, Do, Check, Adjust (PDCA)
  3. Decrease the time between action and effect
  4. Reduce the cost of risk-taking by truncating unsuccessful paths quickly.
  5. Focus on small batch sizes to limit cost
53
Q

List the 2nd 5 Lean-Agile Principles.

A
  1. Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths
  2. Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning
  3. Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
  4. Decentralize decision-making
  5. Organize around value
54
Q

What is the goal of the House of Lean?

A

The goal is to achieve the shortest sustainable lead time with: 1. The best quality and value to people and society 2. High morale, safety, and customer delight.

55
Q

Why Customer Centricity?

A

Customer-centric Enterprises deliver whole-product solutions that are designed with a deep understanding of Customer needs.

56
Q

List the first 5 Lean-Agile principles.

A
  1. Take an economic view
  2. Apply systems thinking
  3. Assume variability, preserve options
  4. Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
  5. Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems
57
Q

What is the purpose of the Lean Portfolio Mgmt competency?

A

The goal is to align strategy and execution by applying Lean- and systems-thinking approaches to investment funding Agile portfolio operations and governance.

58
Q

What are the 3 dimensions for Agile Product Delivery?

A
  1. Customer centricity 2. Develop on cadence and release on demand 3. DevOps and the Continuous Delivery Pipeline.
59
Q

How many SAFe Core Competencies exist?

A

7

60
Q

How can you live the Transparency core value?

A
  1. Visualize all relevant work 2. Take ownership and responsibilities for errors and mistakes 3. Admit your own mistakes 4. Support others who acknowledge and learn from their mistakes - never punish the messenger
61
Q

What does the Agile Product Delivery competency cover?

A

Using a customer-centric approach to defining, building, and releasing a continuous flow of valuable products and services to customers and users

62
Q

Why does reducing batch size leading to higher predicitability?

A

Large batch sizes lead to higher variability due to lots of unknowns in the large batch.

63
Q

What are the 3 dimensions of Lean-Agile Leadership?

A
  1. Mindset & Principles 2. Leading by Example 3. Leading Change.
64
Q

How many SAFe Lean-Agile Principles exist?

A

10.

65
Q

What is one way to Assume Variability and Preserve Optoins?

A

Use a Set-based approach

Set-based keeps options open until the latest possible point.

Need demo each solution option to customers to get feedback.

66
Q

Does Release on Demand mean release to the customer?

A

No, it could be an internal release to another team (e.g. completing tech architecture releases to internal teams to build on it)

67
Q

Describe the Enterprise Solution Delivery competency.

A

Applies Lean-Agile principles and practices to specification, development, deployment, operation, and evolution of solutions.

68
Q

What is an Uncommitted PI Objective?

A
  • It is an objective that the team has low confidence in achieving in the PI
  • They are often Spikes
  • They DO count in velocity/capacity measures
  • They are often considered stretch objectives
69
Q

What are the 3 dimensions for Team and Technical Agility competency?

A
  1. Agile teams 2. Built-in quality 3. Teams of Agile Teams (ART)
70
Q

Who sets the agenda and the objectives of the PI Planning?

A

The RTE

71
Q

What is the role of the Executive/sponsor during the PI Planning?

A
  • Set/reset the vision and the mission for the product
  • Set the overall goal and timeline
  • Set the objectives for this PI
  • Establish the reasoning for this PI
  • Set the time focus to the next 1 to 1-1/2 PIs (10-15 weeks)
72
Q

What is the role of the Program Mgr in the PI planning session?

A
  • Set the specifics of the vision
    • Really list the Epics
  • Set the timeline
  • List the prioritized features
    • The Prod Mgr must do their homework
73
Q

What is the role of the System Architect in PI planning?

A
  • Lists the technical requirements
  • If appropriate supplies a system model diagram
  • Lists the NFRs
    • Security
    • Performance
    • etc
  • States which platforms, if appropriate, will be used
  • Sets the integration strategy
74
Q

What does it mean if a “risk” card lives fully in the Risk lane?

A

This card represents a risk

75
Q

What does it mean if a “risk” card is in the lanes that hold User Stories?

A

This means it is a dependency

76
Q

Is WSJF the same as Business Value?

A

No. BV is assigned to Program Objectives during the PI Planning.

77
Q

When a Business Value (BV) score is assigned is it for the whole solution or just the feature?

A

It is assigned to the whole solution. The goal is to show the teams where they should be focusing their efforts.

78
Q

If a Program Objective has a lot of “Ands” in it, what is the implication.

A

This usually means that a Program Objective can be further broken down to better assess value.

79
Q

Is it possible for an Uncommitted Program Objective to have a higher BV than one the Committed section?

A

Yes. If this occurs, then a conversation needs to happen with the team and the Program Mgr/Business Owner about the situation. After the conversation, it is possible for the higher BV objective to remain in the Uncommitted section.

80
Q

What is the goal of assigning BV to PI Objectives? Who assigns the business value?

What’s the maximum BV assigned to a PI Objective?

A

The goal is to show the Agile teams where they should be focusing their value.

The Business Owner assigns the BV

  1. The scale is 1 to 10.
81
Q

In flow based systems, what is “key” to improving economic outcomes?

A

The key is job sequencing (aka prioritizing)

82
Q

In Lean economics (taking an economic view), what two things do we need to know?

A
  1. The Cost of Delay (CoD) in delivering value
  2. What is the cost (effort) to implement
83
Q

When taking an economic view, if you only quantify one thing, what should you quantify?

A

Quantify the Cost of Delay (CoD)

84
Q

What are the three components of Cost of Delay (CoD)?

A
  1. User-Business Value (relative value to the customer)
  2. Time Criticality (how does BV decay over time)
  3. Risk Reduction & Opportunity Enhancement (RR & OE)
85
Q

How do you calculate WSJF?

A

WSJF = CoD / Job Duration

86
Q

When related to risk, what does R.O.A.M. stand for?

A
  • R - Resolved
    • No longer a concern
  • O - Owned
    • Someone has taken responsibility
      • They need to take this away and bring it back when solved
  • A - Accepted
    • Nothing more can be done. If the risk occurs, then we deal with it
  • M - Mitigated
    • Team has a plan to adjust as necessary
87
Q

List the benefits of PI Planning?

A
  • Establishes face-to-face communication across all teams
  • Aligns development to business goals
  • Identifies dependencies
  • Provides the opportunity for “just the right amount” of UX and architecture
  • Match demand to capacity
  • Fast decision making
88
Q

List the Program-level events.

A
  1. PI Planning
  2. Scrum of Scrums
  3. PO Sync
  4. System Demo
  5. Prepare for PI Planning
  6. Inspect & Adapt

2 & 3 for the RTE Sync

89
Q

What are the steps in calculating Iteration Capacity for new teams?

A
  1. For every Full-time team member, give them 8 points
  2. Subtract 1 point for every holiday or vacation day
  3. Find a small Story that take about 1/2 a day to develop and 1/2 a day to test, set that to be 1 point.
  4. Estimate every other story relative to that one.
90
Q

What is the Scrum of Scrums event? How often do they meet and for how long?

A

All the Scrum Masters meet to give status and answer questions from the RTE. Ultimately need to resolve dependencies between teams.

Generally meets weekly from 30-60 minutes

91
Q

What is the PO sync and who generally attends? Who often do they meet?

A

The PO Sync is primarily made up of Product Owners although SMEs and other stakeholders like Engineering can attend.

They generally meet weekly for 30-60 minutes and usually has a facilitator to keep meeting on track

92
Q

Who must attend the System Demos?

A

Business Owners must attend this Program event.

93
Q

List some of the goals of the Innovation and Planning (IP) event

A
  • Builds some buffer
  • Insures there is time to do the PI planning
  • Opportunity to learn and innovate
  • Keeps the “engine” from burning out
  • Gives time to do the Inspect & Adapt work
  • Opportunity to pay down technical debt
94
Q

What are the three parts of the I&A?

A

Inspect & Adapt (I&A) has three components:

  • The System Demo
  • Perform Qualitative and Quantitative measuring of the current PI
  • Run a Problem-solving Workshop
95
Q

What is the Problem-solving workshop?

A

It’s a structured problem-solving method that consist of:

  1. Agree on the problem
  2. Apply Root Cause Analysis (usually 5 Whys)
  3. Identify the biggest root cause using Pareto analysis
  4. Restate the new problem for the biggest root cause
  5. Brainstorm solutions
  6. Identify improvement backlog items

FOLLOW THIS ORDER AND DO NOT SKIP STEPS

96
Q

What is teh CALMR approach to DevOps?

A
  • C - Culture of shared responsibility between Dev and Ops
  • A - Automation to automate the Continuous Delivery Pipeline
  • L - Lean Flow keeps batch sizes small, limits WIP, and provides visibility
  • M - Measurement of the flow through the pipeline
  • R - Recovery by architecting and enabling low-risk releases and look to establish fast recovery options.
97
Q

What three components constitue Lean Portfolio Management (LPM)?

A
  1. Strategy and investment funding
  2. Agile portfolio operations
  3. Lean governance
98
Q

In LPM, Strategy and Investment Funding refers to what three things?

A
  • Key stakeholders collaborating to create the portfolio strategy
  • Provide the lean budgeting and funding to Value Streams
  • Build the Portfolio Kanban to establish flow
99
Q

Why should there be Strategic Themes?

A
  • Differentiate between current and desired future state
  • Fosters collaboration between the LPM and the larger organization
  • Connects to business drivers
  • Lets the portfolio context influence the strategic themes
100
Q
A