MOC Exam 50Q 84% Agile 01->50 Flashcards
MOC PMP PREP
You are working through the backlog with the product owner and estimating the story cards with the development team. The team have never worked on a product like this before and are unsure if their estimates are accurate enough. What will you recommend they use?
* Affinity estimating, using actual effort from a similar feature on a different project.
* T-shirt sizing, using broad Small, Medium or Large sizes to accommodate variation.
* Three point estimating, where the team gives the average of an optimistic, pessimistic and most likely estimate.
* The product owner should estimate the story cards as they are getting the benefit of the delivered features.
While most estimation methods will do, the best one in this case is Affinity estimating, using a similar example from a previous project. Agile estimating is most often done by breaking down the features into small tasks, then estimating on those tasks (bottom-up). Where that doesn’t work, Affinity estimating will fill in the blanks.
Question 32: Incorrect Not Marked
You are checking in with the quality tester in your Agile team, and they advise you that there are a number of escaped defects in the most recently completed feature. What are they referring to?
* A feature that was not completed by the end of the iteration.
* Code that needs to be refactored before the next iteration can begin.
* Defects that have made it through testing and quality assurance.
* Team members who did not attend the daily stand-up this iteration.
Defects that make it through testing and into a release are called escaped defects. The cost and risk increases for defects the closer they are to a live environment, making these the most expensive type of defect to fix.
You are leading an Agile team that has members in various locations around the country. You have arranged daily stand-ups via phone, with electronic Kanban and backlogs, but the team is not able to meet face to face. What else will you do to increase the team working together and getting to know each other?
* Have a team board with their backgrounds and pictures.
* Swap roles throughout the team so each member gets a feel for what others do.
* Pair up team members to work on tasks, and rotate the pairs for each feature.
* Have a virtual lunch and learn where team members share something about themselves.
Pair programming is a common technique in Agile and can be used for most tasks. Pairing up team members on a task or iteration gives them the opportunity to talk and work with each other one-on-one
You are working with your Agile team to size the story cards and place them in upcoming iterations. You notice that the points allocated to story cards are getting bigger and bigger with each release. Why might this be happening?
A* The product owner keeps adding scope to the project
B* Technical debt is being built on from previous releases
C* Team members are not working their full allotted hours
D* Team members are working too hard and being burnt out
Agile accommodates for changing scope, and should find a regular rhythm of velocity, ruling out A and D. The best answer is technical debt, where code may be rushed to production without being simplified or refactored. With each subsequent release it creates more work to build on and work around disorganised code.
You are going over the velocity of your Agile team and notice it has increased over the last two iterations. What might be the reason for this?
* The productivity of one team member has increased.
* The team no longer tests each card because they already know it works.
* The team estimated the story cards more accurately.
* The product owner removed some features from the backlog of work.
Velocity and throughput are similar concepts. Typically velocity is the work completed by the entire team, however if the productivity of one team member increases that will have an affect on the whole team’s velocity.
You are an Agile project manager working with your Agile team and talking through the defects raised in the project so far. To get a more accurate view of effort per card, you ask the quality tester to begin tracking the defect cycle time. What will they report back on?
* How many defects were discovered in that iteration.
* How long it took to fix a defect from the time it was found to the time it was fixed.
* How many cycles it takes to raise a defect for the developers.
* The number of features in the backlog that have experienced defects.
Cycle time is the measure of time of a smaller increment, often a story card, from start to finish.
Therefore, defect cycle time is the measurement of how long it took to fix a single defect once it was discovered.
Agile approaches emphasise Servant Leadership to empower teams. Servant leadership is the practice of leading through service to the team, understanding and addressing the needs and development of the team members to enable the highest performance possible. Servant leaders approach project work in this order:
* Purpose, People, Process.
* People, Systems, Technology.
* Information, Reporting, Process.
* Plant, People, Machine.
The Servant Leader approaches work starting with the purpose or “why” behind the work, then works with growing and developing people, and finally ensures a solid process for making the work happen.
You have begun a new project in a new organisation, and the project team mentions you are working in an iterative project environment. How do you know you are working within an iterative project life cycle?
* The team iterates around one idea to make sure that idea is right.
* You are improving the product or result through successive prototypes or proofs of concept.
* The project sponsor says that the project lifecycle is iterative.
* You are using Agile sprints or iterations to manage your work.
An Iterative project lifecycle uses successive prototypes or proofs of concept to gather feedback, then **release the product in one go. **
Your team are about to proceed with the development of a new product for the organisation you work in. Depending on the product, stakeholders, risk appetite, need for value and more, the lifecycle or way of work will change. Which of the below represents an “Incremental” lifecycle approach?
- It provides unfinished deliverables that the customer can review for feedback.
- It provides value in one release after thorough risk, quality, schedule and scope planning.
- It provides multiple finished deliverables that the customer can use immediately.
- It provides a way for the team to do less with more, by releasing only a small feature.
An Incremental project lifecycle or way of work delivers small increments that a customer can use immediately, gain value from, and provide feedback on.
The project sponsor of your Agile team is quite familiar with Lean and Agile terms and methods. She has asked you for the average Cycle time and average Lead time for the project so far. What will you give her?
- The average time for team leave, and the average time for team attendance.
- The average time to complete stand-ups, and the average time to complete retrospectives.
- The average time to complete story cards, and the average time to complete features.
- The average team downtime, and the average time to complete releases.
Cycle time is the time for shorter tasks
– most often : story cards in an Agile environment. Those story cards make up a feature.
Lead time measures the time to complete a feature (multiple story cards) from beginning to end.
You are the Scrum Master and about to begin a new iteration in your Agile project. New features have been added to the backlog, and the team are unsure of which of those features to work on next. How will you guide the product owner and the team when analysing next priority?
- Analyse the value of each feature with the product owner, versus the effort and risk of each item with the Agile team.
- Focus on the shortest tasks first so you can deliver value quickly.
- Choose to deliver the entire project at the end so the project sponsor can see it all together.
- By asking the customers what they want delivered first.
Answer (A)
While value is typically determined by features that customers want,
** the priority is ultimately decided by the product owner, who represents the customer or the business** and constantly refines and prioritises the backlog of features. Just as important is developing high risk items, and considering the development effort versus the benefit.
You are working with your Agile team on your first iteration. The feature has been chosen by the product owner and the team breaks it down into user stories to work on.
What is a user story?
- A piece of functionality small enough to be completed in one to three days.
- A description of the feature from the viewpoint of the customer.
- A story about the end-user so the team understands the feature completely.
- A prioritised backlog that the team can choose features from.
A user story is the smallest unit of work in an Agile team – a task that can be completed in no more than three days.
!! If a task will take longer, it is common to try and break it into two or more pieces to accommodate the user story rule.
