Other Skills Flashcards
You are leading the development of a human resource portal that will be accessible to all employees in your organization. You want to collect feedback from over 500 employees regarding the recently released timesheet management functionality. Which of the following techniques is ideal in this situation and would allow you to quickly obtain the feedback?
Questionnaires
Virtual meetings
Interviews
Observation
Questionnaires
Questionnaires and surveys are written sets of questions designed to quickly accumulate information from a large number of respondents. The rest of the techniques will demand a lot of time to gather feedback from 500 employees. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 114]
Which of the following is a valid business analysis technique that is typically used to depict the relationships that exist between stakeholders and the solution?
Onion diagram
Carrot diagram
Ginger diagram
Potato diagram
Onion diagram
An onion diagram is a technique that can be used to model relationships between different aspects of a subject. This is a valid business analysis technique while the rest of the choices are not. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 121]
You are leading business analysis activities on a process automation project. In order to define the stakeholder engagement and communication approach, you need to understand the stakeholders needs and requirements. You can utilize several elicitation techniques to determine stakeholder engagement and communication approach EXCEPT:
Facilitated workshops
Brainstorming
Interviews
Persona analysis
Persona analysis
Persona analysis is a stakeholder analysis technique that can help you understand the stakeholders, their needs, and requirements better. However, this is not an elicitation technique. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, pages 125, 126]
You are leading a complex software development project. Due to the complexity of the project, stakeholders are not able to clearly articulate the product requirements. The team has decided to use Agile methods to manage this project. The team has selected a few epics for the first sprint and broken them down into smaller and more manageable stories. The management needs some visibility over the product development efforts. Which of the following tools should you use?
Burndown charts
Pareto charts
RACI charts
Fishbone diagram
Burndown charts
A burndown chart is a graphical representation used to count the remaining quantity of some trackable aspect of a project over time, such as user stories. The rest of the tools are not capable of showing progress over time. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 131]
You are leading the development of a new website for your organization. The project is currently in the eighteenth iteration and the project’s burndown chart shows that it will hit the x-axis by the end of the current sprint. What does that mean?
All product backlog items will be completed during the current sprint.
The project is about to go over the budget.
The product backlog hasn’t been groomed.
The project is behind schedule.
All product backlog items will be completed during the current sprint.
A burndown chart is a graphical representation used to count the remaining quantity of work over time. The burndown chart hitting the x-axis means all product backlog items will be completed during the current sprint. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 131]
You are managing a complex operating model transformation project. You want to subdivide the scope into smaller components so that these can be easily planned and managed. You plan to do this exercise in collaboration with other team members. This technique is known as:
Affinity estimating
Delphi
Decomposition
Bottom-up estimating
Decomposition
Decomposition is used to breakdown information described at a high level into a hierarchy of smaller, more discrete parts. The rest of the choices are estimation techniques and do not help in decomposition. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 132]
You are the lead business analyst on an operating model transformation project. You have conducted a detailed gap analysis by comparing the to-be process flows to the as-is process flows. As an outcome of this gap analysis you have uncovered some transition requirements. If your project is following an adaptive lifecycle how would you document these requirements?
Document them as transition user stories and add them to the product backlog.
Document them as transition user stories and add them to the sprint backlog.
Document them as change requests and add them to the sprint backlog.
Document them as change requests and add them to the product backlog.
Document them as transition user stories and add them to the product backlog.
Since these are transition requirements these should be documented as transition user stories and not change requests. Furthermore, these should be added to the product backlog from where they will be prioritized and allocated to a sprint backlog. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 140]
You collected and documented requirements for a product. The developers have just released the product for the project team to test and validate the product. You found out that the developers have missed a few critical requirements and the product is not ready to be shipped. What should you do next?
Conduct Delphi analysis
Initiate estimation poker
Conduct variance analysis
Groom the product backlog
Conduct variance analysis
The first thing you need to do is to conduct a detailed variance analysis to understand the root cause of the issue. Once the root cause is identified, appropriate corrective and preventive measures can be planned. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 150]
You have recently joined an organization. The organization’s business analysis and project management processes are not as mature as the organizations you have worked for in the past. You are coaching elicitation techniques to the young business analysts in the organization. Which of the following statements is INCORRECT?
Elicitation means collecting product information that stakeholders always have readily available.
Elicitation may also be performed iteratively with analysis to progressively elaborate information.
Elicitation is highly cyclical and is repeated multiple times.
When business analysis information is analyzed, the quantity of information sometimes decreases.
Elicitation means collecting product information that stakeholders always have readily available.
Elicitation is more than collecting or gathering product information. Stakeholders do not always have product information readily available with them. A business analyst has to work out ways to elicit product information from the stakeholders. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 154]
Which of the following is the Elicitation process of organizing and scheduling resources and preparing necessary materials for an individual elicitation activity?
Prepare for Elicitation
Determine Elicitation Approach
Conduct Elicitation
Confirm Elicitation Results
Prepare for Elicitation
Prepare for Elicitation is the process of organizing and scheduling resources and preparing necessary materials for an individual elicitation activity. This should not be confused with the Determine Elicitation Approach process which is the process of thinking through how elicitation activities will be conducted, which stakeholders will be involved, which techniques may be used, and the order in which the elicitation activities are best performed. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 159]
You are leading a workflow digitization process. Prior to conducting face-to-face stakeholder interviews, you decide to review any documentation readily available within existing document repositories, such as process maps and procedure reports, so that the total amount of elicitation time needed with the stakeholder can be reduced. Which elicitation technique are you considering?
Elicitation planning
Focus groups
Document analysis
Brainstorming
Document analysis
This is an example of document analysis which can be used to obtain information that is readily available within existing document repositories. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 162]
You have scheduled a stakeholder workshop with an aim to discover and understand detailed product requirements. Based on your experience with the stakeholders, you think that having a meeting agenda helps in providing a structure to the meeting. Preparing the agenda for the workshop is an example of:
Adopting Agile practices
Document analysis
Elicitation preparation material
Confirming elicitation results
Elicitation preparation material
Preparing the agenda for the elicitation event is an example of preparation of elicitation materials. This is neither an Agile practice nor document analysis. Confirming elicitation is irrelevant to the context of this question. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 163]
You are a junior business analyst on a team that is analyzing an organization’s operating model. You are currently working with a senior business analyst and helping her prepare for an upcoming elicitation activity. All of the following activities may be performed to prepare for an elicitation activity EXCEPT:
Setting the agenda
Determining the participants
Decomposing epics into smaller user stories
Identifying supporting materials
Decomposing epics into smaller user stories
Decomposing epics into smaller user stories is a task the development team needs to assist you with; this is not an elicitation activity. The rest of choices are all valid activities performed to prepare for an elicitation activity. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 161]
You are leading a new state-of-the-art product development project. In order to elicit product requirements, you plan to use collaborative games techniques with the stakeholders. If you want to focus on the features of the product that are important to the customer, which of the following collaborative games will you choose?
Product box
PERT
Speedboat
Spider web
Product box
Product box is an elicitation technique that uses game play to focus on the features of a product that are important to the customer. Speedboat method focuses on problematic features of the product. Spider web method focuses on relationships between the product being analyzed and other products. PERT is not a collaboration games technique. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 166]
You are conducting a business analysis training for a group of junior business analysts. A team member is confused about the difference between the speedboat and sailboat elicitation techniques. What would be your response?
Speedboat focuses on features that customers value, while sailboat focuses on product relationships with other products.
Speedboat focuses on negative influences, while sailboat focuses on positive influences.
Speedboat focuses on positive influences, while sailboat focuses on negative influences.
There is no difference between the two methods.
Speedboat focuses on negative influences, while sailboat focuses on positive influences.
The sailboat method is similar to the speedboat method but uses sails to encourage the recognition of positive influences rather than anchors to identify the negative ones. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 166]
