Value Driven Delivery

Question 1

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What are the four elements of the agile value proposition?

Answer 1

• Earlier delivery of business value
• Earlier reduction of risk
• Increased visibility (stakeholder engagement) throughout the project
• Increased adaptability throughout the project

Question 2

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What are two key reasons why agile focuses on delivering value as early as possible in the project?

Answer 2

The longer a project runs, the longer the horizon becomes for risks that can reduce value such as failure, decreased benefits, and erosion of opportunities.
By delivering high-value elements early, the team demonstrates an understanding of the stakeholders’ needs, shows that they recognize the most important aspects of the project, and proves they can deliver.

Question 3

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Define “return on investment” (ROl).

Answer 3

The ratio of the benefits received from an investment to the money invested in it, expressed as a percentage

Question 4

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Define “net present value” (NPV).

Answer 4

The present value of a revenue stream (income minus costs) over a series of time periods

Question 5

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Define “internal rate of return” (IRR).

What are some other terms that might be used in referring to a project’s IRR?

Answer 5

The discount rate at which the project inflows (revenues) and project outflows (costs) are equal
Rate of return, discount rate

[Discount rate: The interest rate you need to earn on a given amount of money today to end up with a given amount of money in the future]

Question 6

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is an S-curve?

What is earned value management (EVM)?

Answer 6

A graph that tracks costs or some other variable against time.

An approach that uses a comprehensive set of project metrics that compare actual cost and schedule performance to planned performance.

EVM metrics include planned value (PV), earned value (EV), schedule variance (SV), cost variance (CV), schedule performance index (SPI), and cost performance index (CPI).

Question 7

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Explain two advantages of using EVM on agile projects.

Answer 7

EVM metrics are leading indicators, which allow us to look forward and change our approach if necessary.

EVM graphs are visual representations that engage the right side of our brain, helping us intuitively understand and interpret the data so we can plan an appropriate response.

Question 8

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Explain two cautions for using EVM on agile projects.

Answer 8

Earned value compares actual project performance to planned performance, but in agile’s adaptive planning process, the initial plan is recognized as inaccurate since it is made when we know the least about the project.

Earned value doesn’t truly indicate whether the project is successfully delivering value.

We could be on time and on budget, but building a low-quality product that the customer doesn’t like or need.

Question 9

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

List four examples of agile key performance indicators (KPIs).

Answer 9

• Rate of progress
• Remaining work
• Likely completion date
• Likely costs remaining

Question 10

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is the relationship between value and risk?

Answer 10

Risk is anti-value, since risk events have the potential to erode, remove, or reduce value if they occur.

Question 11

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Explain what is meant by “customer-valued prioritization.

Answer 11

Prioritizing work items based on the customer’s view of what is most important, and working on the items that will yield the highest value to the customer first

Question 12

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

List six prioritization schemes used by agile teams other than simple prioritization.

Answer 12

• MoSCoW
• Monopoly money
• 100-point method
• Dot voting
• Kano analvsis
• Requirements prioritization model

Question 13

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is MoSCoW?

Answer 13

A prioritization method named after the first letters of the four categories that it uses:
• “Must have”
• “Should have”
• “Could have”
• “Would like to have, but not this time”

Question 14

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is dot voting (also called multi-voting)?

Answer 14

A prioritization method in which everyone gets a number of dots (or some other voting token) to distribute as they wish among the available options

Question 15

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is Kano analysis and how is it used for prioritization?

Answer 15

A technique used to classify customer preferences into four categories, usually called Delighters/Exciters, Satisfiers, Dissatisfiers, and Indifferent.

These categories can be useful in setting priorities for product features since they help stakeholders understand how to increase customer satisfaction.

Question 16

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What does “relative prioritization/ranking” mean?

Answer 16

Listing the product features in order of their relative priority to the customer.

Question 17

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Explain what is meant by “incremental delivery.”

Answer 17

Regularly delivering working increments of the product into production or a test environment over the course of the project

Question 18

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Define the term “minimal viable product.”

Answer 18

The minimum package of functionality that is complete enough to be useful to end users or the market, but smaller than the entire project

Question 19

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Explain two disadvantages of using sophisticated project scheduling software on an agile project.

Answer 19

When we use high-tech tools on an agile project, there are two problems that arise:
• Data accuracy perception increases
• Barriers for stakeholder interaction are created

Question 20

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Why do co-located agile teams prefer to use low-tech, high-touch tools?

Answer 20

• Allow more people to manipulate and update the tools
• Avoid tool-related perception of data accuracy
• Reduce the learning curve for using the tools
• Engage all team members
• Promote communication and collaboration
• Make it easy to grasp the status of the work at a glance

Question 21

Value-Driven Delivery | Question
What is a Kanban or task board, and how is it used?

Answer 21

A whiteboard with columns for the various stages of the work process from left to right-for example, “To Do” to “In Progress” to “Done.” The tasks being worked on are represented by sticky notes that team members move through the columns to show their progress.

Question 22

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What does “WIP” stand for?
Explain what this means.

Answer 22

“Work in progress” or “work in process”. Work that has been started but has not vet been completed

Question 23

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What problems are associated with high levels of WIP?

Answer 23

• WIP consumes investment capital but delivers no return to the customer.
• WIP hides bottlenecks that slow workflow or throughput and mask efficiency issues.
• WIP presents the risk of potential rework or scrap.

Question 24

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

How do agile teams ensure that their WIP does not become excessive?

Answer 24

On their Kanban or task board, they set a limit on the amount of work that can be in each stage of the process at a particular time. These are WIP limits.

Question 25

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is a cumulative flow diagram (CFD)?

Answer 25

A stacked area graph of the features that are in progress, remaining, or completed over time

Question 26

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

How can we identify a bottleneck on a CFD?

Answer 26

Look for an activity band that is expanding (widening); this is the activity that is feeding the bottleneck. The bottleneck is the activity that lies below that band.

Question 27

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Do the contractors for an agile project need to understand agile methods like the team members do?

Answer 27

They might have to, but it depends on their role in the project. In educating vendors we need to consider the cost-benefit trade-off.

Question 28

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is emphasized in agile contracting?

Answer 28

Close cooperation between the project team and the customer to focus their efforts on delivering value-adding features.

Customer involvement to provide feedback on iteration deliverables, reprioritize the backlog, and rank the value of changes against the remaining work items.

Question 29

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

List five options for structuring an agile contract.

Answer 29

• DSDM contract
• Money for nothing and change for free
• Graduated fixed-price contract
• Fixed-price work packages
• Customized contracts

Question 30

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is the gulf of evaluation?

Answer 30

The communication gap between what the customer described and what the team heard or interpreted

Question 31

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What are some of the cycles of frequent validation and verification on a typical agile software project?

Answer 31

• Pair programming (seconds)
• Unit testing (minutes)
• Customer collaboration (hours)
• Stand-up meetings (daily)
• Acceptance tests (days)
• Customer demos (weeks)
• Releases (months)

Question 32

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is exploratory testing?
What is usability testing?

Answer 32

Exploratory testing relies on the tester’s autonomy, skill, and creativity to discover issues and unexpected behavior that can’t be found with scripted tests, such as edge cases, system boundaries, and other unanticipated behavior.
Usability testing tries to find out how end users will respond to the system under realistic conditions.

Question 33

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Define “continuous integration.”

Answer 33

An automated process in which new and updated code is checked to make sure the system still performs as intended after the new code is integrated into the code repository

Question 34

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Explain the concept behind TDD.
What behaviors are promoted by TDD?

Answer 34

The tests should be written before the code is written.
• Thinking about how the functionality will be used by the customer
• Making sure that tests are in place
• Catching defects early in the cycle when they are cheaper and easier to fix
• Writing code in small, tested units, which leads to more modular, flexible, and extendable systems

Question 35

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is “Red, Green, Refactor”?

Answer 35

The process of writing a test that initially fails (Red), writing code until the test passes (Green), and then refactoring the code (Refactor)

Question 36

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Explain the approach of ATDD.

Answer 36

As in TDD, the tests are written before the code, but instead of simply testing whether the code works, we test how the functionality requested by the business behaves at an acceptance-test level.