TOPIC: PMI-ACP Question/Topic of the week : Season-5

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Question 77: A team of agile practitioners who have been working together for a long time and successfully delivered many projects has decided to improve their best practices for their upcoming project. What would be the best approach for the team to take to accomplish this task?

A. Select the best practices used by the most successful agile team in the organization
B. Design a new set of best practices that are tailored to the upcoming project
C. Apply the same practices that have been used by the team in their previous projects
D. Consult with the scrum master, the product owner, and the project stakeholders

Correct Answer to Q#77: C


The process can and should always be analyzed for any improvements, for example, during retrospective meetings. However, if a set of practices used by a team has proven to be effective, i.e. became a set of best practices, using the same best practices in the next project would be the best option among the answer choices given.

Reference: Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products - 2nd Edition, Jim Highsmith, 2009, Chapter 5: An Agile Project Management Model, Selecting and Integrating Practices

Here is our free PMI-ACP Exam sample question of the week. This question is taken from The PM Exam Simulator at www.pm-exam-simulator.com/pmi-acp

Question 78: An agile team has worked together on previous projects. In the team's last project, the greatest negative criticism was the inaccuracy of the estimates. When preparing estimates for a new project, what should an agile practitioner recommend that the team members do differently?

A. Deliberate extensively to completely eliminate uncertainty from the estimate
B. Fine tune approach but do not put too much effort to gain the maximum benefit from estimating
C. Lock down the budget, schedule, and scope to improve the accuracy
D. One team member should take primary responsibility for owning the estimate

Correct Answer to Q#78: B

With estimating, there is a point of diminishing returns, where additional effort put into estimation yields a minimal improvement in accuracy. Therefore, the team can fine-tune, but should not put in too much time or effort in estimating.

Reference: Agile Practice Guide</em>, Project Management Institute Inc., 2017, Page(s) 55; see also Agile Estimating and Planning, Mike Cohn, 2005, Diminishing returns on estimating

Here is our free PMI-ACP Exam sample question of the week. This question is taken from The PM Exam Simulator at www.pm-exam-simulator.com/pmi-acp

Question 79: An agile team wants to determine the root cause of a recurring issue. Which method would an agile practitioner select to determine the root cause?

A. Five Whys
B. Kano
C. MoSCoW
D. Kanban

Correct Answer to Q#79: A

The 'Five Whys' analysis method has its origin with Toyota and works well for agile teams performing a root cause analysis during a retrospective.

Exam Reference: Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility, Alan Shalloway, Guy Beaver, James R. Trott, 2010, Value Stream Mapping - Root Cause Analysis; see also A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, (PMBOK® Guide) – Sixth Edition, Project Management Institute Inc., 2017, Page(s) 292

Here is our free PMI-ACP Exam sample question of the week. This question is taken from The PM Exam Simulator at www.pm-exam-simulator.com/pmi-acp

Question 80: An agile team does not think it can meet the release deadline based on their velocity midway through the release's iterations. What should the team do?

A. Meet with the product owner to discuss a new release date
B. Add more developers to the team
C. Slice user stories so that the team can increase velocity
D. Meet with the product owner to re-prioritize the backlog

Correct Answer to Q#80: D

Unless stated differently, on agile projects the cost and the schedule are fixed, while the scope is flexible. Therefore, meeting with the product owner to discuss the scope reduction, or in other words, to re-prioritize the backlog, is the best option among the answer choices provided.

Exam Reference: Exploring Scrum: The Fundamentals, 2nd Edition, Dan Rawsthorne with Doug Shimp, 2013, Reprioritization of Requirements

Here is our free PMI-ACP Exam sample question of the week. This question is taken from The PM Exam Simulator at www.pm-exam-simulator.com/pmi-acp

Question 81: A scrum master is starting a project with a new team and needs to develop an estimate of velocity. What should the scrum master use as a basis for velocity in the first sprint?

A. Forecasted velocity
B. Actual velocity
C. Terminal velocity
D. Cycle velocity

Correct Answer to Q#81: A

Forecasted velocity is commonly used in a new agile project's first iteration because there is no historical data available to help estimate this velocity.

Exam Reference: Agile Estimating and Planning, Mike Cohn, 2005, Estimating Velocity

Here is our free PMI-ACP Exam sample question of the week. This question is taken from The PM Exam Simulator at www.pm-exam-simulator.com/pmi-acp

Question 82: An agile team finished coding for the current iteration. Which of the following is a continuous process improvement ceremony that the team will now attend?

A. Release planning meeting
B. Iteration retrospective meeting
C. Product demonstration meeting
D. Iteration planning meeting

Correct Answer to Q#82: B

The iteration retrospective meeting is an example of a continuous process improvement ceremony on an agile project.

Exam Reference: Agile Practice Guide, Project Management Institute Inc., 2017, Page(s) 50-51; see also Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, 2006

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Question 83: What happens if the development team cannot complete its work within its timebox?

A. The timebox is adjusted permanently to reflect reality
B. The timebox is extended temporarily.
C. The iteration should be abandoned.
D. The timebox is unchanged, but the unfinished work is carried forward to the backlog.

Correct Answer to Q#83: D

Agile uses a timeboxed (fixed) approach to frequently deliver product increments and seek continuous feedback from the users, thereby being able to refine the system.

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Question 84: In the Kanban model, how do WIP limits help?

A. Tracking becomes easy
B. Prevents work piling up of tasks at the bottleneck
C. Limits the size of product backlog
D. Helps developers to choose task easily

Correct Answer to Q#84: B

WIP manages workflow, too many in-progress tasks can create bottleneck and delay others.

Here is our free PMI-ACP Exam sample question of the week.

Question 85: At what point of the project is the product backlog frozen and disallows any further changes?

A. Before the project execution starts
B. After we are done with the first few sprints and the review has happened
C. It is never frozen
D. Once the estimation and planning is done

Correct Answer to Q#85: C

Product backlog is never frozen.

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Question 86: Which of the following has the highest precedence when choosing stories out of a product backlog?

A. High Risk, High Value Stories
B. High Risk, Low Value Stories
C. Low Risk, High Value Stories
D. Low Risk, Low Value Stories

Correct Answer to Q#86: A

High Risk, High Value Stories have the highest precedence when choosing stories out of a product backlog.

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Question 87: Display of the Kanban board, release plan and the cumulative burnup and burndown chart that is updated very frequently and situated at a central place is an example of:

A. Information Distribution or dissemination
B. Daily Status Reporting
C. Information Refrigerators
D. Information Radiators

Correct Answer to Q#87: D

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Question 88: On the project release plan a small change is requested, but the team members get into an endless debate. Which of the following techniques could prove to be helpful in this context?

A: Wideband Delphi
B: Fist-of-Five Voting
C: Pareto Analysis
D: Retrospective

Correct Answer to Q#88: B

Fist-of-Five is accomplished by raising hands as in voting, with the number of fingers raised that indicates level of agreement. A fist is a “no” and any number of fingers is a “yes,” with an indication of how good a “yes” it is. This moves a group away from quantity voting to quality voting, which is considerably more informative.

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Question 89: During your 15-minute stand-up meeting, two of your team members start discussing a solution to one of the issues that they ran into the day before. As the Scrum Master or Agile
project manager, what should you do?

A. Extend the meeting and encourage your team to find a solution before going back to work.
B. Invite other experts to the meeting to help create a solution.
C. Make sure you help them resolve the issues after the meeting but not during.
D. Do nothing—a Scrum Master only listens during the stand-up meeting.

The best choice is “5 why”.
Actually, if you read the original explanation of this technique in Japanese (by Toyota), there is nothing called 5 Whys. The number of whys do no matter. The objective is to find the root causes. In Japanese, this RCA technique is called Naze Naze Bunseki, which literally means Why-Why Analysis in English.

If you want to know more about the correct traditional approach to Why Why Analysis, I recommends having a look at the following lesson.

Correct Answer to Q#89: C

Daily Scrums are for informational purposes only, and the development team are the only ones to discuss what they have done, what they are doing, and what impediments are in their way. Any others attending the Scrum are silent observers. Other stakeholders can attend but not participate in the discussion. No solutions are generated during the meeting, only information.

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Question 90: You are a Scrum Master, and you hear during a daily Scrum that your team is a bit behind schedule. The impediments they mention are having to do too many updates to stakeholders
and too much paperwork. What is the best thing to do?

A. Communicate with the stakeholders, and ask them not to bother your team.
B. Coach the team on Agile principles to help them get back on schedule.
C. Do nothing; the team is self-managed.
D. Take on administrative work as needed to help your team.

Correct Answer to Q#90: D

Part of being a servant leader is to take on administrative work as needed to keep your team focused on the work in progress. You may also suggest to the stakeholders that asking for too many updates can hinder progress, but in this case option D is the best answer.