As many others have reported, the questions were HIGHLY situational; it felt like 75% of the test. Here are some notes that may help others.
1) There were multiple variations of this question: You’re an agile practitioner and the team has an issue with ______, what should you do?
a. Issues they ask about: The customer doesn’t come to demos. The team lacks motivation. A new team member is on two projects. A new team member isn’t delivering work on time. The developers don’t like the user stories. The product owner wasn’t expecting a feature to work a certain way. Problems are recurring. The team expects to finish early or late. Management is concerned about a natural disaster (seriously).
2) The questions used slippery terms like ‘project team’, ‘agile practitioner’, ‘project manager for an agile team’, ‘functional manager’, ‘senior management’, ‘team leader’, ‘team member’.
a. I found that to be tricky. One question boiled down to something like ‘A team member is being told by senior management to work on two projects. How should this be handled?’. One option was ‘Split their time between the projects’. Another option was 'Allow them to work on fewer tasks'. Another option was to ‘Speak to their functional manager’. ……Huh? I don’t even know who ‘I’ am in the situation.
3) I don’t recall a single specific question about XP or Lean. Maybe one general question related to each. Nothing about Coaches, Trackers, Testers, 12 practices of XP, Lean principles.
4) There were more questions about interactions with management than I thought. Clearly they are interested in how agile fits into organizations that are new to Agile.
Out of 7 domains I was Proficient in 2 and Moderately Proficient in 5. I actually didn’t think the questions were very good and I was surprised by that. There was even a spelling mistake in one question. I used the full time.
Studying:
I watched the PrepCast videos and that gave a good foundation. When I got a bit more serious and scheduled the PMI test, I bought and read the Andy Crowe ‘How to pass on your first try’ book. I made flashcards to memorize the terms in the glossary which was very helpful. The book comes with two 100 question tests in the back of the book and a code for an online 120 question test. I took the first practice test around 4 weeks before the PMI test, then the second test 2 weeks before the PMI test, then the last online test about a week before the PMI test. I can’t overstate how important it was for me to take these practice tests.
Finally, YouTube videos were really important to get a feel for some of the principles that you’re not familiar with.
Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell:
https://youtu.be/502ILHjX9EE
Spotify Engineering Culture part 1 (Agile Enterprise Transition with Scrum and Kanban):
https://youtu.be/Mpsn3WaI_4k
Agile Project Management with Kanban: Eric Brechner Presentation:
https://youtu.be/CKWvmiY7f_g
Boost Agile:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHN-ODj_u4GkR6DJ9Y5ayoQ
