The PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® certification was designed by the Project Management Institute (PMI)® to recognize project management professionals who apply Agile approaches in their projects.
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1. A project team is discussing the priorities associated with different project management methodologies. What would an agile practitioner say is the top priority?
A. Working software and lean documentation
B. Individuals and interactions and lightweight processes and tools
C. Customer satisfaction through the delivery of valuable products
D. Responding to change and progressive elaboration of plans
Hint: Which of the available options reflects one of the twelve principles of the Agile Manifesto?
Correct Answer: C
According to the Agile Manifesto, this answer choice most closely resembles the highest priority according to the Agile Manifesto, which states, “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.”
Exam Reference: Agile Practice Guide, Project Management Institute Inc., 2017, Page(s) 8-9
2. An agile team needs to demonstrate a product increment at the end of every iteration. What should an agile practitioner recommend that the team do to ensure they have adequate time to prepare for the demonstration?
A. Create a user story for conducting the demonstration
B. Hire an external expert to handle the demonstration
C. Track the task with a project management plan
D. Delay the demonstration to the next iteration
Hint: What guides the team works on?
Correct Answer: A
Creating a user story to demonstrate the product increment developed in the iteration allows the team to allocate dedicated time to prepare for the demonstration.
Exam Reference: User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development, Mike Cohn, 2004, User story
3. A cross-functional agile team has experienced many disruptions in recent sprints since various members needed time off due to planned holidays and unplanned absences for personal reasons. What should the team have done differently?
A. Increased specialization among team members
B. Engaged in more planning
C. Provided for more safety in estimates
D. Shortened the sprint length during the project
Hint: The scenario describes a repetitive pattern in which frequent disruptions cause change and uncertainty to the team performance.
Correct Answer: C
On average, through all the sprints, some amount of time allocated for unplanned events (such as team taking time off) needs to be included as a safety in the team’s estimates.
Reference: Agile Estimating and Planning, Mike Cohn, 2005, Reflecting Uncertainty in Estimates
4. Which of the following behaviors should an agile coach avoid?
A. Coordinating individual contributions
B. Emphasizing business value delivery
C. Taking the problem to the team
D. Being invested in the team’s overall performance
Hint: There is a difference between “managing” vs. “coaching”. There is also a difference in agile in how the individual vs. the team is treated.
Correct Answer: A
An agile coach should move away from coordinating individual contributions and instead coach the team to collaborate.
Reference: Agile Practice Guide, Project Management Institute Inc., 2017, Page(s) 35; see also Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition, Lyssa Adkins, 2010, Role of an Agile Coach
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5. A new scrum team is looking to improve its process for its next project. Which approach would an agile practitioner say is most likely to help the team improve its process?
A. Adopt the process used by the most successful team in the organization
B. Tailor the process for the new project
C. Focus on ‘work not done’ and reflection
D. Consult with the scrum master and the project sponsor
Hint: Look for the answer choice representing one of the Agile Manifesto principles and one of the core agile practices.
Correct Answer: C
Simplicity and reflection are core agile practices. Simplicity, “the art of maximizing the amount of work not done”, is one of the Agile Manifesto principles. Reflection is in the center of iteration retrospectives aimed to improve the team’s process and performance. Focusing on reflection and simplicity will most likely help the team improve its process, making this the best answer to the question asked.
Reference: Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products – 2nd Edition, Jim Highsmith, 2009, Chapter 5: An Agile Project Management Model, Selecting and Integrating Practices
6. 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 eliminate uncertainty from the estimate
B. Fine-tune approach but do not put too much effort to gain the maximum benefit from estimating
C. Lockdown the budget, schedule, and scope to improve the accuracy
D. One team member should take primary responsibility for owning the estimate
Hint: Remember, in agile planning, progressive elaboration is used.
Correct Answer: B
There is a point of diminishing returns with estimating, where additional effort into estimation yields a minimal improvement inaccuracy. Therefore, the team can fine-tune but should not put in too much time or effort in estimating.
Reference: Agile Practice Guide, Project Management Institute Inc., 2017, Page(s) 55; see also Agile Estimating and Planning, Mike Cohn, 2005, Diminishing returns on estimating
7. 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 projects. 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 the team has used in their previous projects
D. Consult with the scrum master, the product owner, and the project stakeholders
Hint: A practice is only good or bad within some context, e.g., team dynamics.
Correct Answer: 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
8. At the sprint retrospective meeting, the agile team members drew a fishbone diagram, wrote a problem at the fish’s head, and labeled the bones of the fish with categories. What should the team do next?
A. Decide what to do about the categories
B. Brainstorm factors within each category
C. Look for items appearing in more than one category
D. Label the fish’s tail with a category for the solution
Hint: The next step is intended to find issues within each category that are causing the problem.
Correct Answer: B
After the problem is written at the fish’s head and the bones of the fish are labeled with categories, the next step is to brainstorm factors within each category.
Reference: Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, 2006, Activity: Fishbone
9. At the daily standup meeting, the agile team has raised an impediment where one of the developers has been withdrawn from the team by the developer’s line manager to complete their previously committed tasks from another project. As a result, the team will be unable to meet their sprint goal. What should have been done differently to avoid this impediment?
A. The team should have considered human resources availability while planning the sprint.
B. The team should have worked faster during the sprint before the developer has been withdrawn.
C. The team should have added buffers to each user story to account for the unknown risks.
D. The line manager should not have let the developer go to work on the agile project in the first place.
Hint: Dependencies based on people are sometimes overlooked.
Correct Answer: A
Prioritization of work is not solely based on customer value. There are other factors to consider, such as risks, dependencies between user stories, and people’s availability, to name a few.
Reference: Exploring Scrum: The Fundamentals, 2nd Edition, Dan Rawsthorne with Doug Shimp, 2013, Prioritization Factors
10. Agile team members reported that they could not complete all user stories that they had committed to deliver in the last sprint since they had worked overtime and eventually got burned out. What is wrong with the team approach?
A. Nothing is wrong. Maintaining a constant pace indefinitely is more important than missing a sprint goal.
B. The team approach is wrong. The team should fulfill and be held accountable for their commitment.
C. Nothing is wrong. To maintain good working relationships with the team, the product owner should not hold the team accountable.
D. The team approach is wrong. Maintaining a constant pace indefinitely has a different meaning that is not applicable in this scenario.
Hint: Reasons are not excuses.
Correct Answer: B
The Agile Manifesto should not be used as an excuse for not completing the committed sprint goal. The team should be held accountable for their work.
Reference: Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition, Lyssa Adkins, 2010, Coaching Product Owners on Getting Good at the Role
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