PMI ACP Scenario Based v2 Sample Questions
1. Cassandra, an agile practitioner, is given a task to introduce Kanban to her technology support team. As part of the initial activities, which of the following are the most appropriate steps when introducing Kanban?
A) Map the workflow steps on the board, place a Work In Progress (WIP) limit in each step and ask team members to start using the defined process
B) Engage a business analyst that represents the new Kanban process and ensure that each team member receives formal training before start using a new process
C) Assist the manager of a support team to visualize and map the current workflow and ask a manager to introduce a new process for the team
D) Facilitate team sessions and help them to map their existing workflow and support them to continuously improve the process collaboratively
2. Which of the following examples demonstrates the behavior of an agile mindset? (Select all that apply)
A) Focuses on controlling the changes in the project scope, and appropriately redirect requests to the change request process.
B) Manages a team by removing impediments that get in their way
C) Supports the team’s self-organization and helps the team meet project goals
D) Provides task level direction and assign the work to the team
3. At the Sprint Planning meeting, a team is reviewing acceptance criteria and sizing the stories using planning poker. Julie, a development team member, highlighted a concern that we have a huge backlog and not sure when to stop estimating? What would be the most appropriate response to her concern?
A) Estimate only the equal number of stories that team had delivered in the last Sprint
B) Product owner could have estimated the backlog before the Sprint planning
C) Check the team capacity of current Sprint, past performance and let the team decide on how many story points they should commit to delivering within a Sprint
D) Estimate all the stories in the backlog and team commits the equal number of story points that they have delivered in the last Sprint
4. You are a Scrum Master of a team that is consistently producing value and meeting their commitments. Your project sponsor approaches you to assist another team struggle in delivering the product increment at the end of every Sprint. How would you respond to such a request? Select the most appropriate response from the following:
A) Educate your sponsor that helping other teams in the organization is not part of your role.
B) Partner with the product owner and Scrum Master of another team, assess their current maturity, make suggestions and offer help based on your findings
C) Talk team members individually and find out reasons why previous Scrum Master failed in his/her role, submit the report to your sponsor
D) Ask your project sponsor to talk to your manager and wait for official approval before you move to another team
5. Assume you are an Agile coach. Being an effective agile coach requires you to work on self-development. You realize that self-development needs to be constant. You decide to work on your listening skills and know that one good framework to use is “Levels of Listening,” from the school of coactive coaching. Of the following, which is not part of co-active coaching listening skills?
A. Internal listening, when a person listens at this level, they are listening to the sound of their inner voice.
B. Empathetic listening, at this level, empathy of the client is important and the key factor to pay attention using empathy
C. Focus listening, there is a hard focus, like a laser, from coach to client. All attention is directed to one way.
D. Global listening, this is a soft focus, listening that takes in everything. At this level, you are aware of the energy between you and others.
6. Martin is facilitating a release planning session for his team to plan and estimate stories for the next release. After the first few estimates have been made, he asked the team to take a story and compare against a couple of other stories that have already been estimated. This technique is called:
A. Planning Poker
B. Disaggregation
C. Affinity Estimation
D. Triangulation
7. Tracy recognizes that taking a servant leadership approach will make a big difference in her new role as a Scrum Master. What is not part of her job?
A. Creating transparency by radiating information
B. Arbitrate between team members when necessary
C. Direct the team by telling them what to do.
D. Understand and explain the team’s progress to interested stakeholders
8. You join as a Scrum Master to new Scrum Team; you notice that the team is spending too much time in the product backlog refinement, and it is affecting their commitment towards the Sprint. How would you address this issue?
A) Do nothing as the team discovered that refinement is very valuable to them
B) Ask product owner to take the responsibility of refining the backlog items and let the Development Team focus on current sprint goals
C) Cancel all refinement meetings until team start meeting commitments
D) Coach team members to spend just enough time to refine the backlog for upcoming Sprint and focus on meeting the commitment of the Sprint.
9. A behavior whereby team members with available capacity and appropriate skills collectively work on an item to finish what has already been started before moving ahead to begin work on new items is called:
A. Limiting Work in Progress (WIP)
B. Kanban visualization
C. Swarming
D. Collaboration
10. The product vision paints a picture of the future that draws people in. It describes who the customers are, what customers need, and how these needs will be met. It captures the essence of the product – the critical information we must know to develop and launch a winning product. Select the question that you will least likely to be asked during drafting the product vision statement.
A. Who is going to buy the product? Who is the target customer?
B. Statement of need or opportunity
C. What is the unique selling point? How does the product compare to existing products in the market? if any
D. What is the target timeframe and budget to develop and launch the product?
E. A detail features list, containing short descriptions of all functionality desired in the product
ANSWERS WITH EXPLANATIONS
1. Cassandra, an agile practitioner, is given a task to introduce Kanban to her technology support team. As part of the initial activities, which of the following are the most appropriate steps when introducing Kanban?
A) Map the workflow steps on the board, place a Work In Progress (WIP) limit in each step and ask team members to start using the defined process
B) Engage a business analyst that represents the new Kanban process and ensure that each team member receives formal training before start using a new process
C) Assist the manager of a support team to visualize and map the current workflow and ask a manager to introduce a new process for the team
D) Facilitate team sessions and help them to map their existing workflow and support them to continuously improve the process collaboratively
Answer: D
Explanation: Cassandra needs to make sure to involve the entire team while defining a process the first time. The rest of the options are in incorrect.
The buy-in from the team will suffer significantly if one person defines the process especially if someone is outside the team, e.g., consultant (Ref. Marcus Hammarberg and Joakim Sundén Published by Manning Publications, 2014)
2. Which of the following examples demonstrates the behavior of an agile mindset? (Select all that apply)
A) Focuses on controlling the changes in the project scope, and appropriately redirect requests to the change request process.
B) Manages a team by removing impediments that get in their way
C) Supports the team’s self-organization and helps the team meet project goals
D) Provides task level direction and assign the work to the team
Answer: B and C.
Explanation: A is incorrect; agile embraces change instead of avoiding or controlling the changes in the scope.
D is incorrect, unlike traditional projects; agile teams are self-organized and pull the work from the backlog.
3. At the Sprint Planning meeting, a team is reviewing acceptance criteria and sizing the stories using planning poker. Julie, a development team member, highlighted a concern that we have a huge backlog and not sure when to stop estimating? What would be the most appropriate response to her concern?
A) Estimate only the equal number of stories that team had delivered in the last Sprint
B) Product owner could have estimated the backlog before the Sprint planning
C) Check the team capacity of current Sprint, past performance and let the team decide on how many story points they should commit to delivering within a Sprint
D) Estimate all the stories in the backlog and team commits the equal number of story points that they have delivered in the last Sprint
Answer: C
Explanation: Option A is a distraction; a number of stories are irrelevant
Option B is incorrect as estimation is a team activity and entire team should be involved in the estimation
Option D is incorrect as estimating entire backlog in the Sprint planning is wasteful
The team only needs to estimate the story points that they are committed to delivering in the Sprint. According to Scrum guide, “The input to Sprint Planning meeting is the Product Backlog, the latest product Increment, the projected capacity of the Development Team during the Sprint, and past performance of the Development Team. The number of items selected from the Product Backlog for the Sprint is solely up to the Development Team. Only the Development Team can assess what it can accomplish over the upcoming Sprint.”
4. You are a Scrum Master of a team that is consistently producing value and meeting their commitments. Your project sponsor approaches you to assist another team struggle in delivering the product increment at the end of every Sprint. How would you respond to such a request? Select the most appropriate response from the following:
A) Educate your sponsor that helping other teams in the organization is not part of your role.
B) Partner with the product owner and Scrum Master of another team, assess their current maturity, make suggestions and offer help based on your findings
C) Talk team members individually and find out reasons why previous Scrum Master failed in his/her role, submit the report to your sponsor
D) Ask your project sponsor to talk to your manager and wait for official approval before you move to another team
Answer: B
Option A is incorrect because helping the organization to adopt Agile is one of the Scrum Master responsibilities.
Option C is wrong; meeting individually with each team member is not a problem but focusing only on the Scrum Master may not be the right approach.
Option D is incorrect, Sponsor asks for help, but does not ask to move to a new team permanently.
5. Assume you are an Agile coach. Being an effective agile coach requires you to work on self-development. You realize that self-development needs to be constant. You decide to work on your listening skills and know that one good framework to use is “Levels of Listening,” from the school of coactive coaching. Of the following, which is not part of co-active coaching listening skills?
A. Internal listening, when a person listens at this level, they are listening to the sound of their inner voice.
B. Empathetic listening, at this level, empathy of the client is important and the key factor to pay attention using empathy
C. Focus listening, there is a hard focus, like a laser, from coach to client. All attention is directed to one way.
D. Global listening, this is a soft focus, listening that takes in everything. At this level, you are aware of the energy between you and others.
Answer: B
Explanation: Co-Active coaching talks about three levels of listening, i.e. Internal, focused and global
Level I—internal listening: When the coach listens at Level I, the coach hears the speaker’s words and may be very attentive, but the words get interpreted through the coach’s own lens. Everything the speaker says is met with some version of this thought in the coach’s head: How does this affect me? Imagine that the speaker starts talking about the potentially negative impacts of having a new team member join the team, an idea the team had been kicking around lately. In response, the coach may say, “We’ve added team members before between sprints. As long as we’re not doing it during a sprint, we’re OK.” The coach’s focus stayed self-centered on “How does this affect me?” In this case, the coach’s desire to be seen as a “good coach” by upholding the rule about adding team members only between sprints undermined the coach’s ability to listen to the speaker. As a result, the coach completely missed the chance to learn what the speaker really wanted to say.
Level II—focused listening: When listening at Level II, a hardwired connection gets established between the coach and the speaker. The coach is “over there” in the speaker’s chair—intently focused on what the speaker says. Freed from the personal lens, the coach listens and responds in the moment with the questions and silences that help the speaker move through whatever they are expressing. In our example, as the speaker starts talking about the changes that may happen when a new team member joins the team, the coach stays focused solely on the speaker and notices a lot of emotion coming up. The coach isn’t sure what’s really happening, but instead of making assumptions or filtering the speaker through a personal lens, the coach goes with curiosity and says, “I can’t tell what’s happening as you’re talking about this. Excitement? Fear? Nervousness? What’s going on over there?” And then the coach listens.
Level III—global listening: The coach uses everything in the environment when listening at Level III. The speaker’s tone of voice, posture, changes in room temperature, what noises are happening around them—all of these things are noticed and used by the coach. The Level II hardwired connection remains strong, joined by the coach’s antennae that pick up everything. When the antennae function, intuitions emerge. As the speaker goes on about how good a new team member will be for the team, the coach notices that the air suddenly feels stifling and says, “I hear you talking about how good you think this will be, and yet there is a sense of being stifled. What does that mean to you?” The speaker may say, “Stifled? No, that’s not it at all. It’s more like excited but nervous about adding a new personality to the team.” Or, perhaps the speaker says, “Stifled? (silence) I didn’t realize it until now, but it’s true. I always feel stifled when I work with people who have more experience than me.” In either case, the coach and speaker have gained a deeper understanding.
To increase the amount of time you spend in Level II and Level III listening, enter each conversation with an open mind. Remind yourself that you truly don’t know what the person will say next. So, stay on the edge of your seat.
Source:
1. Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition by Lyssa Adkins Published by Addison-Wesley Professional, 2010
2. http://www.thecoaches.com/learning-hub/fundamentals/res/FUN-Topics/FUN-Co-Active-Coaching-Skills-Listening.pdf
6. Martin is facilitating a release planning session for his team to plan and estimate stories for the next release. After the first few estimates have been made, he asked the team to take a story and compare against a couple of other stories that have already been estimated. This technique is called:
A. Planning Poker
B. Disaggregation
C. Affinity Estimation
D. Triangulation
Anwer: D.
Explanation: Planning poker requires a team to follow a different process and require each team member to privately select the story point, and then all team members reveal their estimates at the same time.
B is incorrect because disaggregation is not an estimation technique. It is a process to split compound story.
C is incorrect, affinity estimating works in a similar manner but all the comparison is made using single baseline or universal reference.
When estimating using triangulation, you do not compare all stories against a single baseline or universal reference. Instead, you want to estimate each new story against an assortment of those that have already been estimated. This is referred to as triangulation. To triangulate, compare the story being estimated against a couple of other stories.
Reference: Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn, Published by Prentice Hall, 2005
7. Tracy recognizes that taking a servant leadership approach will make a big difference in her new role as a Scrum Master. What is not part of her job?
A. Creating transparency by radiating information
B. Arbitrate between team members when necessary
C. Direct the team by telling them what to do.
D. Understand and explain the team’s progress to interested stakeholders
Answer: C
Explanation: Servant Leader doesn’t direct the team by telling them what to do. Instead, he or she should assist the team to self-organize and do what it takes to expedite their progress.
8. You join as a Scrum Master to new Scrum Team; you notice that the team is spending too much time in the product backlog refinement, and it is affecting their commitment towards the Sprint. How would you address this issue?
A) Do nothing as the team discovered that refinement is very valuable to them
B) Ask product owner to take the responsibility of refining the backlog items and let the Development Team focus on current sprint goals
C) Cancel all refinement meetings until team start meeting commitments
D) Coach team members to spend just enough time to refine the backlog for upcoming Sprint and focus on meeting the commitment of the Sprint.
Answer: D
Explanation: Ideally, Development team should not spend more than 10% of their capacity. Refinement is valuable, but planning too much up front is considered waste. Refinement requires development team and product owner to collaborate.
9. A behavior whereby team members with available capacity and appropriate skills collectively work on an item to finish what has already been started before moving ahead to begin work on new items is called:
A. Limiting Work in Progress (WIP)
B. Kanban visualization
C. Swarming
D. Collaboration
Answer: C
Explanation: Swarming is a behavior whereby team members with available capacity and appropriate skills collectively work (swarm) on an item to finish what has already been started before moving ahead to begin work on new items.
Source: Kanban in Action by Marcus Hammarberg and Joakim Sundén Published by Manning Publications, 2014
10. The product vision paints a picture of the future that draws people in. It describes who the customers are, what customers need, and how these needs will be met. It captures the essence of the product – the critical information we must know to develop and launch a winning product. Select the question that you will least likely to be asked during drafting the product vision statement.
A. Who is going to buy the product? Who is the target customer?
B. Statement of need or opportunity
C. What is the unique selling point? How does the product compare to existing products in the market? if any
D. What is the target timeframe and budget to develop and launch the product?
E. A detail features list, containing short descriptions of all functionality desired in the product
Answer: E
Explanation: The product vision should be brief and concise (Pichler 2008). It should contain only information critical to the success of the product. The blockbuster products researched by Lynn & Reilly (2002), for instance, had visions with no more than six product attributes. The product vision is, therefore, not a feature list and should not provide unnecessary detail.
Reference: Developing an effective product vision entails carefully answering the following questions – Read the full blog post “Product Vision” by Roman Pichler
https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2009/january/the-product-vision#sthash.Czf7s0GY.dpuf
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