Pass the PeopleCert DevOps DevOps-Foundation Questions and answers with CertsForce

Epics deliveredis asoftware/process metric, not a business performance metric.

Business performance metricsinclude financial and market indicators: earnings, cashflow, market share, revenue growth.

Why not the others?

Earnings, Cashflow, Marketshare:Directly tied to business health.

Extract-style reference:

“Business performance metrics focus on outcomes such as earnings, cashflow, and marketshare. Agile metrics like epics delivered measure team output, not business value.”

—Project to Product, Mik Kersten

PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6:Distinguishes business impact from process metrics.

Acentralized platformin DevOps provides standardized, reusable services to development teams, improving productivity and reducing duplication. Characteristics include:

A: Centralized version control with approved security libraries promotes consistent and secure coding practices.

B: Automated pipelines that include quality and security scans ensure compliance and quality are built-in, not bolted on.

C: Deployment to validated environments with monitoring enables quick detection and resolution of issues.

Since all three characteristics (A, B, C) are described in PeopleCert andThe DevOps Handbookas best practices,D—All of the above—is correct.

TheThomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI)is a psychometric tool that measures an individual’s behavior in conflict situations—specifically, how they handle disagreement with colleagues.

It classifies responses into five modes: Competing, Collaborating, Compromising, Avoiding, and Accommodating.

Why not the others?

Kubler Ross Change Curve:Describes emotional responses to change, not conflict styles.

Westrum’s Typology:Categorizes organizational culture (pathological, bureaucratic, generative) but doesn’t measure individual behavior.

Value Stream Mapping:A process improvement tool, not a behavioral assessment.

Reference/Extract:

“The Thomas-Kilmann instrument helps teams understand how individuals approach conflict and collaboration, enabling better resolution strategies—a key aspect of high-performing DevOps teams.”

—DevOps Handbook; PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6 Section 3.7

TheTheory of Constraints (ToC), as referenced in PeopleCert DevOps Foundation, states:

A: Every system has at least one limiting factor (constraint) that determines overall performance.

B: System throughput is limited by the capacity of the constraint; improving non-constraints has minimal impact.

C: Focusing improvement efforts on the constraint is the most effective way to improve the performance of the entire system.

In DevOps, constraints may appear in testing, change approvals, environment provisioning, or deployment. By identifying and alleviating these bottlenecks, organizations improve flow and reduce lead time.

Since all three statements (A, B, C) are accurate representations of ToC, the correct answer isD – All of the Above.

Microservices architecturebreaks down applications into small, independent, loosely coupled services that can be developed, tested, and deployed independently.

Why does this improve release frequency?Each microservice can be updated, tested, and deployed on its own, reducing the risk and coordination overhead associated with monolithic releases.

This allows for faster feedback and more frequent delivery of value to users.

Extract-style reference:

“Microservices enable teams to deploy independently, reduce deployment risk, and increase release frequency by decoupling services.”

—Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps, Chapter 4

PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6:Stresses modular architectures for enabling rapid, independent deployments and continuous delivery.

Businesses are drawn to DevOps because it improves agility, responsiveness, and quality.

A: The growth of IoT requires scalable, automated, and reliable delivery processes.

B: Fast, intelligent decision-making is needed to respond to market changes.

D: The shift toward valuing customer outcomes over products is central to modern service delivery.

However,Cis a misconception. While automation is a key DevOps practice, the goal isstrategic automation—automating where it adds measurable value, improves quality, or accelerates delivery. “Automate all the things” without consideration can waste resources, increase complexity, and reduce adaptability.

Continuous Integration (CI) is the practice of frequently merging small code changes into a shared repository, followed by automated builds and tests. Theprimary benefitisearly detection and resolution of integration issues. When commits are tested together continuously, defects are caught soon after introduction, reducing the cost and complexity of fixing them.

WhileB(more developers can work together) is a side effect, it is not the primary goal.C(pushing changes quickly) is more related to Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment.D(version control) is a prerequisite for CI, not the main benefit.

Therefore,Acorrectly captures the primary benefit—finding and fixing issues early before they reach production.

According to PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6, the five primary values that guide successful DevOps adoption are summarized in theCALMSframework:Culture, Automation, Lean, Measurement, and Sharing.

Culturefocuses on breaking down silos, encouraging trust, and promoting collaboration between development, operations, security, QA, and business teams.

Automationis essential for speeding up delivery, reducing manual errors, and ensuring repeatability across the software delivery lifecycle.

Leanemphasizes the elimination of waste, limiting work in progress (WIP), and improving flow.

Measurementmeans using metrics and data to inform decisions, identify bottlenecks, and drive continuous improvement.

Sharingfosters transparency, knowledge transfer, and a unified approach to goals and problem-solving.

Option A replaces automation and lean principles with softer collaboration aspects, which are important but not recognized as the formal value set. Option C replaces “Measurement” with “Metrics,” which is only a part of measurement. Option D substitutes “Accountability” for “Automation,” which is not part of the CALMS model.

Therefore, the official correct set of values per the DevOps Foundation syllabus isB.

Deployment frequencyis not aculture metric.

It’s aprocessmetric, indicating how often code is released.

Culture metricsfocus on engagement, morale, retention, psychological safety, and NPS.

Why not the others?

Employee NPS:Measures employee satisfaction and willingness to recommend.

Engagement/morale:Direct indicators of cultural health.

Retention:How well an org keeps talented people, reflecting culture.

Extract-style reference:

“Measuring DevOps culture relies on employee engagement, morale, and retention, not on delivery metrics like deployment frequency.”

—State of DevOps Report

PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6:Culture metrics focus on people, not just process.

High-performing organizations use Continuous Delivery practices to improveSoftware Delivery and Operational (SDO) performance.

B: Psychological safety encourages open communication, incident reporting, and learning from failures.

C: Trunk-based development reduces integration issues and supports continuous integration/delivery.

D: Cloud technologies provide scalable, on-demand environments that speed up delivery and testing.

On the other hand,A—a heavyweight change process—slows down delivery, increases lead time, and often fails to improve change success rates. Research cited inAccelerateshows that manual, centralized change approvals correlate with lower performance, while automated, peer-reviewed changes produce better reliability and faster delivery.