Pass the PMI PMI Agile DASSM Questions and answers with CertsForce

The primary function of the "Business Operations" process blade in Disciplined Agile is to provide ongoing support and services to customers and ensure that products function smoothly post-deployment. This involves managing customer relationships, handling support requests, andmaintaining operational stability. Options such as "B. To monitor the competitive landscape" and "D. To ensure cash flow in the organization" do not align with the core function of Business Operations. "C. To monitor and guide teams to remove barriers" is more aligned with the roles of leadership and governance. Hence, "A. To provide services to customers and support your products" is the correct answer.

The principle "Organize around products/services" meansbuilding dedicated cross-functional teams focused on customer offerings. This approach ensures that teams are aligned directly with the delivery of customer value, with all the necessary skills to deliver a complete product or service. This organization enhances focus, collaboration, and efficiency, driving greater value delivery to customers.

Option A (asking customers to pick from available products) does not reflect this principle, and Option C (project teams being best equipped) does not align with the DA emphasis on long-standing, product-focused teams over temporary project teams.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

Estimating in hours instead of pointsmay not help in improving predictabilitybecause time-based estimates can often be inaccurate and can vary widely based on individual productivity and context. Using story points allows teams to focus on relative size and complexity, making it easier to compare work items and plan iterations more predictably.

Options B (reducing technical debt), C (reducing feedback cycles), D (respecting WIP limits), and E (adopting a test-first approach) all contribute to improving predictability by promoting consistent, high-quality delivery.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

Governance in a Disciplined Agile (DA) project involves ensuring that the organization's standards, practices, and compliance requirements are being met while allowing teams to operate within a defined framework. It includes activities such as creating forums for sharing knowledge (A), making decisions about funding (B), administering rewards and recognition (C), ensuring compliance with a regulatory standard (E), and having a defined process for decision-making (F).

However, governance does not mean giving the team complete freedom to make decisions (D). In DA, while teams are encouraged to be self-organizing and empowered, they must still operate within the constraints of organizational governance policies and practices. Governance ensures there is a balance between team autonomy and alignment with organizational goals and standards. Therefore, "complete freedom to the team to make decisions" is not aligned with the DA approach to governance.

This aligns with the principles found in the PMI Disciplined Agile framework, which emphasizes both flexibility and control. In DA, governance is about guiding and monitoring the team’s activities to align with the organizational context, rather than granting unrestricted autonomy.

When tailoring an agile strategy within the Disciplined Agile (DA) framework, the two process goals that require the most effort are"Align with Enterprise Direction"and"Explore Scope."These goals are critical because they provide a foundational understanding and alignment with both the organization's strategic objectives and the specific scope of the project or product being developed.

Align with Enterprise Direction:

Effort Required: Tailoring an agile strategy requires significant effort to ensure alignment with the overall enterprise direction, including strategic goals, corporate culture, compliance requirements, and governance policies. This involves understanding and integrating the broader organizational objectives into the team’s way of working (WoW).

Why It Is Important: Ensuring alignment with the enterprise direction is vital for maintaining consistency across different teams and departments and for achieving long-term organizational goals. It helps in leveraging shared resources, standards, and practices, reducing risks, and fostering collaboration.

Disciplined Agile Context: In the DA toolkit, "Align with Enterprise Direction" ensures that teams are not working in silos but are contributing to the broader organizational strategy and that their actions support the enterprise’s vision and values.

Explore Scope:

Effort Required: Exploring the scope involves understanding the breadth and depth of the problem space, gathering requirements, and defining what needs to be built. This can be a complex and time-consuming effort because it requires collaboration with multiple stakeholders, eliciting requirements, and managing changes.

Why It Is Important: This process goal helps ensure that the team understands the scope of the work to be done and aligns its efforts accordingly. It involves prioritizing features, defining acceptance criteria, and creating a shared understanding among all stakeholders.

Disciplined Agile Context: "Explore Scope" in the DA framework is critical because it lays the foundation for what the team will work on. It helps manage stakeholder expectations, prioritize work, and align deliverables with customer needs and organizational objectives.

Contrasting Incorrect Options:

A. Improve Quality: While improving quality is essential in any agile strategy, it typically involves applying established practices such as Test-Driven Development (TDD), Continuous Integration (CI), and automated testing, which may not require as much initial effort compared to aligning with enterprise direction or exploring scope.

D. Address Changing Stakeholder Needs: Addressing changing stakeholder needs is part of the agile process, but the effort involved depends on how frequently and significantly those needs change. This goal is more of an ongoing activity rather than an initial effort required for tailoring an agile strategy.

The main role of the team lead in Disciplined Agile is toensure that the team builds the product right. This involves guiding the team to follow the appropriate practices, ensuring high-quality standards, and removing any impediments that could affect the development process. The team lead facilitates the team’s work, helps them adhere to their chosen way of working, and ensures that the product meets the necessary quality standards and fulfills customer requirements. While other roles, such as product owner or architect, might focus more on defining the right product or coordinating efforts, the team lead's primary responsibility is to ensure proper execution and adherence to quality practices.

The Disciplined Agile (DA) principle of "Accelerate value delivery" reflects the importance of minimizing the cost of delay. Cost of delay measures the impact of time on the value delivery, emphasizing the need to deliver valuable work quickly to maximize its benefits. While Option D (Optimize flow) is related to managing work effectively, it does not specifically highlight the urgency of reducing the cost of delay. Options A (Keep workloads within capacity) and C (Collaborate proactively) are important DA principles but do not directly address this concept.

The lean life-cycle in Disciplined Agile does not require timeboxed iterations. Instead, it emphasizes continuous flow, where work items are processed individually through the value stream without the strict confines of iteration cycles. This approach allows for a more flexible and responsive process, which aligns with lean principles of minimizing waste and optimizing flow. Thus, the statement is true as it reflects the flexibility inherent in the lean life-cycle approach.

The Disciplined Agile (DA) mindset consists of several principles that guide agile practices within an organization. Three of these key principles are:

Delight customers:This principle emphasizes that the primary goal is to meet or exceed customer expectations by delivering value early and often.

Enterprise awareness:This principle promotes awareness of the larger organizational context, encouraging teams to make decisions that align with enterprise goals, values, and governance.

Be pragmatic:This principle encourages practical, context-specific solutions over rigid adherence to one methodology, allowing teams to use practices that are most effective for their situation.

Option B, "Be a servant leader," is a practice or behavior expected from team leaders, not a core principle of the DA mindset itself. Option D, "Accelerate delivery," is an outcome of effective agile practices, but not one of the principles guiding the DA approach.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

It is false to say that Disciplined Agile (DA) roles cover all possible roles in an organization. DA defines a set of primary roles (such as Team Lead, Product Owner, and Architecture Owner) and supporting roles for agile delivery teams. However, it does not prescribe all roles that might exist in an organization, such as executive leadership or specialized departments outside the agile delivery context.