PMI DASSM Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) Exam Exam Practice Test

Disciplined Agile projects do not aim to maximize work-in-progress (WIP). Instead, they aim to minimize WIP to increase efficiency and reduce waste. By limiting WIP, teams can focus on completing tasks faster and delivering value more frequently. This approach is aligned with lean principles, which discourage multitasking and encourage teams to complete work items before starting new ones. Therefore, the statement that disciplined agile projects try to maximize WIP is false. The goal is to optimize the flow of work, not overload the team with too many concurrent tasks.

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The coordination meeting (often known as the Daily Stand-up or Scrum meeting in Agile practices) is crucial for keeping the team synchronized. It provides a regular opportunity for team members to share their progress, discuss any obstacles they face, and plan their activities for the day. This meeting ensures that everyone is aligned with the team's goals, helping to maintain momentum and quickly address any issues that might impede progress.

Options A, B, and C do not fully capture the core purpose of a coordination meeting. While A (providing a demo) might occur in a sprint review, it is not the focus of a daily coordination meeting. Option B (stakeholder observation) is not the primary intent, and Option C (reassessing the backlog) is typically part of a planning meeting, not the coordination meeting.

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.

The last step in Ester Derby and Diana Larsen's 5-step retrospective template isClose the Retrospective. This step involves wrapping up the retrospective by summarizing the key takeaways, ensuring that everyone understands the agreed-upon action items, and reflecting on the meeting itself. It is an opportunity to appreciate the contributions of team members and reinforce the commitment to continuous improvement. Closing the retrospective properly helps maintain a positive and constructive atmosphere and ensures that the insights and decisions made are effectively carried forward.

A value stream map is a lean tool that visually maps out the steps in a process from start to finish to identify areas of waste, delays, or inefficiencies in delivering value to the customer. In Disciplined Agile (DA), value stream mapping helps the team identify problem areas where waste occurs, such as bottlenecks, excessive handoffs, or unnecessary steps that do not add value to the customer. By recognizing these problem areas, the team can focus on improving or eliminating them to optimize the value delivery process. Options A, C, and D provide specific strategies for improving processes but do not encompass the broad benefit of identifying problem areas in realizing value.

In the Disciplined Agile (DA) framework, the Iteration Demo is the ceremony where the team presents the work completed during the iteration to stakeholders and other team members. This is the primary opportunity to obtain feedback on the increment of product or work that was developed. The feedback gathered during this demo is crucial for making any necessary adjustments in subsequent iterations. Other ceremonies like Daily Stand-up (B), Iteration Planning (C), or Retrospective (D) have different focuses. For example, Retrospective (D) is used for process improvement feedback, not product feedback.

Among the primary roles on Disciplined Agile (DA) teams, theTeam Lead(also referred to as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach in other frameworks) needs to be aprocess expert. The Team Lead is responsible for guiding the team in following Agile practices, helping them optimize their way of working (WoW), removing impediments, and facilitating continuous improvement. They ensure that the team adheres to the chosen practices and adapts them as necessary to fit their context.

Options A (Team member), B (Architecture owner), and C (Product owner) are important roles but are not primarily focused on being process experts.

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.

The primary advantage of using design thinking, according to DA guidelines, is that it promotes customer empathy and appropriate solutions. Design thinking focuses on understanding the user's needs and creating solutions that are tailored to those needs. Options A, C, and D are not accurate descriptions of design thinking's primary benefit; rather, they reflect misconceptions or partial truths.

Performingsystem integration testingmore frequently helps identify integration issues early, reducing the cost and time associated with fixing problems discovered later in the development cycle. Continuous integration testing is a core practice in Agile and Disciplined Agile that ensures changes are regularly validated, promoting a smoother integration process. Conducting integration tests more often allows the team to catch defects early and maintain a stable and reliable build.

Options B (adding team members) and C (testing only at the end) are not best practices as they do not address the root cause of the problem. Option D (finding a way to do less integration testing) contradicts Agile principles, which emphasize frequent testing.

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.

A major challenge that agile teams face withProcurement processesis that these processes are oftennot agile enough. Traditional procurement practices can be bureaucratic, slow, and rigid,making it difficult for Agile teams to respond quickly to changes, integrate new vendors, or adjust to new requirements. Agile teams need flexible procurement processes that allow for iterative and incremental development, quick onboarding of vendors, and adaptive contracting mechanisms.

Options B (vendor compliance), C (preference for in-house teams), and D (no contracting) are not typically the primary challenges Agile teams face with procurement.

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.

The correct answer isB. Agile Documentation. In the context of the Disciplined Agile (DA) toolkit, Agile Documentation is the process blade most likely to address the need to provide employees and customers with more information about an organization's products and services.

Agile Documentationis a process blade within the DA toolkit that focuses on creating and maintaining documentation that adds value to the team and the organization. The goal is to ensure that the documentation is just sufficient, meaning that it is only created when it is needed and at the appropriate level of detail. The Agile Documentation blade helps teams and organizations develop and share information effectively, which is crucial for helping both employees and customers understand and take advantage of what the organization offers.

Why Agile Documentation is the Correct Answer:

Provides Relevant Information:Agile Documentation emphasizes producing the right amount of documentation to meet the needs of stakeholders. This could include product manuals, user guides, FAQs, and other resources that help customers and employees better understand the products and services.

Maintains Up-to-Date Information:Agile Documentation encourages keeping the documentation current and relevant, ensuring that the provided information reflects the latest state of the organization's offerings.

Supports Communication and Understanding:By making information available in a clear and concise manner, Agile Documentation helps bridge knowledge gaps between the organization and its customers or employees, enhancing their ability to leverage the products and services.

The other options are less applicable:

C. Support:While the Support blade might handle customer inquiries and provide assistance, it does not focus on proactively providing information about products and services.

D. Reuse Engineering:This is related to managing reusable assets (e.g., code, components) but not about documentation or providing information.

E. Enterprise Architecture:This focuses on the strategic alignment of IT and business goals, not on providing information to end-users or employees about products and services.

Therefore,B. Agile Documentationis the most appropriate choice for addressing the need to provide employees and customers with more information about the organization's products and services, according to the Disciplined Agile framework.

The correct answer isC. Accelerate value delivery. In the Disciplined Agile (DA) framework, the process goal"Accelerate value delivery"typically requires significant tailoring to suit the specific needs, context, and constraints of the team and the organization.

What is "Accelerate Value Delivery"?

The process goal"Accelerate value delivery"focuses on optimizing the flow of work and reducing delays in delivering valuable outcomes to customers. This goal encompasses various practices and techniques such as reducing batch sizes, implementing continuous integration and delivery, enhancing team collaboration, removing bottlenecks, and improving overall efficiency in delivering products or services.

Achieving this goal requires careful consideration of the team's context, technology stack, existing workflows, and the organization's unique challenges and constraints. As a result, "Accelerate value delivery" is highly tailored to ensure that the selected practices are effective in a specific environment.

Why "Accelerate Value Delivery" Requires a Lot of Tailoring:

Tailoring is necessary because different teams and organizations have varying capabilities, maturity levels, cultural norms, and existing processes. For example, one team might need to focus on improving their DevOps practices, while another may need to address process inefficiencies or enhance cross-functional collaboration.

In Disciplined Agile, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to accelerating value delivery. Teams are encouraged to choose from a range of strategies and techniques that best suit their particular circumstances. This flexibility means that teams must continually assess and adapt their approaches to achieve optimal results, which requires significant customization and tailoring.

Why the Other Options Are Not Correct:

A. Form team:While forming a team may require some tailoring based on the project's needs and team composition, it is generally a more straightforward process with less variation in how it is executed compared to accelerating value delivery.

B. Prove architecture early:This process goal typically involves establishing the technical foundation of the solution early in the project. While it may require some adaptation based on the project's architecture, it does not involve the same level of ongoing tailoring as optimizing the flow of value delivery.

D. Improve quality:Although improving quality involves adopting practices that suit the team's context, it does not typically require as much tailoring as "Accelerate value delivery." Quality improvement is often about adhering to established standards and best practices, which can be more consistent across different teams and projects.

Therefore,C. Accelerate value deliveryis the correct answer because it inherently involves a high degree of customization to adapt the approach to the unique context and constraints of the team and organization, consistent with Disciplined Agile's emphasis on context-driven agility.

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a product with the minimum set of features needed to satisfy early customers and gather feedback for future development. The primary purpose of an MVP is to validate product assumptions, understand user needs, and guide subsequent iterations based on real user feedback. This iterative approach helps in aligning the product with customer expectations and reducing the risk of failure.

Options A (last iteration of development), B (not yet ready to be sold), and C (used for demonstration only) do not accurately reflect the primary purpose of an MVP in Disciplined Agile.

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.

The eight principles of Disciplined Agile are:

Delight Customers: Focus on providing exceptional value to customers.

Be Awesome: Foster an environment where team members feel motivated and supported.

Pragmatism: Make practical decisions based on context, rather than blindly following a methodology.

Context Counts: Recognize that every team and organization operates in a unique context.

Choice is Good: Encourage flexibility by providing multiple options to solve problems.

Optimize Flow: Improve efficiency and effectiveness by focusing on smooth workflow.

Enterprise Awareness: Ensure alignment with organizational goals and strategies.

Organize Around Products/Services: Form teams based on delivering complete products or services, rather than around specialized functions.

These principles promote a flexible, customer-centric, and context-sensitive approach to Agile 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.

During the Inception stage of a Disciplined Agile project, the team typically focuses on defining the project's vision, goals, and scope, as well as identifying high-level architecture and a test strategy. The deployment strategy, which details how the product will be released to the users, is generally determined later in the project when more is known about the product's architecture and functionality. Therefore, "B. Deployment strategy" is the correct answer, as it may not be decided during the Inception stage.

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The best way to eliminate waste in Disciplined Agile is to "eliminate delays in workflow and feedback." Lean principles focus on removing any non-value-added activities (waste) to improve efficiency. By minimizing delays, teams can ensure a smoother flow of work and faster feedback loops, which helps to identify and resolve issues quickly and reduces the time taken to deliver value to customers. While making sure each step is done as quickly as possible (A) or correctly(D) and ensuring people know their job (B) are important, they are not the primary method of eliminating waste according to Lean principles.

Disciplined Agile (DA) is best described as aprocess-decision toolkit. Unlike a prescriptive methodology or framework, DA provides a flexible toolkit that helps teams and organizations make informed decisions about their way of working based on their unique context. It offers guidance on various agile, lean, and traditional practices, and helps teams choose the most effective strategies for their situation. DA focuses on pragmatism and context-driven choice, encouraging teams to adopt and adapt practices that suit their specific needs rather than following a one-size-fits-all approach.

Attributes of a leader in Disciplined Agile include taking risks, inspiring trust, and focusing on goals. Leaders in an agile environment should be willing to take calculated risks to innovate and improve, build trust within their teams and with stakeholders, and maintain a focus on achieving goals and delivering value. Options B (Goes with the flow) and D (Assigns tasks) are less aligned with agile leadership, which emphasizes empowerment over task assignment and adaptability rather than passively following along.

Avalue streamin Disciplined Agile and Lean thinking is defined as the sequence of steps that an organization undertakes to deliver a product or service to customers. This encompasses all activities, from identifying customer needs to delivering the final product or service, and includes both value-adding and non-value-adding activities. The goal of managing a value stream is to optimize the flow of value to the customer by identifying and eliminating waste, improving efficiency, and enhancing overall effectiveness.

False: In a complex adaptive system, it is generally better to havepatterns of good practicesrather than one best practice. This is because complex systems are characterized by dynamic and unpredictable behavior, where a single best practice may not be applicable or effective in all situations. Instead, using a variety of good practices allows teams to adapt to changing conditions and choose the most appropriate approach for their specific context. Disciplined Agile promotes a flexible, context-driven approach to process decisions rather than a rigid adherence to one best practice.

The Continuous Delivery Lean life cycle is suitable when there is an experienced team working on a product or service where the requirements change frequently, potentially daily. This life cycle supports frequent deployments and quick feedback loops, making it ideal for environments where requirements are dynamic and evolve rapidly. Options A, D, and E do not align with the conditions that necessitate a Continuous Delivery Lean approach, as they involve either less experienced teams or slower-evolving requirements.

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 decision to keep a single Scrum team of 12 members, despite the increase in size, reflects the Disciplined Agile principle ofbeing pragmatic. This principle involves making context-sensitive decisions that balance competing priorities. In this case, although Scrum recommends smaller team sizes (ideally 10 or fewer), the team prioritized cohesiveness and delivery over strict adherence to the guideline. By being pragmatic, they chose an approach that best suits their current context and promotes better collaboration and productivity, even if it meant working with a slightly larger team. This decision also demonstrates a balance between adhering to best practices and adapting to the unique needs and dynamics of the team.

Reducing work-in-progress (WIP)is intended to increase focus, reduce lead time, and create a greater incentive to prioritize. It helps teams deliver value more quickly and efficiently by concentrating on fewer items at a time, minimizing context-switching, and reducing the chances of burnout.Option A isnota benefit of reducing WIP, as reducing WIP discourages multi-tasking between many high-priority items. In fact, reducing WIP aims to prevent multi-tasking, which is often counterproductive.

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.

Disciplined Agile (DA) is an agnostic hybrid approach that draws upon various ideas, principles, and practices from multiple agile and lean methodologies, including Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), Lean, and others. It does not adhere strictly to one methodology but instead provides a toolkit that allows teams to tailor their ways of working based on their specific context, objectives, and constraints. Options B (Agile), C (Iterative), and D (Lean) are more specific frameworks or approaches, whereas Disciplined Agile explicitly combines multiple methodologies in an agnostic manner.

The primary advantage of working in an Agile team, according to the PMI Disciplined Agile framework, is the ability to quickly adapt to changing customer needs (Option C). Agile teams emphasize flexibility, responsiveness, and continuous improvement, enabling them to respond effectively to feedback and evolving requirements. Options A, B, and D do not reflect the core value proposition of Agile. While agile teams may aim for timely delivery, specialization, andreduced customer intervention, their core strength lies in adaptability and responsiveness to change, ensuring that the product remains aligned with customer needs.

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A disadvantage of having afeature team(as opposed to component teams) is thetemptation to build everything from scratch. Feature teams are cross-functional teams that handle all aspects of delivering a customer-centric feature from end to end. This can sometimes lead to duplication of effort or reinventing existing components instead of reusing them, especially if the team lacks visibility or understanding of existing solutions.

Options A, B, and C are actually advantages of feature teams: they deliver complete features, reduce hand-offs, and require cross-functional skills.

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.

The Retrospective is an important agile ceremony because it provides a dedicated time for the team to reflect on their performance and processes, discuss what went well, what didn’t, and how they can improve moving forward. This continuous improvement mindset is central to agile methodologies, including Disciplined Agile (DA). It helps build a culture of transparency, trust, and learning. Option B is incorrect because the Product Owner is not the focus of the Retrospective. Options C and D do not describe the purpose of a Retrospective in agile practices.

In the context of the construction phase of a project, "Prove Architecture Early" is a relevant process goal. During this phase, it is critical to validate the chosen architecture to ensure that it will support the desired functionality and meet quality requirements. This goal focuses on reducing technical risks by building architectural spikes or prototypes to validate key architectural decisions. This helps the team confirm that the architecture is sound before investing heavily in development. Other options like "Explore Scope," "Develop Test Strategy," and "Form Team" are activities relevant to earlier phases (such as inception).

In Disciplined Agile, the responsibility for determining the "Way of Working" (WoW) falls primarily on the team members. Disciplined Agile promotes a self-organizing team structure, where team members collaboratively decide on the practices and processes they will use, tailored to their unique context. While roles such as the Product Owner or Team Lead may provide input or guidance, the decision is ultimately a team-driven process. This approach empowers teams to choose the most effective ways of working to meet their goals. Thus, "B. Team members" is the correct answer.

It is false to say that all the process goal diagrams need to be explored while determining the initial Way of Working (WoW). In Disciplined Agile (DA), teams are encouraged to focus on the most relevant process goals based on their specific context, objectives, and constraints. Exploring every possible process goal would be impractical and unnecessary; instead, the team should prioritize and tailor their WoW to address the most critical factors for their situation.

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The Disciplined Agile framework emphasizes that long-standing product teams are generally more effective than ad-hoc or project-based teams. This is because stable, cross-functional teams develop stronger relationships, improve collaboration, and build a deeper understanding of the product and customer needs over time. Long-standing teams can leverage their accumulated knowledge and experience, resulting in higher productivity and better quality outcomes. This aligns with the DA's principles of fostering team continuity and encouraging long-term team formation to improve agility and efficiency within organizations. The DA approach supports a team-based way of working rather than frequent team reorganization, which can disrupt team dynamics and reduce effectiveness.

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Disciplined Agile provides a solid foundation for business agility by (A) creating awesome teams that foster joy and (D) describing the trade-offs associated with a range of options. Creating awesome teams involves building a positive and productive team environment where team members are engaged, motivated, and empowered. Describing trade-offs allows teams to make informed decisions by understanding the implications of different practices and approaches. While "enforcing adherence to organizational standards" (C) and "defining a framework for agility at scale" (B) are part of Disciplined Agile, they are not specifically highlighted as primary ways DA fosters business agility.

A long-lived (stable) team is one that remains intact over multiple projects or iterations, allowing team members to develop strong relationships, trust, and a deep understanding of each other's skills and working styles. This stability leads to two key benefits:

Highly Collaborative:Stable teams develop effective communication and collaboration patterns, which enhance their ability to work together efficiently. They understand each other's strengths and weaknesses and can leverage this knowledge to optimize teamwork and problem-solving.

Trustworthy:Long-lived teams build trust over time, which is essential for open communication, risk-taking, and innovation. Trust enables team members to feel safe sharing their ideas and concerns, which leads to higher engagement, morale, and productivity.

Options A (Projectized) and B (Specifically resourced) are incorrect as they do not directly represent the benefits of having a stable team. Option E (Ability to multi-task) is less relevant, as Agile promotes focused work rather than multi-tasking.

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.

The Lean life-cycle model is based on a continuous flow of work. In Disciplined Agile, Lean focuses on minimizing waste, delivering value continuously, and optimizing the entire value stream. Unlike other models like Waterfall, which follow a sequential approach, or Agile models, which may focus on iterative increments, Lean emphasizes a smooth, steady flow of value to the customer. Continuous Delivery Agile also involves a continuous flow, but "Lean" specifically is the framework built around this concept. Therefore, "D. Lean" is the correct answer.

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.

In a Disciplined Agile team, the role of the team lead is not typically to make decisions on product priorities or the product roadmap. These responsibilities usually belong to the Product Owner, who represents the customer and stakeholders, prioritizes the backlog, and defines the product vision. The team lead's responsibilities include guiding the team through improvement actions (A), facilitating collaboration (B), and helping the team evolve their Way of Working (WoW) (D). Hence, "C. Providing timely decisions on priority and product roadmap" is not a role for the team lead.

The responsibility for choosing the team's lifecycle in Disciplined Agile (DA)depends on the context. DA promotes a context-driven approach where decisions are made based on the specific needs, objectives, and constraints of the team and the organization. In some cases, the team itself may choose the lifecycle that best fits its way of working. In other scenarios, the decision could be influenced by an Agile coach, team manager, or organizational guidelines. Therefore, it is not a one-size-fits-all answer, and the context determines who is best suited to make this decision.

The "Exploratory" lifecycle in Disciplined Agile (DA) is most suitable for a lean startup model that focuses on quickly validating ideas and narrowing down candidate projects to pursue. The Exploratory lifecycle is designed for situations where the primary goal is to learn and validate assumptions rapidly through experimentation and feedback. This aligns with the lean startup approach of testing hypotheses, iterating quickly, and adapting based on validated learning. Options A (Continuous delivery Agile), B (Agile), D (Lean), E (Continuous Delivery Lean), and F (Program) do not focus specifically on the rapid learning and experimentation phase that characterizes the lean startup model.

The PMI Disciplined Agile framework presents various process choices in a goal diagram to allow teams to select the most appropriate practices for their context. However, not all choices are suitable for every situation. The goal diagram illustrates multiple options to provide flexibility, but teams need to assess their specific circumstances, constraints, and goals to determine which process choices are viable. Therefore, it is true that not all process choices may be viable in a given situation.

The purpose of an iteration retrospective in Disciplined Agile (DA) is to reflect on the recent iteration and identify areas of improvement, successes, and challenges. The retrospective allows the team to transfer knowledge, insights, and process improvements to subsequent iterations, fostering continuous improvement. This helps the team become more effective and efficient over time.

Option B relates to a daily stand-up, Option C involves iteration planning, and Option D pertains to an iteration review or demo, not a retrospective.

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.

In Disciplined Agile,shared services teamsare not always based on specialization. While shared services teams often consist of specialists (e.g., security experts, database administrators), they can also be cross-functional teams that provide support across different disciplines. The key is that these teams provide services to multiple delivery teams, regardless of whether they are composed entirely of specialists.

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.

The three categories of process blades in Disciplined Agile (DA) are:

Disciplined DevOps:Focuses on integrating development and operations to streamline workflows, reduce bottlenecks, and ensure continuous delivery and deployment.

Disciplined Agile IT:Encompasses practices that support IT functions, such as Enterprise Architecture, Data Management, IT Governance, and IT Operations.

Disciplined Project Management Office (PMO):Provides strategic alignment, governance, and guidance to ensure that projects and initiatives align with organizational goals and deliver value.

Disciplined Agile Delivery (C) is a process blade itself, not a category, and Disciplined Kanban (D) is not a recognized process blade in DA.

Agile teams, as per the Disciplined Agile (DA) framework, can deliver non-software projects. The DA toolkit is designed to be adaptable and applies agile and lean principles to a wide range of business domains beyond software development. This flexibility allows agile teams to use iterative and incremental approaches to manage various types of projects, such as marketing campaigns, event planning, and other organizational initiatives. Thus, it aligns with the PMI's stance that agility can benefit all types of projects, not just software-focused ones.

Disciplined Agile (DA) is described as a process-decision toolkit that provides tailored guidance to help teams and organizations optimize their way of working in a context-sensitive manner. Unlike a rigid methodology, DA offers flexibility by allowing teams to choose from a variety of agile, lean, and traditional practices that best fit their situation. DA emphasizes that there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach; rather, it empowers teams to make informed decisions based on their specific needs and circumstances. Option A focuses on project alignment, which is only one aspect of DA. Options C and D do not accurately reflect the comprehensive, adaptive nature of DA as a toolkit designed for broad applicability.

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The statement isfalse. In Disciplined Agile (DA), organizations are considered complex adaptive systems, meaning they require adaptive, decentralized, and bottom-up governance approaches rather than rigid, top-down control. Teams are encouraged to be self-organizing and empowered to make decisions that align with their context and the organization's goals. Top-down governance can be too rigid and may stifle innovation, agility, and responsiveness.

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.

The "Plan the Release" process goal in Disciplined Agile is most likely to offer potential techniques for providing a cost estimate for the project while recognizing that requirements will evolve over time. This goal involves determining the scope of the release, estimating the effort and cost, and planning for future iterations. It accounts for the fact that Agile teams work in environments of uncertainty and helps them create realistic plans that can adapt as requirements change. Options A (Project Management), C (Explore Scope), and D (Address Changing Stakeholder Needs) are relevant for Agile projects, but "Plan the Release" specifically focuses on creating estimates and planning in an Agile context.

The Disciplined Agile principles that best address the need to consider the bigger picture areEnterprise AwarenessandContext Counts.

Enterprise Awarenessensures that teams understand how their work fits within the broader organizational context, including alignment with corporate objectives, policies, and other teams. This principle encourages teams to think beyond their immediate tasks and consider the overall goals and constraints of the organization.

Context Countsemphasizes that the approach to work should be tailored to the specific situation and environment. It promotes the idea that different contexts require different strategies, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Both principles encourage a holistic view that considers the larger organizational and environmental factors influencing team decisions.

The Kaizen feedback loop, which is an important concept in Lean and Agile practices, can be summarized as "Plan, Do, Study, Act" (PDSA). This cycle is fundamental to continuous improvement (Kaizen) and is used to iteratively improve processes and products. "Plan" involves identifying a goal or a change to implement; "Do" means implementing the change; "Study" refers to analyzing the results and understanding the impact of the change; and "Act" is about making necessary adjustments or standardizing the change if it is successful. Options A, B, and C do not accurately reflect the PDSA cycle as recognized in Disciplined Agile and Lean methodologies.

"Develop test strategy" is a process goal within the Construction phase of the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) framework. The Construction phase is where the team actively builds the solution incrementally, and developing a test strategy is critical to ensure that the product meets quality standards and stakeholder expectations. Other options like "Explore scope" (Option A), "Prove architecture early" (Option C), and "Form team" (Option D) are associated with the Inception phase, while "Ensure production readiness" (Option E) relates to the Transition phase.

In the Disciplined Agile framework, the principle of "Context Counts" emphasizes the importance of tailoring practices to fit the specific situation or context of the team. In this scenario,the team decided to skip the daily standup meetings because they were co-located, and the meetings were not adding value. This is an example of making a context-specific decision based on the team's unique circumstances, which aligns with the DA principle of "Context Counts." Options A (Being awesome), B (Enterprise awareness), and D (Choice is good) do not accurately capture the rationale behind the decision to modify the practice based on context.

In Disciplined Agile, the daily huddle or daily stand-up is referred to as a "coordination meeting." The purpose of this meeting is to allow the team members to coordinate their work, identify any impediments, and align their activities to meet the team’s goals. This term emphasizes the focus on coordinating efforts rather than simply following a ritual. Unlike a "daily meeting" (A), "Scrum meeting" (C), or "Sprint review" (D), the coordination meeting is specifically about the daily alignment and coordination, not about reviewing or planning the work in detail.

Yes: In a complex adaptive system, understanding the individual parts does not automatically convey a perfect understanding of the whole system's behavior. Complex adaptive systems, such as those found in Agile development environments, are characterized by intricate interdependencies and dynamic interactions among components. The behavior of the system as a whole emerges from these interactions, and cannot be fully predicted or understood solely by analyzing the individual parts. This is why Disciplined Agile encourages looking at the bigger picture and understanding how different elements influence each other within the larger organizational context.

In the PMI Disciplined Agile framework, the timely delivery of the product as committed is ultimately the responsibility of the entire team. While the Product Owner (Option A) provides direction and prioritization of work, and the Team Lead (Option B) facilitates the process, it is the collective responsibility of the Team Members (Option C) to deliver the product incrementally and meet commitments. Agile teams operate under the principle of shared responsibility and accountability for outcomes, meaning every team member contributes to the delivery process. Other roles, such as Gold User (Option D) and Architecture Owner (Option E), have specific responsibilities but are not accountable for the delivery timeline.

The process goal "Improve Quality" is most likely to offer potential techniques for addressing technical debt. Disciplined Agile encourages teams to continuously improve the quality of their deliverables, and one of the key aspects of improving quality is to manage and reduce technicaldebt. Techniques under this process goal include refactoring, applying test automation, and implementing continuous integration practices, all of which help address existing technical debt in a structured manner.

The first step in deciding the team's way of working (WoW) in Disciplined Agile is toanalyze the context. Understanding the context includes assessing the team's current situation, the organization's culture, available skills, tools, stakeholder expectations, and project goals. This analysis helps determine which practices, tools, and techniques are most appropriate for the team’s unique environment. Based on this understanding, the team can make informed decisions on their WoW.

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.

When introducing new features to a large, existing product, the product team should employ the Minimum Business Increment (MBI) technique. In the Disciplined Agile (DA) framework, an MBI is a small, releasable component that delivers recognizable business value to a customer or user. Unlike a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), which is often used for new products or market exploration, an MBI is suitable for incrementally enhancing existing products by delivering value in manageable pieces. This approach allows teams to release new features more frequently and receive feedback more rapidly, helping them to prioritize future work based on actual customer and business needs. Continuous Integration (A) is a practice of merging code frequently to prevent integration issues, while Pull System (B) is related to Lean practices of managing work in progress. MVP (D) is generally used for launching new products rather than adding to an existing one.

A team should consider entering the transition phase when the product meets all stakeholder expectations. In Disciplined Agile, the transition phase involves finalizing the product or solution for release. This phase is initiated when the product is deemed ready and all necessary criteria, including stakeholder expectations, have been fulfilled. Options A (new MBI developed), C (operational teams ready), and D (MVP ready) may be relevant in other contexts but do not specifically trigger the transition phase.