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Quiz Session - Attempts With Random Questions

PMI-ACP Exam Questions

Page 3 of 25

41.

The Scrum Master has decided that he will provide recognition to those that find the most defects in the product. However, the testing team is dedicated to testing the product and identifying bugs. What is this an example of?

  • Zero-sum reward

  • Win-win

  • Compromise

  • Negative sum

Correct answer: Zero-sum reward

In a zero-sum game there will always be one person or group winning. Such an environment is not effective for negotiation and should be avoided.

In a win-win situation, everyone wins, which promotes satisfaction. Compromise is when one or more parties give up part or all of what they want to reach agreement in a negotiation. This approach does not promote fulfillment. A negative sum is a situation where the winnings are reduced and both parties struggle to take some part or all of the diminishing returns.

42.

All the following contracts are used in Agile projects, except:

  • Fixed-price incentive fee

  • DSDM contract

  • Graduated fixed-price contract

  • Fixed-price work package

Correct answer: Fixed-price incentive fee

The fixed-price incentive fee is not used due to its predictive nature. In this contract, the seller is offered a performance incentive. The incentive depends on one or more project metrics such as performance, cost, or time.

DSDM contracts are characterized by never compromising the quality of the product and by focusing on payment based on passing product inspection or testing. They also aim to accomplish the work within the time and money constraints defined in the project.

Graduated fixed-price contracts share the risk load between the parties, providing incentives for early completion of work. It is common for graduated fixed-price contracts also to punish the vendor if the work is late.

Fixed-price work packages break down the work into sizable work packages with a fixed price associated with them. The customer can then re-prioritize the work packages as requirements change, and the supplier can readjust the cost of the work packages as more information is available about the work. This helps both parties stay flexible throughout the Agile project.

43.

The two axes used to map out the performance of deliverables in the Kano analysis are:

  • customer satisfaction and degree of achievement

  • customer satisfaction and time

  • story points and degree of achievement

  • velocity and story points

Correct answer: customer satisfaction and degree of achievement

The Kano analysis is a technique to classify customer preferences into the following categories: Exciters or delighters, satisfiers, dissatisfiers, and indifferent. The two axes of the Kano analysis are customer satisfaction and degree of achievement.

44.

A project team has decided that they will be using metaphors, refactoring, and code standards from XP within the software team to build the product alongside Scrum ceremonies to manage the project. What kind of methodology is being used for this project?

  • Agile-Agile hybrid methodology

  • Traditional methodology

  • Agile methodology

  • Agile-Traditional hybrid methodology

Correct answer: Agile-Agile hybrid methodology

A hybrid methodology is an approach to customize how the project will be implemented. There are two hybrid models:

  • Agile-Agile hybrid: Uses two Agile approaches in a single project. For example: Scrum and XP
  • Agile-Traditional hybrid: Uses an Agile approach in combination with traditional project management

Traditional project methodologies are used in sequential type projects where all requirements are well understood at the beginning of the project.

Agile project methodologies are used when requirements are not well understood and there is room to innovate on the solution. They are characterized by short iterations that create product value incrementally.

In this scenario, this project is using an Agile-Agile hybrid approach because it is using XP and Scrum approaches.

45.

Maddie is using some EVM calculations to measure the budget performance of her Agile project. She notes that CV is equal to -$40,000. What does this metric mean for Maddie’s project? 

  • The cost variance indicates more is spent than the value obtained.

  • The cost variance indicates the project is on budget.

  • The cost variance indicates the project is under budget.

  • The cost variance indicates less is spent than the value obtained.

Correct answer: The cost variance indicates more is spent than the value obtained.

Cost variance (CV) measures the cost performance of the project by subtracting the actual cost from the earned value. A negative cost variance indicates that the project is over budget. The value of the negative cost variance shows how much more we are paying for the value received from the work being done. Maddie’s project has spent $40,000 more than what the work that the development team has completed is worth.

46.

Two stakeholders do not want to attend the upcoming team meeting. At the last meeting, it was unclear to them why they needed to attend in the first place. They approach the session facilitator to voice their concerns. 

What should the meeting facilitator change to improve this situation?

  • Establish a goal for the session by setting a clear agenda ahead of time

  • Set basic ground rules for the team to follow

  • Take detailed meeting notes to be sent after the session

  • Never go beyond the scheduled time

Correct answer: Establish a goal for the session by setting a clear agenda ahead of time

In facilitation, it is important to set clear goals for each session so people can stay engaged and come prepared to contribute. This way, the participants will know why they are being asked to join the session and the goals they are driving toward. If the meeting ends up being an open-ended conversation, it will feel like the session is getting sidetracked all the time, and participants will feel they are wasting time.

Attending a call for a stakeholder, though recommended, is not part of the ground rules, especially if they don't have a specific task assigned to them.

Taking detailed meeting notes is recommended but not something the facilitator can use to enroll stakeholders to keep attending the meetings.

Adhering to the allotted time is recommended and encouraged, but it is not a way the facilitator can have stakeholders attend the meetings.

47.

In what Scrum ceremony does the Scrum team review and prioritize the product backlog? 

  • Backlog refinement 

  • Sprint planning 

  • Daily Scrum 

  • Sprint retrospective 

Correct answer: Backlog refinement

During the backlog refinement meeting, the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development team get together to review and prioritize the items in the backlog. This process is called “grooming.”

48.

You have been hired as a Scrum master for a software development project. What would be one of your main responsibilities in this role?

  • Remove barriers to the team’s progress

  • Determine whether the product increment is working as expected

  • Write acceptance tests for the product increment

  • Change the product features and their priorities

Correct answer: Remove barriers to the team’s progress

The Scrum master is in charge of serving the development team as a coach to guide the team’s Agile practices. The Scrum master also helps remove barriers to progress and facilitates meetings, enabling the development team to focus on its work.

Determining whether the product increment is working as expected falls under the product owner's role, who is responsible for ensuring that the product increment meets the customer's needs and is of high quality.

Writing acceptance tests for the product increment falls under the development team's role, which is responsible for creating and testing the product increment.

Changing the product features and their priorities falls under the product owner's role, who is responsible for managing the product backlog and determining the priorities of the product features.

49.

In an Agile project team, a developer has finished his code well ahead of the sprint deadline. He is confident his code does not need to be tested by the assigned testers since he tested it himself using test-driven development. In the past, the testing team kept asking him questions during testing, which he now hopes to avoid by excluding them. He decides to call it done at the next daily stand-up and not even mention that the testing team did not test his code. 

What team dysfunction is exemplified in this scenario?

  • Absence of trust

  • Inattention to results

  • Lack of commitment 

  • Avoidance of accountability

Correct answer: Absence of trust

Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, lists the following as major dysfunctions that diminish team performance:

  • Absence of trust: Team members show unwillingness to be open and transparent to the group.
  • Fear of conflict: The team prefers to fake harmony over argument and debate.
  • Lack of commitment: Team members are not bought into the team’s decisions.
  • Avoidance of accountability: Team members do not call out inappropriate behavior or low standards from another teammate.
  • Inattention to results: Personal needs take precedence over the team’s success.

In this scenario, the developer excludes the testing team from testing his code. His testing is one-sided since he also coded the software. The developer does not trust that the testing team will find bugs in the code and even decides not to mention it to the wider group in the next daily stand-up.

50.

Agile modeling is also known as what? 

  • Barely sufficient

  • Thumbs up/down/sideways

  • Simple voting

  • Convergence

Correct answer: Barely sufficient

Agile modeling allows teams to set an initial take on paper to understand the deeper issues and conduct deep dives into what matters. It's a first-take approach in which teams can reflect on the project challenges. The value of Agile modeling lies in creation, not preservation.

The thumbs up/down/sideways participatory decision model asks each member of the group to hold their thumbs up, down, or sideways to signal approval, rejection, or inability to make up their minds.

A simple voting approach is a participatory decision model where we ask the team to vote for or against an idea. Although it helps determine the team’s preference quickly, it prevents the team from identifying better alternatives since there is no opportunity for the team to delve into other options.

Convergence is a participatory decision model where the group discusses all options openly, seeking to converge on the best answer together.

51.

Which of the following is not an activity typically used to set the stage during a team retrospective?

  • Triple nickels

  • Check-in

  • ESVP

  • Working agreements

Correct answer: Triple nickels

Agile retrospectives or intraspectives are facilitated meetings to inspect and find areas of improvement within an iteration or project. An Agile retrospective has the following five stages:

  • Set the stage
  • Gather data
  • Generate insights
  • Decide what to do
  • Close the retrospective

Activities that can help set the stage during a retrospective include check-in, focus on/focus off, ESVP, and working agreements.

Triple nickels is a data-gathering exercise on a specific topic. This activity can be used in the gather data stage of an Agile retrospective.

52.

A Scrum master is holding a session with the team members to gather work estimates to include in an upcoming sprint. Before a final estimate is put on paper, the estimates are discussed extensively to find the best approach. 

What is this approach called in participatory decision-making models?

  • Convergence

  • Shared collaboration  

  • Command-and-control

  • Participation

Correct answer: Convergence

There are two participatory decision-making models:

  • Convergence: The group discusses all options openly, seeking to converge on the best approach together.
  • Shared collaboration: Various techniques are used to avoid bias toward the group's opinions. The goal is to reach a decision by making the process fair.

In this scenario, the group openly discusses the estimates given by team members, trying to reach a consensus on the best answer.

Command-and-control is an approach where the higher-level person directs the group to do as commanded.

Participation is included in all the participatory decision-making models.

53.

Which of the following is a good example of noise in a communication model?

  • A few sentences in an e-mail that were deleted by mistake

  • An e-mail system sending the message

  • A modem in a network configuration

  • An unsecured network connection

Correct answer: A few sentences in an e-mail that were deleted by mistake

Noise in a communication model is anything that disrupts the communication between parties. Noise could be caused by reasons related to the environment, semantics, cultural, organizational, syntactical, etc.

An e-mail system sending a message represents an encoder in a communication model. A modem by itself in a network configuration does not represent noise in a communication model. An unsecured network connection does not represent noise. A few sentences in an e-mail that were deleted by mistake could represent noise because it could impair the receiver from understanding the message.

54.

Mariah is the project manager for an Agile project that utilizes an external vendor to produce key project work. She is reviewing the contract signed with the vendor six months ago. She notices that the payments to the vendor depend on when the increment is completed. Early delivery pays $120 per hour, on-time delivery pays $100 per hour, and late delivery pays $80 per hour. What kind of Agile contract is being used for this project? 

  • Graduated fixed-price contract

  • Fixed-price work packages

  • Customized contract

  • DSDM

Correct answer: Graduated fixed-price contract

Graduated fixed-price contracts share the risk load between the parties, providing incentives for early completion of work. It is common for graduated fixed-price contracts to also punish the vendor if the work is late.

Fixed-price work packages break down the work into sizable work packages with a fixed price associated with them. The customer can then re-prioritize the work packages as requirements change and the supplier can readjust the cost of the work packages as more is known about the work. This helps both parties stay flexible throughout the Agile project.

Customized contracts vary depending on how the supplier and customer piece together the contract using various parts of other types of contracts, such as DSDM, graduated fixed-price contracts, etc.

DSDM contracts are characterized by never compromising the quality of the product by focusing on payment based on passing product inspection or testing.

55.

The walking skeleton in story maps represents which of the following?

  • Describes the minimum functionality that will satisfy the customer’s most basic needs

  • Describes the main functions of features needed for the overall system to work

  • Describes the user stories developed for that specific feature

  • Represents a usage sequence for the overall product

Correct answer: Describes the minimum functionality that will satisfy the customer’s most basic needs

Story maps are a high-level planning tool to map out the project priorities early in the project. It includes product features at a high level and the user stories underneath the features in descending order of priority. The components of a story map are:

  • Backbone: Describes the main functions of features needed for the overall system to work.
  • Walking skeleton: Describes the minimum functionality that will satisfy the customer’s most basic needs.
  • User stories: Provides the smallest sized narrative that describes the work item to be added to the product increment.

The correct answer is the walking skeleton.

56.

You are a Kanban coach who has come to review the Kanban board of a team in your organization. The project manager has set WIP limits that are visible on the board. No more than four tasks can be “In Progress” at all times. The project manager mentions that this will allow all four team members to be utilized 100% of the time. 

What is the most likely observation you would make about this Kanban project?

  • The aim of WIP is not to optimize resource utilization but work throughput.

  • The project will need five tasks instead of four to utilize resources.

  • The WIP needs to be reduced to increase resource utilization.

  • The WIP should be put on hold to measure the constraints in the system.

Correct answer: The aim of WIP is not to optimize resource utilization but work throughput.

Work in progress (WIP) is a term used in Kanban for work that has started but has not yet been completed. WIP needs to be limited in the workflow because it can hide bottlenecks or constraints in the system, hide risks, and keep work in progress from materializing. There is a misconception that the objective of WIP limits is to optimize resource utilization so team members are busy working at all times. WIP limits seek to optimize work throughput so things don’t get stuck in progress. 

The number of tasks based on the number of resources in the team is irrelevant.

WIP should never be put on hold because WIP represents an unrealized return on investment. The sooner it gets done, the better.

WIP size does not affect resource utilization.

57.

An Agile team is drawing a diagram on the whiteboard to examine the root cause of issues that arose during the iteration. What is the name of the exercise that takes place during the generate insights phase of a retrospective?

  • Fishbone analysis

  • Brainstorming

  • Five Whys

  • Identify themes

Correct answer: Fishbone analysis

Agile retrospectives or intraspectives are facilitated meetings to inspect and find areas of improvement within an iteration or project. An Agile retrospective has the following five stages:

  • Set the stage
  • Gather data
  • Generate insights
  • Decide what to do
  • Close the retrospective

Activities that can help gather data during a retrospective include:

  • Brainstorming: The team meets to generate a long list of ideas.
  • Fishbone analysis: A visual diagramming tool to analyze the root cause of a problem.
  • Identify themes: The team identifies recurring patterns
  • Five Whys: The team asks "why" five times to identify the root cause of the issue.

In this scenario, this team is using the Fishbone analysis diagramming tool during the generate insights phase of the retrospective.

58.

A Scrum master started the meeting right at 5:30 pm, as agreed in the first meeting held before the first sprint. What is this scenario an example of?

  • Enforcing ground rules

  • Resolving conflict

  • Facilitating a workshop

  • Making effective decisions

Correct answer: Enforcing ground rules

Ground rules help the team agree on how to operate more effectively as a group. The facilitator is responsible for enforcing these rules throughout the engagement. In this scenario, when the team first got together, they agreed on the team ground rules, including starting the meeting on time.

There is no conflict to be solved, and the intent of the meeting is not clear. There is no specific decision being made. 

59.

The Scrum Master is leading a session to gather requirements from stakeholders. He observes that some members of the group are very quiet and distracted while others are very engaged, blurting out their ideas often. The Scrum Master writes the ideas received but wonders if there is a more collaborative way to elicit these ideas from the group. What collaboration game could the Scrum Master use in this instance?

  • Prune the Product Tree

  • Personas

  • Highsmith Decision Spectrum

  • Fist-of-Five

Correct answer: Prune the Product Tree

Collaboration or innovation games are facilitated workshops used with Agile teams to explore topics for discussion looking for consensus. Prune the Product Tree is a collaboration game that helps stakeholders gather and refine requirements.

Personas are profile-type documents that outline key stakeholder values and interests. This helps the development team focus on and empathize with the end-user.

The Highsmith Decision Spectrum is a participatory decision model where voters indicate how they feel about an idea by placing a check mark next to a value in a range of options ranging from “In favor” on one extreme, to “Veto” on the other. This approach gives the opportunity for people to explain their selection to the group.

The Fist-of-Five voting method in participatory decision models asks group members to show their degree of agreement by showing the number of fingers that indicates their support. One finger up indicates total support of the decision and all five fingers up indicates complete opposition.

60.

Luis is looking at some financial metrics for his project. He wants to calculate the value equivalent to the amount of work completed to date. Which EVM metric should he be looking at?

  • Earned value (EV)

  • Actual cost (AC)

  • Schedule variance (SV)

  • Planned value (PV)

Correct answer: Earned value (EV)

Earned value (EV) represents the amount of work completed to date. It can be calculated by multiplying the percent complete times the budget at completion (BAC).

Planned value (PV) indicates the percent complete per the plan. In reality, the project may be ahead or behind, but PV will indicate where it should be. It is calculated by multiplying the percent planned times the budget at completion (BAC). The actual cost is the actual amount of money spent on the project up to this point. The schedule variance (SV) is the subtraction of PV from EV. This indicates whether the project is on time or behind schedule.

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