Safe Agile Certification Questions And Answers

Question: House of Lean
Answer: Goal: Value Foundation: Leadership, Respect for People and Culture, Development Flow, Innovation, Relentless Improvement
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Question: Lean Goal
Answer: Speed, quality, value. sustainably shorted lead time, best quality and value to people and society, most customer delight, lowest cost, high morale, safety
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Question: Respect for People
Answer: Lean principle, your customer is whoever consumes your work. Develop individuals and teams, empower teams, build partnerships based on trust and mutual respect
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Question: Kaizen
Answer: Lean principle,. We can do better.Reflection, continuous improvement as an enterprise value
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Question: Leadership
Answer: Lean foundation, management is trained, take responsibility, develop people
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Question: Product development flow
Answer: Lean principle. 1. Take an economic view. 2. Actively manage queues. 3. Understand and exploit variability. 4. Reduce batch sizes. 5. Apply WIP constraints. 6. Control flow under uncertainty; cadence and synchronization. 7. Get feedback as fast as possible. 8. Decentralized control
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Question: Take an economic view
Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #1. Base your decisions on economics. The goal is to optimize the time from concept to cash
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Question: Actively manage queues
Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #2. Understand Little's Law. Control wait times by controlling queue lengths
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Question: Understand and exploit variability
Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #3. Risk taking is central to value creation
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Question: Reduce Batch Size
Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #4. Smaller batches go through the system faster, with lower variability and risk. Large batch sizes and high utilization increase variability, causing project slippage. Co-location and good infrastructure enable small batches
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Question: Apply WIP constraints
Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #5. WIP constraints force capacity matching, increases flow. Time box, purge lower value projects when WIP is too high, constrain local WIP pools, make WIP continuously visible. High WIP and utilization cause reduction throughput
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Question: Control flow under uncertainty
Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #6. Cadence + Synchronization. Cadence transforms unpredictable events into predictable events, requires scope or capacity margin, makes waiting times predictable, helps manage load by limiting available time. Regular systemwide integration provides higher fidelity tests and objective solution assessment
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Question: Get fast feedback
Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #7. Product development is the process of converting uncertainty to knowledge. Fast feedback accelerates knowledge
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Question: Decentralized control
Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #8. Centralize control for decisions that are infrequent and can be applied globally, have significant economies of scale or high-risk. Decentralized control for time critical, local decisions
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Question: Planning is for alignment
Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #9. There is more value created with overall alignment than with local excellence. Agile aims to change the plan when something changes
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Question: Agile values: Individuals and interactions
Answer: Over processes and tools
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Question: Agile values: working software
Answer: Over comprehensive documentation
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Question: Agile values: customer collaboration
Answer: Over contract negotiation
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Question: Agile values: responding to change
Answer: Over following a plan
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Question: Agile drivers in the triangle.
Answer: Value and quality driven, the vision creates feature estimates, fix the dates and float the scope
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Question: Agile benefits
Answer: Early value delivery drives first to market, fast feedback, profitability, makes money faster, reduces risk, delivers better fit for purpose
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Question: SAFe core values
Answer: Alignment, Code quality, Transparency, program execution
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Question: Four SAFe business results
Answer: Increased employee engagement, 20-50% increase in productivity, 30-70% faster time to market, 50% defect reduction
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Question: Describe an Agile team
Answer: Empowered, self organizing, self managing, cross functional, deliver fully tested code every two weeks
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Question: How does an Agile team deliver value?
Answer: In user stories
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Question: Describe a SAFe team that is scaled to program level
Answer: Self organizing, self managing team of Agile teams, continuous value delivery, aligned to a common mission via a single program backlog
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Question: How do program level safe teams deliver value?
Answer: In features and benefits
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Question: Describe how SAFe is scaled to the portfolio level.
Answer: Using Lean approaches to strategy and investment funding, program management, and governance. Centralized strategy and decentralized execution. Objective metrics support governance and kaizen
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Question: How does portfolio level SAFe deliver value?
Answer: In business and architectural epics
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Question: What is the product owner's content authority?
Answer: User stories
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Question: What is product management content authority?
Answer: Features
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Question: What is the typical ratio of product management to product owners?
Answer: One PM to four PO
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Question: What is the typical size of an Agile Release Train
Answer: 5-12 teams 50-125 people
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Question: What is the typical ART program increment time box?
Answer: 10 weeks
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Question: What are the shared teams in Agile Release Train?
Answer: DevOps, UX, System Architect, RTE
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Question: How often is the team demo in the ART?
Answer: Every two weeks
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Question: How often is the inspect and adapt in an ART?
Answer: Every 10 weeks
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Question: What makes a good Agile team?
Answer: They are independent, cross functional, self organizing, self managing, define, build, test code, optimized for communication to deliver value every two weeks. Team size 7 +/- 2
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Question: What are the Agile team Product Owner responsibilities?
Answer: Define and accept stories, act as the customer for developer questions, work with product management to plan releases
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Question: What are the developer or tester responsibilities in the Agile team?
Answer: Create and refine user stories and acceptance criteria, define - build - test and deliver stories, develop and commit to team PI objectives and Sprint plans
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Question: What is the Release Train Engineer's role in ART?
Answer: The Chief Scrum Master for the train.
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Question: What is Product Management's role in the ART?
Answer: Own, define,and prioritize the Program Backlog
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Question: What is the System's Architect role in ART?
Answer: Provide architectural guidance and technical enablement to the teams on the train.
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Question: What is the Systems team role in the Art?
Answer: Provide process and tools to integrate and evaluate assets early and often
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Answer: The key stakeholders on the Agile Release Train
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Question: What is the ART program vision?
Answer: Expresses strategic intent, may be expressed in a variety of forms.
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Question: What is the ART roadmap?
Answer: Series of features and planned release dates. commitment is made only to the next release. Subsequent releases are best estimates.
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Question: What is the function of features in the program backlog?
Answer: Features are those behaviors of the system that directly fulfill some user need.
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Question: What do the estimates in the program backlog mean?
Answer: They are only estimates and do not imply committed delivery
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Question: What is the key driver for the Team backlog?
Answer: Program priorities
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Question: What are Spikes?
Answer: Could be technical spikes or functional spikes. Can be used for analysis, design out to try to type an idea. Spikes are demonstrable like any other story and included in the demo
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Question: What does a story point represent?
Answer: Single number for volume, complexity, knowledge, uncertainty
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Question: Is ART cadence without synchronization enough?
Answer: No. Synchronize with cadenence to assure delivery.
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Question: Does ART value follow organizational silos?
Answer: No. ART is based on cross-functional, self organized teams that define, build and test a feature to deliver value
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Question: What is estimating poker?
Answer: Estimating poker combines expert opinion, analogy, and disaggregation for quick but reliable estimates
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Question: Who are included in estimating poker?
Answer: Team members. The PO participates but does not estimate
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Question: What are the benefits of estimating in the team?
Answer: Increases accuracy by including all perspectives, builds understanding, creates shared commitment
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Question: Who should not create estimates for the team backlog?
Answer: Managers, Architect, Select Group
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Question: What is normalized estimation?
Answer: Normalized story point estimating provides the economic basis for estimating work within and across programs
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Question: Are defects estimated?
Answer: Yes. Defects are included in the team backlog
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Question: What is release planning?
Answer: Cadence based release planning meetings are the pacemaker of the Agile Enterprise
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Question: How often is release planning done for ART?
Answer: Every 8-12 weeks
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Question: How long is the release planning meeting for ART?
Answer: Two days
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Question: Who owns the feature priorities in the ART release planning?
Answer: Program Management
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Question: Who owns the story planning and high level estimates in the ART release planning?
Answer: Development team
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Question: Who are the intermediaries for governance, interfaces, and dependencies in the ART release planning?
Answer: Architects and UX
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Question: What is the result of the ART release planning meeting?
Answer: A committed set of program objectives for the next PI
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Question: What are the inputs to the ART release planning process?
Answer: Vision and top ten features
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Question: What are the outputs from the ART release planning process?
Answer: Team and PI objectives, and program board
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Question: What does the program board visualize?
Answer: Program board visualizes Features, WIP, dependencies divided into sprints by team
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Question: What are objectives?
Answer: Brief summaries in business terms of what each team intends to deliver in the upcoming PI
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Question: How can we align to a mission in the release planning?
Answer: Using PI objectives we can align to a mission
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Question: What are team's PI objectives?
Answer: Team PI Objectives often will map directly to the features but not always
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Question: Team objectives
Answer: Features, aggregation of a set of features, milestones, architectural feature, major refactoring
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Question: What are stretch objectives?
Answer: They provide reliability and guard bandwidth
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Question: Are stretch objectives included in the commitment?
Answer: No. This makes it more reliable. Unknowns should be moved here
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Question: What is the single most important goal of the release planning event?
Answer: Alignment is the single most imports oak of the release planning event
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Question: Who facilitates and kicks off the release planning event?
Answer: Release Train Engineer
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Question: Who represents the business context in the release planning event?
Answer: The Executive
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Question: Who presents the vision, feature and benefits in the release planning event?
Answer: Program Manager
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Question: Who presents the SWOT in the release planning event?
Answer: The Executive
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Question: Who gives the planning guidance in the release planning event?
Answer: Release Train Engineer
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Question: Who conducts the SoS in the release planning event?
Answer: Release Train Engineer
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Question: What is ROAM?
Answer: Addressing. Program risks: Resopved, Owned, Accepted, Mitigated
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Question: What is the last activity of release planning day 1?
Answer: Management review and problem solving
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Question: What does release planning Management review and problem solving include?
Answer: Make adjustments to scope and objectives
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Question: What are the possible changes presented in the release planning day first session?
Answer: Changes t o business priorities, plan, scope, movement of stories or people
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Question: What do business owners do in the team breakout 2 of release planning?
Answer: Assign business value to release objectives
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Question: What happens in day 2 - during the am breakout #2?
Answer: Business Owner adding business value to release objectives, team finalize PI plan, consolidates program risks, impediments and dependencies, and stretch objectives
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Question: What is the final plan review - in release planning day 2?
Answer: Teams and Business Owner peer review all final plans
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Question: What is included in the final plan review agenda?
Answer: Changes to velocity nod load, final PI objectives with business value, program risk and impediments, Q&A
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Question: What happens after all PI release plans have been presented?
Answer: Review of the remaining program risks and impediments
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Question: What is release planning. Confidence vote?
Answer: Fist of five for hitting objectives
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Question: What is the last activity of release planning day 2?
Answer: Retrospective
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Question: What is the vision?
Answer: It communicates strategic intent
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Question: What is the content vision?
Answer: Where are we headed with this solution, what problem does it solve, features and benefits, to who, NFR
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Question: What are common formats for the vision?
Answer: Rolling wave briefings, vision doc, preliminary data sheet, draft press release
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Question: What are sources for vision
Answer: Strategic themes, portfolio backlog, customer, PM, architect and team input
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Question: What is a roadmap?
Answer: It guides the delivery of features over time
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Question: What are program epics?
Answer: They carry large initiatives into program backlog split portfolio epics for implementation
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Question: How are Program Epics handled?
Answer: They are split into features in the program backlog. May require budget approval and lightweight business case
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Question: How is portfolio epic implemented?
Answer: Via one or more ARTs
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Question: How is Program Epic implementes
Answer: via one ART. Can be multi PI
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Question: What are the sources of Program Epics?
Answer: Portfolio epics, large local team scope
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Question: What are features?
Answer: Behaviors of the system that directly fulfill some user need
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Question: How is a feature expressed?
Answer: As a phrase
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Question: How is value expressed?
Answer: In terms of benefits
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Question: How are features handled?
Answer: They are identified, prioritized, estimated, and maintained on the program backlog
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Question: How do features deliver?
Answer: Business benefits
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Question: What is feature acceptance criteria?
Answer: Used to prove the value is there
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Question: What do business benefits impact?
Answer: Economic prioritization of the feature, and are consist met with key strategic themes
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Question: When is acceptance criteria defined?
Answer: During program backlog refinement
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Question: Why does acceptance criteria contain?
Answer: They reflect functional requirements and system qualities
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Question: What is the key to economic outcomes in a flow system?
Answer: Job sequencing
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Question: If you only quantify one thing quantify?
Answer: Cost of delay
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Question: To prioritize based on Lean economics we need to know two things that are?
Answer: Cost of Delay and what is the cost to implement the valuable thing
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Question: How do you prioritize features for optimal ROI?
Answer: Using WSJF
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Question: What is WSJF?
Answer: Weighted Shortest Job First
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Answer: Do the shortest job first
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Answer: Do the highest CoD first
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Answer: Do the WSJF first
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Question: Formula for WSJF?
Answer: COD / Duration (job size)
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Question: What are the components of CoD?
Answer: Business value, Time critically, Risk reduction
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Question: How to estimate the components of CoD?
Answer: Involve the team, use modified Fibonacci, give always 1 value first in the column
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Question: How are program backlog features prioritized?
Answer: Using WSJF
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Question: What is Agile Architecture?
Answer: Every team deserves to see the big picture, and are empowered to design their part
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Question: Principles of Agile Architecture?
Answer: Emergent design, intentional architecture, architectural runway
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Question: What is emergent design?
Answer: Teams grow the system design as user stories require
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Question: What is intentional architecture?
Answer: It fosters team alignment and defines architectural runway
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Question: What is Architectural Runway?
Answer: Existing code is ready to immediately support new functionality
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Question: What is used to support architectural decisions?
Answer: Prototyping and modeling
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Question: Where is the architectural runway located in SAFe?
Answer: At the boundary on the program level
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Question: What builds up the architectural runway?
Answer: Architectural features
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Question: What consumes the Architectural runway?
Answer: Business features
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Question: Define decentralized architectural decision making
Answer: It supports emergent design intentionally
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Question: What is systems architect role in decentralized architectural decision making?
Answer: General guidance, system level constraints, integrity, maintainability, avoid duplication
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Question: What is the Team role in decentralized decision making?
Answer: Emergent design, development contributes runway, improve refactoring techniques
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Question: What is refactoring?
Answer: Improved design, code base without changing external system behavior
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Question: Architectural runway is assisted by?
Answer: Design spikes, emergent design, refactoring modeling, test automation
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Question: What are NFRs?
Answer: System qualities which support end user functionality and system goals
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Question: Examples of NFR?
Answer: Reliability, usability, scalability, maintainability
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Question: Are NFR backlog items?
Answer: No. But the are constraints
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Question: Portfolio level NFRs apply to...?
Answer: All ARTS
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Question: Program level NFRs apply to ..?
Answer: System as a whole
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Question: Team level NFRs apply to...?
Answer: Feature or component in team's domain
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Question: How to handle a NFR in backlog?
Answer: Create items to implement or evolve them
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Question: Who is responsible for the Architectural Runway?
Answer: PM has feature authority, and systems architect has design authorization
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Question: How to ensure that architectural runway is built continuously?
Answer: Plan for capacity and resources, add work to program backlog
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Question: What is a system demo?
Answer: Occurs every two week to provide integrated view of all team's work
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Question: Who hosts the system demo?
Answer: System team
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Question: What does a team demo?
Answer: Team demos work done in iteration
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Question: When is the system demo?
Answer: After team sprint demos, max lag one sprint
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Question: What is SoS?
Answer: Program coordinates team dependencies weekly or more frequently
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Question: Who participates in the SoS?
Answer: Release Train Engineer, scrum Masters, system team representative
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Answer: Crappy code
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Question: What is FAB?
Answer: Features and benefit matrix
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Question: Program PI objectives are set?
Answer: By teams (not for)
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Question: What is SMART?
Answer: In Goal setting Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant Time bound objectives
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Question: Outputs from Release Planning event?
Answer: Team SMART objective, PI Plan, one of confidence to objectives
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Question: Inputs to Release Planning event?
Answer: Vision, Roadmap, top 10 features, business context
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Question: What is the Skunk Cost principle?
Answer: Don't consider money already spent
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Question: What is the Principle of alignment?
Answer: There is more value created with overall alignment the local excellence
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Question: What are ART planning principles?
Answer: Frequent, periodic planning, dates and quality are fixed, scope floats, decentralized scope and schedule planning, continuous integration of all teams on ART, system demo every two weeks
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Question: What are the 5 principles of cadence
Answer: Limit the accumulation of variance, provide sufficient capacity margin, make waiting times predictable, enable small batch, use frequent meetings
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Question: What are the 5 principles of synchronization?
Answer: Exploit economies of scale, capacity margin, facilitate cross-functional trade offs, reduce queues, integrate and evaluate
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Question: SAFe principle: Develop on cadenence...?
Answer: Release on demand
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Question: What is the primary Agile metric
Answer: Working software exists and it fits its intended purpose
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Question: Who is the content authority for the train
Answer: PM
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Question: Who is responsible for developing the vision and roadmap?
Answer: PM
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Question: What are some potential organization roles to find a PM
Answer: Solution manager, systems engineer, PgM, BA
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Question: What are SAFe PM responsibilities?
Answer: Understand ART objectives, budget, develop vision roadmap, PgM Backlog, acceptance criteria, releases and PI
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Question: What is the only true measure of team and program velocity?
Answer: Team and system demo
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Question: Who is responsible for running the system demo?
Answer: PM
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Question: Who is responsible for running the team sprint demo?
Answer: PO
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Question: How long is a system demo?
Answer: One hour
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Question: What are inputs to team sprint iteration planning?
Answer: Establis velocity, agree on Sprint goals, estimate stories, acceptance criteria, tasks, commit
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Question: How is a team's estimating done?
Answer: Using relative estimating and normalizing story points
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Question: How do teams limit WIP?
Answer: Committing only to work that fits their sprint capacity/velocity
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Question: What is a team demo?
Answer: Traditional scrum prescribed ceremony every two weeks
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Question: Define SAFe Scrum Master role
Answer: Scrum Master is a part time role assumed by a developer, tester, project manager or other skilled individual
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Question: What are additional scrum master responsibilities for ART?
Answer: Coordinate with other Scrum Masters, the System Team, and Shared Resources in the ART Release Planning Meetings. Preparation for Release Planning and Inspect and Adapt
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Question: How often is the SoS
Answer: Weekly minimum f3or 1 hour
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Question: What meeting happens at the end of SoS?
Answer: Problem solving meeting
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Question: What are 6 Agile software quality best practices?
Answer: Agile Architecture, Continious Integration, Test First, Refactoring, Pair Work, Collective ownership
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Question: What is a Team Backlog?
Answer: User stories, future features, technical stories, defects, infrastructure work, spikes, refractors, and anything else a team needs to do
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Question: What is the allocated capacity for stretch objectives I the team sprint plan?
Answer: 10-15%
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Question: What is the function of stretch objectives in the team sprint?
Answer: Function as scope margin
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Question: What are the two parts of a teams SAFe commitments?
Answer: Teams agree to do everything I their power to meet the committed objectives, of immediately escalate for corrective action
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Question: What is the benefit of the SoS?
Answer: Scrum Masters and RTE gain visibility into progress and impediments
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Question: How long is the SoS time box?
Answer: 15-30 min followed by a problem solving meeting
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Question: What are the benefits of code quality?
Answer: Customer satisfaction, predictability, and integrity of development, scalability, higher velocity and performance, ability to innovate
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Question: What is the principle of Continious integration?
Answer: Continuously integrate assets, leaving as a little as possible to the systems team
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Question: What are the benefits of continious integration?
Answer: Always current code base increases program velocity
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Question: What are the benefits of test automation?
Answer: Improve velocity, quality and scaling
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Question: How often does release management meet?
Answer: One per week
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Question: What is the role of release management?
Answer: Responsible for scheduling and governing the release
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Question: What are innovation and planning IP Sprints?
Answer: They facilitate reliability, program increment readiness, planning and innovation
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Question: What does innovation include in IP Sprint?
Answer: Opportunity for innovation spikes, hackathons, and infrastructure improvements
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Question: What does Planning include in IP Sprint?
Answer: Provides cadence based planning and resource flexibility
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Question: What is Inspect and Adapt I&A?
Answer: It is a routine event which consists of program demo and retrospective
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Question: What are the three parts of I&A?
Answer: PI demo, quantitative measurement, problem solving workshop
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Question: How long is the I&A time box ?
Answer: 3-4 hours per PI
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Question: Who normally leads PI demo in I&A
Answer: PM and the system team
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Question: what is a PI demo?
Answer: Integrated systems solution demo
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Question: What happens during I&A quantitative measurement / program performance reporting?
Answer: Teams compare plans vs actual PI objectives
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Question: What is one output of I&A program performance reporting?
Answer: Release predictability report
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Question: What does I&A Rellease predictability report indicate?
Answer: It shows if achievements are within acceptable process control band
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Question: What is the benefit of Release predictability report?
Answer: It shows how predictable the train is
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Question: What happens in the I&A Problem Solving Workshop?
Answer: Teams use root cause analysis to systematically address larger impediments that are limiting velocity
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Question: What is the purpose of team Sprint planning?
Answer: Define and commit to what will be built in the time box
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Question: What is the result of Sprint Planning meeting?
Answer: Sprint goals and backlog of team's commitment
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Question: What are the benefits of acceptance criteria in Sprint planning?
Answer: They help with splitting, estimating, tasking and testing
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Question: What are the benefits of Sprint Goals?
Answer: They provide clarity, commitment, and management information
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Question: Does SAFe require use of Sprint goals?
Answer: Yes
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Question: What is the benefit of the Team Sprint Demo?
Answer: It provides the true measure of progress by showing working software
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Question: When does the preparation for the Team Sprint Demo take place?
Answer: In Sprint Planning
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Question: What is shown in the Team Sprint Demo?
Answer: Every story, Spike, Refactor, NFR
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Question: Who will attend the Team Sprint Demo?
Answer: Team level stakeholders
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Question: How long is the Team Sprint Retrospective?
Answer: 30-60 minutes
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Question: What is the benefit of high quality team retrospective?
Answer: Come up with one or two concrete action items for the next sprint
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Question: Who decides when to release?
Answer: Release management team
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Question: What is the real value of a release?
Answer: Why the end users are successfully using the software
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Question: What are the additional activities of the release?
Answer: Systems validation and documentation
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Question: What are the 3 parts of SAFe definition of done?
Answer: Working software, System Increment, Release
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Question: What is the key responsibility of BO Role?
Answer: Authority over how program's budget is allocated across content and design
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Question: What is the key responsibility of DevOps role?
Answer: Improve deployment readiness from feature definition all the way to the point were users actually benefit
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Question: What is the key responsibility of the PM?
Answer: Content authority for the train
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Question: What is the key responsibility of Release Management Team role?
Answer: Responsible for scheduling and governing releases
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Question: What is the key responsibility of the RTE role
Answer: Chief Scrum Master for the train
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Question: What is the key responsibility of the System Architect role?
Answer: Helps teams efficiently implement stakeholder needs
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Question: When is the Team backlog refinement meeting?
Answer: I the middle of the Sprint
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Question: What happens when the story is reviewed by the PO in the Sprint demo?
Answer: The story is either accepted to the baseline or reworked
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Question: What is the difference that SAFe brings to the Agile Team?
Answer: Iterations are synchronized, estimating is normalized, code quality is reemphasized, iteration planning is already seeded with stories from Release Planning and teams collaborate on systems level demos
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Question: What are Team Sprint Goals?
Answer: Team business objectives for the sprint, 1-2 sentences
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Question: Which activities are not optional in SAFe and in Team's PI Sprint?
Answer: Inspect and Adapt and Release Planning activities
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Question: What is the use of innovation and Planning IP Sprint?
Answer: Provides estimating buffer for meeting team's objectives; a dedicated time for I&A and Release Planning activities; innovation; k on the technical infrastructure, tooling and other impediments' time for backlog refinement and final validation for release.
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Question: Are stories planned for the IP?
Answer: No
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Question: What is one of the major benefits of the Team IP Sprint to the program?
Answer: It increases predictability a Business benefit
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Question: Are Sprint goals madatory in Scrum and SAFe?
Answer: Yes. Sprint goals are mandatory in Scrum and SAFe
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Question: What are the three key benefits of Team Sprint Goals?
Answer: Transparency, alignment, program execution
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Question: Are User Stories requirements?
Answer: No. They are a statement of intent and negotiable
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Question: What question does a User Story answer?
Answer: Who does what with the system, and why do they do it
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Question: What are the 3 Cs for a user story?
Answer: card, conversation, confirmation
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Question: What does Conversationmean I the 3 Cs?
Answer: Discussion with the user/product owner and team
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Question: What are the three key benefits of Team Sprint Goal?
Answer: Align team members to a common purpose; Align program teams to a common PI objectives; Manage dependencies; Provide continuous management information
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Question: What is the benefit of strategic themes in SAFe?
Answer: They connect each SAFe software portfolio to the enterprise business strategy
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Question: What is the relationship of portfolio to business unit?
Answer: One SAFe portfolio to a business unit
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Question: Where can we find information on the company's strategic theme?
Answer: Company website, annual report, press release
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Question: What to do if an Epic is not aligned with the strategic theme?
Answer: Pull it out from the portfolio backlog
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Question: Why should we work in value streams?
Answer: To ensure that IT and Business work together to accomplish customer value
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Question: What is the physical limit of effective collocation?
Answer: 60 feet
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Question: Should there be dependencies between value streams?
Answer: Ideally, no
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Question: What is a value stream?
Answer: It describes the steps used to provide continious flow of a specific kind of value to the customer
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Question: What are the two parts of a Value Stream?
Answer: The major themes portfolio intent; the whole picture from concept to cash
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Question: How to identify a Value Stream to build one or more trains?
Answer: Find the kidney
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Question: What is the benefit of using flowchart diagrams with Value Stream analysis?
Answer: Understand the complete workflow and identify non-value add steps to remove waste
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Question: When one train can realize a Value Stream?
Answer: If it can be implemented by 50-125 people
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Question: Does each train have a budget?
Answer: Yes. One for each train
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Question: What we need to consider if additional roles are needed above trains?
Answer: Number, scope and dependencies of the trains
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Question: What is the key function of Epics?
Answer: They carry centralized initiatives
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Question: What are examples of additional roles needed for coordination above the trains?
Answer: Senior Projec Manager, Solution Architect
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Question: What is the responsibility of an Epic owner?
Answer: They define and analyze Epics and move those to selected implementation
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Question: What is the purpose of the portfolio Kanban system?
Answer: It manages the flow of epics
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Question: Who fills in the lightweight business case for epics?
Answer: The business epic owner with help from the team
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Question: What is the purpose of the portfolio backlog?
Answer: It holds the epics that made it thru Kanban, approved for implementation
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Question: What are the portfolio Epic size estimate unit?
Answer: Story Points
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Question: What is the purpose of Lean Agile budgeting?
Answer: Fund Agile release trains every 6 months and not projects no stops
==================================================
Question: What is the principle of refactoring?
Answer: Each change made is tested immediately to verify the correct accomplishment of the desired goal
==================================================
Question: What is the purpose of Spikes?
Answer: Drive out risk and uncertainty
==================================================
Question: What has the highest fiduciary decision making responsibility in the framework?
Answer: Program portfolio management
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Question: What is portfolio vision?
Answer: Strategic themes and epics
==================================================
Question: What are Program Portfolio Management (PPM) responsibilities?
Answer: Central role in strategy and investment funding, program management, governance
==================================================
Question: How to accomplish PPM governance?
Answer: With cadence based objective measures of working code with customer feedback
==================================================
Question: Why Business Owner (BO) will assign value points to PI objectives in Release Planning
Answer: To show priority in planning, show progress after the PI
==================================================
Question: How doe we come up with Program PI objectives?
Answer: By aggregating each team's PI
==================================================
Question: What are 3 parts of the I&A?
Answer: PI demo, Quantative measurement (team self assessment against PI objectives) Problem solving workshop
==================================================
Question: What are the key elements of a successful Sprint?
Answer: Constant communication, daily synchronization, define build test stories serially, code quality, managing WIP
==================================================
Question: How long is the I&A
Answer: 3-4 hours
==================================================
Question: Is daily Scrum a problem solving meeting?
Answer: No. It happens afterwards
==================================================
Question: What are the two test methods?
Answer: Test Driven Development, Acceptance Test Driven Development
==================================================
Question: What is TDD?
Answer: Test Driven Development. Unit Test fail fix
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Question: What is ATTD?
Answer: Acceptance test driven development. Acceptance of PO approved functionality
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Question: What does test automation support?
Answer: Continuous system wide integration, team velocity and development efficiency
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Question: How doe an Agile approach differ from traditional manager to employee directed approach?
Answer: The Teams determine what and how to build their elements of the solution
==================================================

Answer: Everybody codes
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Question: What is SAFe definition of Done?
Answer: Working software, system increment, release
==================================================
Question: What are the areas of PO responsibility?
Answer: Prep and participation in Release Planning, Sprint execution, Programexecution, I&A
==================================================
Question: What are the team levelAgile project management Pratices based on in SAFe?
Answer: Scrum
==================================================
Question: What is the benefit of a Burn Down chart
Answer: It shows the amount of work left to do vs time remaining
==================================================
Question: What are 3 methods that a Team can track status and progress?
Answer: Story board, Daily standup, Burn down chart
==================================================
Question: What is DoD
Answer: Definition of Done
==================================================
Question: House of Lean A…Question: House of Lean A…Question: House of Lean Answer:…Questio…Question: House of Lean Answer:”Question: House of Lean Answer:…Questio…Question: House of Lean Answer:…Question: House of Lean Answer: …Question: House of Lean Answer: Goal: Val…Question: House of Lean Answer: Goal: Value Foundation: Leadership, ’Question: House of Lean Answer: Goal: Value Foundation: Leadership, Respect for People and Culture, Development Flow, Innovation, Relentless Improvement ================================================== Question: Lean Goal Answer: Speed, quality, value. sustainably shorted lead time, best quality and value to people and society, most customer delight, lowest cost, high morale, safety ================================================== Question: Respect for People Answer: Lean principle, your customer is whoever consumes your work. Develop individuals and teams, empower teams, build partnerships based on trust and mutual respect ================================================== Question: Kaizen Answer: Lean principle,. We can do better.Reflection, continuous improvement as an enterprise value ================================================== Question: Leadership Answer: Lean foundation, management is trained, take responsibility, develop people ================================================== Question: Product development flow Answer: Lean principle. 1. Take an economic view. 2. Actively manage queues. 3. Understand and exploit variability. 4. Reduce batch sizes. 5. Apply WIP constraints. 6. Control flow under uncertainty; cadence and synchronization. 7. Get feedback as fast as possible. 8. Decentralized control ================================================== Question: Take an economic view Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #1. Base your decisions on economics. The goal is to optimize the time from concept to cash ================================================== Question: Actively manage queues Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #2. Understand Little's Law. Control wait times by controlling queue lengths ================================================== Question: Understand and exploit variability Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #3. Risk taking is central to value creation ================================================== Question: Reduce Batch Size Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #4. Smaller batches go through the system faster, with lower variability and risk. Large batch sizes and high utilization increase variability, causing project slippage. Co-location and good infrastructure enable small batches ================================================== Question: Apply WIP constraints Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #5. WIP constraints force capacity matching, increases flow. Time box, purge lower value projects when WIP is too high, constrain local WIP pools, make WIP continuously visible. High WIP and utilization cause reduction throughput ================================================== Question: Control flow under uncertainty Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #6. Cadence + Synchronization. Cadence transforms unpredictable events into predictable events, requires scope or capacity margin, makes waiting times predictable, helps manage load by limiting available time. Regular systemwide integration provides higher fidelity tests and objective solution assessment ================================================== Question: Get fast feedback Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #7. Product development is the process of converting uncertainty to knowledge. Fast feedback accelerates knowledge ================================================== Question: Decentralized control Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #8. Centralize control for decisions that are infrequent and can be applied globally, have significant economies of scale or high-risk. Decentralized control for time critical, local decisions ================================================== Question: Planning is for alignment Answer: Lean principle of product development flow. #9. There is more value created with overall alignment than with local excellence. Agile aims to change the plan when something changes ================================================== Question: Agile values: Individuals and interactions Answer: Over processes and tools ================================================== Question: Agile values: working software Answer: Over comprehensive documentation ================================================== Question: Agile values: customer collaboration Answer: Over contract negotiation ================================================== Question: Agile values: responding to change Answer: Over following a plan ================================================== Question: Agile drivers in the triangle. Answer: Value and quality driven, the vision creates feature estimates, fix the dates and float the scope ================================================== Question: Agile benefits Answer: Early value delivery drives first to market, fast feedback, profitability, makes money faster, reduces risk, delivers better fit for purpose ================================================== Question: SAFe core values Answer: Alignment, Code quality, Transparency, program execution ================================================== Question: Four SAFe business results Answer: Increased employee engagement, 20-50% increase in productivity, 30-70% faster time to market, 50% defect reduction ================================================== Question: Describe an Agile team Answer: Empowered, self organizing, self managing, cross functional, deliver fully tested code every two weeks ================================================== Question: How does an Agile team deliver value? Answer: In user stories ================================================== Question: Describe a SAFe team that is scaled to program level Answer: Self organizing, self managing team of Agile teams, continuous value delivery, aligned to a common mission via a single program backlog ================================================== Question: How do program level safe teams deliver value? Answer: In features and benefits ================================================== Question: Describe how SAFe is scaled to the portfolio level. Answer: Using Lean approaches to strategy and investment funding, program management, and governance. Centralized strategy and decentralized execution. Objective metrics support governance and kaizen ================================================== Question: How does portfolio level SAFe deliver value? Answer: In business and architectural epics ================================================== Question: What is the product owner's content authority? Answer: User stories ================================================== Question: What is product management content authority? Answer: Features ================================================== Question: What is the typical ratio of product management to product owners? Answer: One PM to four PO ================================================== Question: What is the typical size of an Agile Release Train Answer: 5-12 teams 50-125 people ================================================== Question: What is the typical ART program increment time box? Answer: 10 weeks ================================================== Question: What are the shared teams in Agile Release Train? Answer: DevOps, UX, System Architect, RTE ================================================== Question: How often is the team demo in the ART? Answer: Every two weeks ================================================== Question: How often is the inspect and adapt in an ART? Answer: Every 10 weeks ================================================== Question: What makes a good Agile team? Answer: They are independent, cross functional, self organizing, self managing, define, build, test code, optimized for communication to deliver value every two weeks. Team size 7 +/- 2 ================================================== Question: What are the Agile team Product Owner responsibilities? Answer: Define and accept stories, act as the customer for developer questions, work with product management to plan releases ================================================== Question: What are the developer or tester responsibilities in the Agile team? Answer: Create and refine user stories and acceptance criteria, define - build - test and deliver stories, develop and commit to team PI objectives and Sprint plans ================================================== Question: What is the Release Train Engineer's role in ART? Answer: The Chief Scrum Master for the train. ================================================== Question: What is Product Management's role in the ART? Answer: Own, define,and prioritize the Program Backlog ================================================== Question: What is the System's Architect role in ART? Answer: Provide architectural guidance and technical enablement to the teams on the train. ================================================== Question: What is the Systems team role in the Art? Answer: Provide process and tools to integrate and evaluate assets early and often ================================================== Question: What are the Business Owner's responsibilities in the ART?' Answer: The key stakeholders on the Agile Release Train ================================================== Question: What is the ART program vision? Answer: Expresses strategic intent, may be expressed in a variety of forms. ================================================== Question: What is the ART roadmap? Answer: Series of features and planned release dates. commitment is made only to the next release. Subsequent releases are best estimates. ================================================== Question: What is the function of features in the program backlog? Answer: Features are those behaviors of the system that directly fulfill some user need. ================================================== Question: What do the estimates in the program backlog mean? Answer: They are only estimates and do not imply committed delivery ================================================== Question: What is the key driver for the Team backlog? Answer: Program priorities ================================================== Question: What are Spikes? Answer: Could be technical spikes or functional spikes. Can be used for analysis, design out to try to type an idea. Spikes are demonstrable like any other story and included in the demo ================================================== Question: What does a story point represent? Answer: Single number for volume, complexity, knowledge, uncertainty ================================================== Question: Is ART cadence without synchronization enough? Answer: No. Synchronize with cadenence to assure delivery. ================================================== Question: Does ART value follow organizational silos? Answer: No. ART is based on cross-functional, self organized teams that define, build and test a feature to deliver value ================================================== Question: What is estimating poker? Answer: Estimating poker combines expert opinion, analogy, and disaggregation for quick but reliable estimates ================================================== Question: Who are included in estimating poker? Answer: Team members. The PO participates but does not estimate ================================================== Question: What are the benefits of estimating in the team? Answer: Increases accuracy by including all perspectives, builds understanding, creates shared commitment ================================================== Question: Who should not create estimates for the team backlog? Answer: Managers, Architect, Select Group ================================================== Question: What is normalized estimation? Answer: Normalized story point estimating provides the economic basis for estimating work within and across programs ================================================== Question: Are defects estimated? Answer: Yes. Defects are included in the team backlog ================================================== Question: What is release planning? Answer: Cadence based release planning meetings are the pacemaker of the Agile Enterprise ================================================== Question: How often is release planning done for ART? Answer: Every 8-12 weeks ================================================== Question: How long is the release planning meeting for ART? Answer: Two days ================================================== Question: Who owns the feature priorities in the ART release planning? Answer: Program Management ================================================== Question: Who owns the story planning and high level estimates in the ART release planning? Answer: Development team ================================================== Question: Who are the intermediaries for governance, interfaces, and dependencies in the ART release planning? Answer: Architects and UX ================================================== Question: What is the result of the ART release planning meeting? Answer: A committed set of program objectives for the next PI ================================================== Question: What are the inputs to the ART release planning process? Answer: Vision and top ten features ================================================== Question: What are the outputs from the ART release planning process? Answer: Team and PI objectives, and program board ================================================== Question: What does the program board visualize? Answer: Program board visualizes Features, WIP, dependencies divided into sprints by team ================================================== Question: What are objectives? Answer: Brief summaries in business terms of what each team intends to deliver in the upcoming PI ================================================== Question: How can we align to a mission in the release planning? Answer: Using PI objectives we can align to a mission ================================================== Question: What are team's PI objectives? Answer: Team PI Objectives often will map directly to the features but not always ================================================== Question: Team objectives Answer: Features, aggregation of a set of features, milestones, architectural feature, major refactoring ================================================== Question: What are stretch objectives? Answer: They provide reliability and guard bandwidth ================================================== Question: Are stretch objectives included in the commitment? Answer: No. This makes it more reliable. Unknowns should be moved here ================================================== Question: What is the single most important goal of the release planning event? Answer: Alignment is the single most imports oak of the release planning event ================================================== Question: Who facilitates and kicks off the release planning event? Answer: Release Train Engineer ================================================== Question: Who represents the business context in the release planning event? Answer: The Executive ================================================== Question: Who presents the vision, feature and benefits in the release planning event? Answer: Program Manager ================================================== Question: Who presents the SWOT in the release planning event? Answer: The Executive ================================================== Question: Who gives the planning guidance in the release planning event? Answer: Release Train Engineer ================================================== Question: Who conducts the SoS in the release planning event? Answer: Release Train Engineer ================================================== Question: What is ROAM? Answer: Addressing. Program risks: Resopved, Owned, Accepted, Mitigated ================================================== Question: What is the last activity of release planning day 1? Answer: Management review and problem solving ================================================== Question: What does release planning Management review and problem solving include? Answer: Make adjustments to scope and objectives ================================================== Question: What are the possible changes presented in the release planning day first session? Answer: Changes t o business priorities, plan, scope, movement of stories or people ================================================== Question: What do business owners do in the team breakout 2 of release planning? Answer: Assign business value to release objectives ================================================== Question: What happens in day 2 - during the am breakout #2? Answer: Business Owner adding business value to release objectives, team finalize PI plan, consolidates program risks, impediments and dependencies, and stretch objectives ================================================== Question: What is the final plan review - in release planning day 2? Answer: Teams and Business Owner peer review all final plans ================================================== Question: What is included in the final plan review agenda? Answer: Changes to velocity nod load, final PI objectives with business value, program risk and impediments, Q&A ================================================== Question: What happens after all PI release plans have been presented? Answer: Review of the remaining program risks and impediments ================================================== Question: What is release planning. Confidence vote? Answer: Fist of five for hitting objectives ================================================== Question: What is the last activity of release planning day 2? Answer: Retrospective ================================================== Question: What is the vision? Answer: It communicates strategic intent ================================================== Question: What is the content vision? Answer: Where are we headed with this solution, what problem does it solve, features and benefits, to who, NFR ================================================== Question: What are common formats for the vision? Answer: Rolling wave briefings, vision doc, preliminary data sheet, draft press release ================================================== Question: What are sources for vision Answer: Strategic themes, portfolio backlog, customer, PM, architect and team input ================================================== Question: What is a roadmap? Answer: It guides the delivery of features over time ================================================== Question: What are program epics? Answer: They carry large initiatives into program backlog split portfolio epics for implementation ================================================== Question: How are Program Epics handled? Answer: They are split into features in the program backlog. May require budget approval and lightweight business case ================================================== Question: How is portfolio epic implemented? Answer: Via one or more ARTs ================================================== Question: How is Program Epic implementes Answer: via one ART. Can be multi PI ================================================== Question: What are the sources of Program Epics? Answer: Portfolio epics, large local team scope ================================================== Question: What are features? Answer: Behaviors of the system that directly fulfill some user need ================================================== Question: How is a feature expressed? Answer: As a phrase ================================================== Question: How is value expressed? Answer: In terms of benefits ================================================== Question: How are features handled? Answer: They are identified, prioritized, estimated, and maintained on the program backlog ================================================== Question: How do features deliver? Answer: Business benefits ================================================== Question: What is feature acceptance criteria? Answer: Used to prove the value is there ================================================== Question: What do business benefits impact? Answer: Economic prioritization of the feature, and are consist met with key strategic themes ================================================== Question: When is acceptance criteria defined? Answer: During program backlog refinement ================================================== Question: Why does acceptance criteria contain? Answer: They reflect functional requirements and system qualities ================================================== Question: What is the key to economic outcomes in a flow system? Answer: Job sequencing ================================================== Question: If you only quantify one thing quantify? Answer: Cost of delay ================================================== Question: To prioritize based on Lean economics we need to know two things that are? Answer: Cost of Delay and what is the cost to implement the valuable thing ================================================== Question: How do you prioritize features for optimal ROI? Answer: Using WSJF ================================================== Question: What is WSJF? Answer: Weighted Shortest Job First ================================================== Question: When the cost of delay is equal... Answer: Do the shortest job first ================================================== Question: When the time is equal... Answer: Do the highest CoD first ================================================== Question: When nothing is equal... Answer: Do the WSJF first ================================================== Question: Formula for WSJF? Answer: COD / Duration (job size) ================================================== Question: What are the components of CoD? Answer: Business value, Time critically, Risk reduction ================================================== Question: How to estimate the components of CoD? Answer: Involve the team, use modified Fibonacci, give always 1 value first in the column ================================================== Question: How are program backlog features prioritized? Answer: Using WSJF ================================================== Question: What is Agile Architecture? Answer: Every team deserves to see the big picture, and are empowered to design their part ================================================== Question: Principles of Agile Architecture? Answer: Emergent design, intentional architecture, architectural runway ================================================== Question: What is emergent design? Answer: Teams grow the system design as user stories require ================================================== Question: What is intentional architecture? Answer: It fosters team alignment and defines architectural runway ================================================== Question: What is Architectural Runway? Answer: Existing code is ready to immediately support new functionality ================================================== Question: What is used to support architectural decisions? Answer: Prototyping and modeling ================================================== Question: Where is the architectural runway located in SAFe? Answer: At the boundary on the program level ================================================== Question: What builds up the architectural runway? Answer: Architectural features ================================================== Question: What consumes the Architectural runway? Answer: Business features ================================================== Question: Define decentralized architectural decision making Answer: It supports emergent design intentionally ================================================== Question: What is systems architect role in decentralized architectural decision making? Answer: General guidance, system level constraints, integrity, maintainability, avoid duplication ================================================== Question: What is the Team role in decentralized decision making? Answer: Emergent design, development contributes runway, improve refactoring techniques ================================================== Question: What is refactoring? Answer: Improved design, code base without changing external system behavior ================================================== Question: Architectural runway is built... Answer: Incrementally, validated early and often, provides "just enough" ================================================== Question: Architectural runway is assisted by? Answer: Design spikes, emergent design, refactoring modeling, test automation ================================================== Question: What are NFRs? Answer: System qualities which support end user functionality and system goals ================================================== Question: Examples of NFR? Answer: Reliability, usability, scalability, maintainability ================================================== Question: Are NFR backlog items? Answer: No. But the are constraints ================================================== Question: Portfolio level NFRs apply to...? Answer: All ARTS ================================================== Question: Program level NFRs apply to ..? Answer: System as a whole ================================================== Question: Team level NFRs apply to...? Answer: Feature or component in team's domain ================================================== Question: How to handle a NFR in backlog? Answer: Create items to implement or evolve them ================================================== Question: Who is responsible for the Architectural Runway? Answer: PM has feature authority, and systems architect has design authorization ================================================== Question: How to ensure that architectural runway is built continuously? Answer: Plan for capacity and resources, add work to program backlog ================================================== Question: What is a system demo? Answer: Occurs every two week to provide integrated view of all team's work ================================================== Question: Who hosts the system demo? Answer: System team ================================================== Question: What does a team demo? Answer: Team demos work done in iteration ================================================== Question: When is the system demo? Answer: After team sprint demos, max lag one sprint ================================================== Question: What is SoS? Answer: Program coordinates team dependencies weekly or more frequently ================================================== Question: Who participates in the SoS? Answer: Release Train Engineer, scrum Masters, system team representative ================================================== Question: You can't scale... Answer: Crappy code ================================================== Question: What is FAB? Answer: Features and benefit matrix ================================================== Question: Program PI objectives are set? Answer: By teams (not for) ================================================== Question: What is SMART? Answer: In Goal setting Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant Time bound objectives ================================================== Question: Outputs from Release Planning event? Answer: Team SMART objective, PI Plan, one of confidence to objectives ================================================== Question: Inputs to Release Planning event? Answer: Vision, Roadmap, top 10 features, business context ================================================== Question: What is the Skunk Cost principle? Answer: Don't consider money already spent ================================================== Question: What is the Principle of alignment? Answer: There is more value created with overall alignment the local excellence ================================================== Question: What are ART planning principles? Answer: Frequent, periodic planning, dates and quality are fixed, scope floats, decentralized scope and schedule planning, continuous integration of all teams on ART, system demo every two weeks ================================================== Question: What are the 5 principles of cadence Answer: Limit the accumulation of variance, provide sufficient capacity margin, make waiting times predictable, enable small batch, use frequent meetings ================================================== Question: What are the 5 principles of synchronization? Answer: Exploit economies of scale, capacity margin, facilitate cross-functional trade offs, reduce queues, integrate and evaluate ================================================== Question: SAFe principle: Develop on cadenence...? Answer: Release on demand ================================================== Question: What is the primary Agile metric Answer: Working software exists and it fits its intended purpose ================================================== Question: Who is the content authority for the train Answer: PM ================================================== Question: Who is responsible for developing the vision and roadmap? Answer: PM ================================================== Question: What are some potential organization roles to find a PM Answer: Solution manager, systems engineer, PgM, BA ================================================== Question: What are SAFe PM responsibilities? Answer: Understand ART objectives, budget, develop vision roadmap, PgM Backlog, acceptance criteria, releases and PI ================================================== Question: What is the only true measure of team and program velocity? Answer: Team and system demo ================================================== Question: Who is responsible for running the system demo? Answer: PM ================================================== Question: Who is responsible for running the team sprint demo? Answer: PO ================================================== Question: How long is a system demo? Answer: One hour ================================================== Question: What are inputs to team sprint iteration planning? Answer: Establis velocity, agree on Sprint goals, estimate stories, acceptance criteria, tasks, commit ================================================== Question: How is a team's estimating done? Answer: Using relative estimating and normalizing story points ================================================== Question: How do teams limit WIP? Answer: Committing only to work that fits their sprint capacity/velocity ================================================== Question: What is a team demo? Answer: Traditional scrum prescribed ceremony every two weeks ================================================== Question: Define SAFe Scrum Master role Answer: Scrum Master is a part time role assumed by a developer, tester, project manager or other skilled individual ================================================== Question: What are additional scrum master responsibilities for ART? Answer: Coordinate with other Scrum Masters, the System Team, and Shared Resources in the ART Release Planning Meetings. Preparation for Release Planning and Inspect and Adapt ================================================== Question: How often is the SoS Answer: Weekly minimum f3or 1 hour ================================================== Question: What meeting happens at the end of SoS? Answer: Problem solving meeting ================================================== Question: What are 6 Agile software quality best practices? Answer: Agile Architecture, Continious Integration, Test First, Refactoring, Pair Work, Collective ownership ================================================== Question: What is a Team Backlog? Answer: User stories, future features, technical stories, defects, infrastructure work, spikes, refractors, and anything else a team needs to do ================================================== Question: What is the allocated capacity for stretch objectives I the team sprint plan? Answer: 10-15% ================================================== Question: What is the function of stretch objectives in the team sprint? Answer: Function as scope margin ================================================== Question: What are the two parts of a teams SAFe commitments? Answer: Teams agree to do everything I their power to meet the committed objectives, of immediately escalate for corrective action ================================================== Question: What is the benefit of the SoS? Answer: Scrum Masters and RTE gain visibility into progress and impediments ================================================== Question: How long is the SoS time box? Answer: 15-30 min followed by a problem solving meeting ================================================== Question: What are the benefits of code quality? Answer: Customer satisfaction, predictability, and integrity of development, scalability, higher velocity and performance, ability to innovate ================================================== Question: What is the principle of Continious integration? Answer: Continuously integrate assets, leaving as a little as possible to the systems team ================================================== Question: What are the benefits of continious integration? Answer: Always current code base increases program velocity ================================================== Question: What are the benefits of test automation? Answer: Improve velocity, quality and scaling ================================================== Question: How often does release management meet? Answer: One per week ================================================== Question: What is the role of release management? Answer: Responsible for scheduling and governing the release ================================================== Question: What are innovation and planning IP Sprints? Answer: They facilitate reliability, program increment readiness, planning and innovation ================================================== Question: What does innovation include in IP Sprint? Answer: Opportunity for innovation spikes, hackathons, and infrastructure improvements ================================================== Question: What does Planning include in IP Sprint? Answer: Provides cadence based planning and resource flexibility ================================================== Question: What is Inspect and Adapt I&A? Answer: It is a routine event which consists of program demo and retrospective ================================================== Question: What are the three parts of I&A? Answer: PI demo, quantitative measurement, problem solving workshop ================================================== Question: How long is the I&A time box ? Answer: 3-4 hours per PI ================================================== Question: Who normally leads PI demo in I&A Answer: PM and the system team ================================================== Question: what is a PI demo? Answer: Integrated systems solution demo ================================================== Question: What happens during I&A quantitative measurement / program performance reporting? Answer: Teams compare plans vs actual PI objectives ================================================== Question: What is one output of I&A program performance reporting? Answer: Release predictability report ================================================== Question: What does I&A Rellease predictability report indicate? Answer: It shows if achievements are within acceptable process control band ================================================== Question: What is the benefit of Release predictability report? Answer: It shows how predictable the train is ================================================== Question: What happens in the I&A Problem Solving Workshop? Answer: Teams use root cause analysis to systematically address larger impediments that are limiting velocity ================================================== Question: What is the purpose of team Sprint planning? Answer: Define and commit to what will be built in the time box ================================================== Question: What is the result of Sprint Planning meeting? Answer: Sprint goals and backlog of team's commitment ================================================== Question: What are the benefits of acceptance criteria in Sprint planning? Answer: They help with splitting, estimating, tasking and testing ================================================== Question: What are the benefits of Sprint Goals? Answer: They provide clarity, commitment, and management information ================================================== Question: Does SAFe require use of Sprint goals? Answer: Yes ================================================== Question: What is the benefit of the Team Sprint Demo? Answer: It provides the true measure of progress by showing working software ================================================== Question: When does the preparation for the Team Sprint Demo take place? Answer: In Sprint Planning ================================================== Question: What is shown in the Team Sprint Demo? Answer: Every story, Spike, Refactor, NFR ================================================== Question: Who will attend the Team Sprint Demo? Answer: Team level stakeholders ================================================== Question: How long is the Team Sprint Retrospective? Answer: 30-60 minutes ================================================== Question: What is the benefit of high quality team retrospective? Answer: Come up with one or two concrete action items for the next sprint ================================================== Question: Who decides when to release? Answer: Release management team ================================================== Question: What is the real value of a release? Answer: Why the end users are successfully using the software ================================================== Question: What are the additional activities of the release? Answer: Systems validation and documentation ================================================== Question: What are the 3 parts of SAFe definition of done? Answer: Working software, System Increment, Release ================================================== Question: What is the key responsibility of BO Role? Answer: Authority over how program's budget is allocated across content and design ================================================== Question: What is the key responsibility of DevOps role? Answer: Improve deployment readiness from feature definition all the way to the point were users actually benefit ================================================== Question: What is the key responsibility of the PM? Answer: Content authority for the train ================================================== Question: What is the key responsibility of Release Management Team role? Answer: Responsible for scheduling and governing releases ================================================== Question: What is the key responsibility of the RTE role Answer: Chief Scrum Master for the train ================================================== Question: What is the key responsibility of the System Architect role? Answer: Helps teams efficiently implement stakeholder needs ================================================== Question: When is the Team backlog refinement meeting? Answer: I the middle of the Sprint ================================================== Question: What happens when the story is reviewed by the PO in the Sprint demo? Answer: The story is either accepted to the baseline or reworked ================================================== Question: What is the difference that SAFe brings to the Agile Team? Answer: Iterations are synchronized, estimating is normalized, code quality is reemphasized, iteration planning is already seeded with stories from Release Planning and teams collaborate on systems level demos ================================================== Question: What are Team Sprint Goals? Answer: Team business objectives for the sprint, 1-2 sentences ================================================== Question: Which activities are not optional in SAFe and in Team's PI Sprint? Answer: Inspect and Adapt and Release Planning activities ================================================== Question: What is the use of innovation and Planning IP Sprint? Answer: Provides estimating buffer for meeting team's objectives; a dedicated time for I&A and Release Planning activities; innovation; k on the technical infrastructure, tooling and other impediments' time for backlog refinement and final validation for release. ================================================== Question: Are stories planned for the IP? Answer: No ================================================== Question: What is one of the major benefits of the Team IP Sprint to the program? Answer: It increases predictability a Business benefit ================================================== Question: Are Sprint goals madatory in Scrum and SAFe? Answer: Yes. Sprint goals are mandatory in Scrum and SAFe ================================================== Question: What are the three key benefits of Team Sprint Goals? Answer: Transparency, alignment, program execution ================================================== Question: Are User Stories requirements? Answer: No. They are a statement of intent and negotiable ================================================== Question: What question does a User Story answer? Answer: Who does what with the system, and why do they do it ================================================== Question: What are the 3 Cs for a user story? Answer: card, conversation, confirmation ================================================== Question: What does Conversationmean I the 3 Cs? Answer: Discussion with the user/product owner and team ================================================== Question: What are the three key benefits of Team Sprint Goal? Answer: Align team members to a common purpose; Align program teams to a common PI objectives; Manage dependencies; Provide continuous management information ================================================== Question: What is the benefit of strategic themes in SAFe? Answer: They connect each SAFe software portfolio to the enterprise business strategy ================================================== Question: What is the relationship of portfolio to business unit? Answer: One SAFe portfolio to a business unit ================================================== Question: Where can we find information on the company's strategic theme? Answer: Company website, annual report, press release ================================================== Question: What to do if an Epic is not aligned with the strategic theme? Answer: Pull it out from the portfolio backlog ================================================== Question: Why should we work in value streams? Answer: To ensure that IT and Business work together to accomplish customer value ================================================== Question: What is the physical limit of effective collocation? Answer: 60 feet ================================================== Question: Should there be dependencies between value streams? Answer: Ideally, no ================================================== Question: What is a value stream? Answer: It describes the steps used to provide continious flow of a specific kind of value to the customer ================================================== Question: What are the two parts of a Value Stream? Answer: The major themes portfolio intent; the whole picture from concept to cash ================================================== Question: How to identify a Value Stream to build one or more trains? Answer: Find the kidney ================================================== Question: What is the benefit of using flowchart diagrams with Value Stream analysis? Answer: Understand the complete workflow and identify non-value add steps to remove waste ================================================== Question: When one train can realize a Value Stream? Answer: If it can be implemented by 50-125 people ================================================== Question: Does each train have a budget? Answer: Yes. One for each train ================================================== Question: What we need to consider if additional roles are needed above trains? Answer: Number, scope and dependencies of the trains ================================================== Question: What is the key function of Epics? Answer: They carry centralized initiatives ================================================== Question: What are examples of additional roles needed for coordination above the trains? Answer: Senior Projec Manager, Solution Architect ================================================== Question: What is the responsibility of an Epic owner? Answer: They define and analyze Epics and move those to selected implementation ================================================== Question: What is the purpose of the portfolio Kanban system? Answer: It manages the flow of epics ================================================== Question: Who fills in the lightweight business case for epics? Answer: The business epic owner with help from the team ================================================== Question: What is the purpose of the portfolio backlog? Answer: It holds the epics that made it thru Kanban, approved for implementation ================================================== Question: What are the portfolio Epic size estimate unit? Answer: Story Points ================================================== Question: What is the purpose of Lean Agile budgeting? Answer: Fund Agile release trains every 6 months and not projects no stops ================================================== Question: What is the principle of refactoring? Answer: Each change made is tested immediately to verify the correct accomplishment of the desired goal ================================================== Question: What is the purpose of Spikes? Answer: Drive out risk and uncertainty ================================================== Question: What has the highest fiduciary decision making responsibility in the framework? Answer: Program portfolio management ================================================== Question: What is portfolio vision? Answer: Strategic themes and epics ================================================== Question: What are Program Portfolio Management (PPM) responsibilities? Answer: Central role in strategy and investment funding, program management, governance ================================================== Question: How to accomplish PPM governance? Answer: With cadence based objective measures of working code with customer feedback ================================================== Question: Why Business Owner (BO) will assign value points to PI objectives in Release Planning Answer: To show priority in planning, show progress after the PI ================================================== Question: How doe we come up with Program PI objectives? Answer: By aggregating each team's PI ================================================== Question: What are 3 parts of the I&A? Answer: PI demo, Quantative measurement (team self assessment against PI objectives) Problem solving workshop ================================================== Question: What are the key elements of a successful Sprint? Answer: Constant communication, daily synchronization, define build test stories serially, code quality, managing WIP ================================================== Question: How long is the I&A Answer: 3-4 hours ================================================== Question: Is daily Scrum a problem solving meeting? Answer: No. It happens afterwards ================================================== Question: What are the two test methods? Answer: Test Driven Development, Acceptance Test Driven Development ================================================== Question: What is TDD? Answer: Test Driven Development. Unit Test fail fix ================================================== Question: What is ATTD? Answer: Acceptance test driven development. Acceptance of PO approved functionality ================================================== Question: What does test automation support? Answer: Continuous system wide integration, team velocity and development efficiency ================================================== Question: How doe an Agile approach differ from traditional manager to employee directed approach? Answer: The Teams determine what and how to build their elements of the solution ================================================== Question: Everybody tests... Answer: Everybody codes ================================================== Question: What is SAFe definition of Done? Answer: Working software, system increment, release ================================================== Question: What are the areas of PO responsibility? Answer: Prep and participation in Release Planning, Sprint execution, Programexecution, I&A ================================================== Question: What are the team levelAgile project management Pratices based on in SAFe? Answer: Scrum ================================================== Question: What is the benefit of a Burn Down chart Answer: It shows the amount of work left to do vs time remaining ================================================== Question: What are 3 methods that a Team can track status and progress? Answer: Story board, Daily standup, Burn down chart ================================================== Question: What is DoD Answer: Definition of Done ==================================================