Unit 5: Agile Foundations and Frameworks - Practice Quiz

1 Which of the following best describes the Agile approach to project management?

2 The Agile Manifesto values "Responding to change" over which of the following?

3 What is a key difference between the Agile and Waterfall models?

4 Which of the following is a well-known Agile framework?

5 In Scrum, what is a "Sprint"?

6 What is the primary responsibility of a Scrum Master?

7 What is the primary visual tool used in the Kanban method?

8 What is the recommended time limit for a Daily Stand-up (or Daily Scrum) meeting?

9 In Agile estimation, what do "Story Points" represent?

10 The MoSCoW method is a technique for setting priorities. What does the 'M' in MoSCoW stand for?

11 What is a central concept of Lean thinking that is applied in Lean Agile?

12 Which of the following is a core practice of Extreme Programming (XP)?

13 The Agile principle of "Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential" encourages teams to do what?

14 What is "Team Velocity" in an Agile context?

15 Which Agile Manifesto value prioritizes creating a tangible product over creating extensive plans and reports?

16 In a Scrum team, who is responsible for managing and prioritizing the Product Backlog?

17 Agile project management focuses on delivering value in small, frequent increments. What is this concept called?

18 A core principle of Kanban is to limit WIP. What does WIP stand for?

19 What is the primary purpose of a Sprint Charter or Sprint Goal?

20 What is the general attitude toward change in an Agile methodology?

21 An Agile team delivers a functional software increment, but the customer realizes their initial requirements were flawed and requests significant changes. According to the Agile Manifesto, how should the team respond?

22 A project to build a new airport has well-defined, static requirements and a fixed budget and timeline. However, the software for the baggage handling system needs to be developed with evolving requirements based on user feedback. Which project management approach would be most suitable for the overall project?

23 A Scrum team completed 18 story points in Sprint 1, 22 in Sprint 2, and 20 in Sprint 3. They are planning Sprint 4 and have a backlog of user stories estimated at 8, 5, 5, 3, 3, and 2 points. Based on their average velocity, which stories can they most likely commit to completing in Sprint 4?

24 A development team using Kanban notices that the "In Progress" column on their board frequently has more items than the team can handle, leading to context switching and delays. What Kanban practice should they implement to address this issue directly?

25 During a Sprint Retrospective, two team members have a heated disagreement about a technical approach that caused a delay. What is the primary role of the Scrum Master in this situation?

26 A new team member reports during the Daily Stand-up: "Yesterday, I worked on the login feature. Today, I will continue working on the login feature. I have no impediments." While technically correct, what is this update lacking from an Agile perspective?

27 A project manager wants to adopt Extreme Programming (XP) practices. Which of the following combinations of practices best represents the core of XP, aimed at improving code quality and collaboration?

28 A Product Owner is prioritizing features for a new mobile application. They have a feature that is high-value but also very high-risk and high-effort. Another feature has medium-value but is low-risk and low-effort. Using a risk/value matrix, which feature should generally be addressed first?

29 A team is working on a maintenance project where tasks arrive unpredictably and vary in priority and size. The team needs a highly visual way to manage work, optimize flow, and react quickly to new requests. Which Agile framework is specifically designed for this type of environment?

30 A development team is discussing two possible solutions for a user story. Solution A is complex, handles many potential future use cases, and will take 8 story points. Solution B is simple, meets the current requirements perfectly, and will take 3 story points. Which Agile principle should guide their decision?

31 During a Sprint, the Product Owner identifies a new, urgent user story that they believe must be included. What is the correct procedure according to the Scrum framework?

32 A team is spending a significant amount of time on detailed requirements documents that are rarely used by the developers, who prefer to get clarification directly from the Product Owner. In the context of Lean principles applied to Agile, what does this documentation represent?

33 A key difference in how risk is managed between Waterfall and Agile approaches is that:

34 If you were creating a Venn diagram to compare Agile and Waterfall methodologies, which of the following items would most likely be placed in the intersection (shared area) of the two circles?

35 A Scrum team is about to start its third Sprint. The Product Owner presents a set of high-priority user stories, and the team selects several for the Sprint Backlog. What key element is missing that would help align the team and provide context for decision-making during the Sprint?

36 An Agile project manager is observing a team that consistently fails to complete all the work they commit to in a Sprint. The team members appear stressed and overworked. What is the most appropriate first step for the project manager (or Scrum Master/coach)?

37 A project's stakeholders are complaining they don't know the exact date the entire scope will be delivered. The team is working in Sprints and delivering value incrementally. This situation highlights a tension between traditional project expectations and which Agile principle?

38 When an organization decides to "be Agile" rather than just "do Agile," what does this primarily imply?

39 A key metric in Kanban is "Cycle Time." What does it measure?

40 A team is new to story points and is trying to estimate a user story. One developer thinks it's a 5, another thinks it's an 8, and a junior developer thinks it's a 13 because they are unfamiliar with the technology. What is the primary purpose of this estimation discussion?

41 A team of 5 developers has an established velocity of 40 points per 2-week (10-day) sprint. For an upcoming sprint, there is a 1-day national holiday, and one developer will be on vacation for 3 days. Assuming capacity is the primary constraint, what is the most realistic adjusted velocity forecast for this sprint?

42 A Kanban team observes that their average Cycle Time is increasing, while their Throughput (rate of completion) remains stable. According to Little's Law (), what is the most direct and unavoidable mathematical conclusion?

43 A project is chartered to build a new satellite. The hardware construction and launch logistics have extremely high costs, long lead times, and are subject to rigid, well-understood physical constraints. The software for analyzing the satellite's data, however, is expected to evolve rapidly as scientists discover new research questions. Which project management strategy is most appropriate?

44 A Product Owner, under pressure from stakeholders, is consistently pushing the Development Team to treat sprint forecasts as fixed commitments and add unplanned work mid-sprint. This is causing team burnout and a decline in quality. What is the most effective initial action for the Scrum Master to take?

45 A team practices Scrum diligently but suffers from high technical debt and frequent bugs escaping into production. Their retrospectives identify inconsistent coding standards and knowledge silos as root causes. Which specific Extreme Programming (XP) practice, if adopted, would most directly target these specific issues?

46 A product team needs to decide on an architecture for a new mobile app. Option A uses a familiar, stable technology. Option B uses a new, cutting-edge framework that could offer a 10x performance improvement but has significant technical uncertainty. The cost of delaying other features to explore Option B is low. Which Lean principle provides the strongest justification for investing time in a prototype for Option B?

47 A team's backlog contains features with varying profit potentials, time-critical market windows, risk reduction values, and development complexities. The Product Owner wants a prioritization technique that provides a rational, economic basis for decision-making. Which framework is specifically designed for this purpose?

48 Which of the following scenarios best exemplifies the Agile principle of "Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done"?

49 A distributed team's Daily Stand-up is consistently ineffective. Team members report status to the Scrum Master, conversations diverge into technical problem-solving, and there's no clear plan for the day. This is a symptom of a deeper anti-pattern. What is the most likely root cause?

50 In a scaled environment with multiple Scrum teams working on interdependent components of a single product, what is the primary strategic value of having each team create and share a Sprint Charter at the beginning of each sprint?

51 If you were to create a Venn diagram of Scrum, Kanban, and XP, which of the following would be located exclusively in the intersection of Kanban and XP, but not Scrum?

52 An Agile project manager learns of a new data privacy regulation that will take effect in six months, potentially requiring a major architectural redesign of the product. How should this risk be managed in an Agile way?

53 A Sprint Goal has been defined as "Demonstrate a viable checkout process." Mid-sprint, the Product Owner realizes a critical payment gateway integration was missed in the planning and asks the Development Team to add it. The team concludes that adding this work makes the original Sprint Goal unachievable. According to the Scrum Guide, what is the only legitimate action the Product Owner can take?

54 A team's velocity over the past six 2-week sprints has been: 20, 38, 22, 41, 18, 43. This data shows a very high standard deviation. What is the most critical conclusion a Scrum Master should draw from this?

55 A team using Kanban with Classes of Service (CoS) notices that a frequent use of the 'Expedite' class is causing a severe delay in 'Standard' class items, violating their service level agreements (SLAs). What is the most effective policy change to mitigate this issue without eliminating the 'Expedite' class entirely?

56 A team is asked to build a new notification system. The initial request includes support for email, SMS, and push notifications, with user-configurable preferences for each. Applying the principle of "Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done," which approach is best?

57 An organization's primary goal for adopting Agile is to improve its 'time-to-market' for new ideas. Their current process is hampered by long analysis phases and departmental silos creating bottlenecks. They want a framework that focuses explicitly on optimizing the end-to-end workflow from concept to cash. Which framework's core principles are most aligned with this specific goal?

58 A highly mature, self-organizing Scrum Team is consistently delivering value. However, the Scrum Master notices that their retrospectives have become superficial, and they haven't experimented with their process in several months. What is the most appropriate stance for the Scrum Master?

59 A team is required to get sign-off on a 50-page requirements specification document from five different departments before development can begin. This process takes weeks, and the requirements frequently change once the team starts building the product and getting real user feedback. According to Lean principles, this extensive, upfront documentation and approval process is primarily an example of which of the 'Seven Wastes'?

60 A large-scale project involves a fixed-deadline regulatory compliance component and a customer-facing innovation component. The compliance work is well-defined and must be audited. The innovation work is highly uncertain. Which of the following describes the most problematic implementation of a Hybrid model for this scenario?