SAFe Scrum Master Exam Two primary aspects of a Lean-Agile mindset - ✔Thinking lean & embracing agility SAFe is based on three bodies of knowledge - what are they? - ✔Agile development, systems thinking, and lean product development What are the pillars for the SAFe House of Lean? What is the goal? - ✔Respect for people and culture, flow, innovation and relentless improvement; the goal is delivering value What is the key to successfully executing SAFe? - ✔Establish a continuous flow of work that supports incremental value delivery, based on constant feedback and adjustment What is gemba? [Pillar 3: Innovation] - ✔The idea that one should get OOTO and into the actual workplace where value is produced, and products are created and used What are some of the components of relentless improvement? - ✔Optimize the whole, not the parts; consider facts carefully, then act quickly; apply Lean tools and techniques to determine the root cause of inefficiencies; reflect at key milestones What are the values of the agile manifesto? - ✔Individuals and interactions over processes and tools; working software over comprehensive documentation; customer collaboration over contract negotiation; responding to change over following a plan What is the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a dev. team? - ✔Face-to-face conversation What is the primary measure of progress? - ✔Working software What is the role of the Scrum Master? - ✔Ensuring the Scrum process is followed; Educating the team in Scrum and SAFe practices; providing the environment for continuous improvement; also typically charged with removing impediments Why do some teams apply WIP limits? - ✔To create a "pull" process within the iteration and to continuously balance the work to increase throughput To build quality into the code and component level (and thus being able to scale), what are five practices that supplement the project managements practices of Scrum? ✔Continuous Integration, Test-First, Refactoring, pair work, and collective ownership
In the Scrum Master role, what do they spend most of their time doing? - ✔Helping other team members communicate, coordinate and cooperate What is the Product Owner (PO) responsible for in their role? - ✔Defining stories; prioritizing the team backlog; maintain the conceptual and technical integrity of features/components for team Who has the responsibility of accepting the final iteration plan? - ✔Product Owner While operating within the context of the ART, teams are... - ✔empowered, selforganizing and self-managing What are the steps for a team in building incremental value? - ✔Define, Build, Test, Deploy What is the one real measure of value, velocity and progress? - ✔The demo of fully integrated work from all teams during the prior iteration (System Demo) Who is ultimately responsible for the adoption, success and ongoing improvement of Lean-Agile development? - ✔An organization's managers, leaders and executives What are the four core values that define SAFe's essential ideals and beliefs? ✔Alignment, built-in quality, transparency, and program execution What are the four aspects of transformational leadership? - ✔Vision, authenticity, growth and innovation When does PI planning occur? - ✔Within the Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration A successful PI planning delivers two primary outputs: - ✔Committed PI objectives & program board What does the program board highlight? - ✔New feature delivery dates, feature dependencies among teams and with other ARTs, and relevant Milestones During PI planning, risks are categorized into what categories? - ✔ROAM - Resolved, Owned, Accepted and Mitigated What is one of the critical roles of an Innovation & Planning (IP) Iteration? - ✔Providing an estimating buffer for meeting PI Objectives and enhancing the predictability of PI performance; an opportunity for teams to work on activities that are difficult to fit into a continuous, incremental value delivery pattern
What are the main elements of a successful iteration execution? - ✔Tracking iteration progress, building stories serially and incrementally, constant communication, improving flow, program execution What is commonly used to track iteration progress? - ✔Big Visible Information Radiator (BVIR) What is the primary goal of the iteration review process? - ✔For stakeholders to provide feedback on the demos What is the typical length of a Program Increment? - ✔8-12 weeks, split into 5 iterations (four normal, one Innovation & Planning) Which events in SAFe represent the Plan-Do-Check-Adjust (PDCA) learning cycle? ✔Plan - PI Planning; Do - PI Execution; Check - System Demo; Adjust - Inspect & Adapt (I&A) What are the three primary focus areas for preparing for an upcoming PI? ✔Management alignment and organizational readiness for planning; backlog readiness; actual logistics for the event (facility readiness) What does an I&A event consist of? - ✔PI System Demo; quantitative measurement; retrospective and problem-solving workshop The 5 Whys are used to... - ✔Perform root cause analysis What is used to identify the biggest root cause? - ✔The Pareto analysis, known as the 80/20 rule (20% of the causes are responsible for 80% of the problems) What two qualities ensure alignment, one of the core values of SAFe? - ✔Cadence and synchronization What are the three pillars of Scrum? - ✔Transparency, Inspection and Adaptation Can team composition change during an iteration? - ✔NO; otherwise the velocity is invalid What are the three Cs for user story guidelines? - ✔Card (small and concise), Conversation (fleshed out with a PO), Confirmation (acceptance criteria confirm correctness) What are known as a systematic approach to improving the system without changing observable system behavior? - ✔Refactors
What are known as research activities to reduce risk, understand a functional need, increase estimate reliability, or define a technical approach? - ✔Spikes Teams should write their PI objectives in what format? - ✔SMART - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Bound What is DevOps? - ✔An agile approach to bridge the gap between development and operations to deliver value faster and more reliably. What approach helps DevOps run more smoothly? - ✔CALMR - Culture, Automation, Lean flow, Measurement and Recovery What are the four stages of high-performing teams? - ✔Forming -- Storming -- Norming -- Performing What are the five dysfunctions of a team? - ✔Absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, inattention to results