Agile Scrum Foundation Exam

At the end of the first Sprint, the team has finished three user stories with 5, 3, and 8 story points, and is half way through a 10 story point item. What’s the velocity?

• 16
• 26
• 21
• 5.3

What’s the name of burn-down charts that use bars instead of lines?

• Burn-up chart
• Cumulative flow diagram
• Burn-down bar
• Niko-Niko calendar

Which of the following can be considered an information radiator?

• An electronic project dashboard shared by all stakeholders
• A series of status reports provided to the customer
• A Sprint Backlog displayed on a large physical board
• The ticketing system used by the operations

A very large international Scrum project is about to start. All team members are mature developers with many years of experience in using Scrum. How many Scrum Masters are likely needed?

• One Scrum Master
• There can be no Scrum Master(s), because the developers are expert in using Scrum
• One Scrum Master for the team and one for the customer
• Multiple Scrum Masters

A Scrum project is supposed to have two releases: one in the middle and the other at the end of the project. Which of the following statements is correct?

• All increments should be releasable.
• Increments that are created before each release should be releasable.
• Increments are created for investigation and adaptation; they don’t have to be releasable.
• Having releasable Increments depends on the operations' preference.

What is an escaped defect?

• A defect that has escaped the unit test
• A defect that has been discovered by the customer
• A defect that was found by the QA team
• A defect that has been discovered at the end of the Sprint

The Development Team uses Story Points to estimate the Product Backlog items. Instead of estimating items individually, they start by ordering them by size, and then they assign story points to them. What’s the name of this technique?

• Affinity estimation
• Triangulation
• Batch estimation
• Mass story estimation (MSE++)

When multiple Scrum teams are working on the same product, what is a common way to synchronize their technical activities?

• Through the Product Owner
• Through the Scrum Master
• Through information radiators
• Through Scrum-of-Scrums

When multiple Scrum teams are working on the same product, which is the best way to break down and assign the elements of the product to each team?

• Based on specialty
• Based on features
• It’s up to the Product Owner to decide
• Based on value

The team is spending about 20% of its capacity reviewing the old code and improving it, without changing its behavior. What is this called?

• Continuous improvement
• Rearchitecturing
• Refactoring
• This is not Agile!

You’re assigned to one of the steps in a project that uses Kanban. You have done 4 items in your step which are not picked by the next step, and the work in progress limit for your step is 4. What should you do?

• You should stop working and wait for the next step to pull one of the complete items.
• You can pick a new item from the previous step and start working on it.
• You should help with the next step.
• You should help with the step that has become the bottleneck.

16 — 5+3+8=16

Burn-down bar

A Sprint Backlog displayed on a large physical board — An information radiator is any large display that provides important information about the status of the project, and is usually in physical form. Burn-down charts, burn-up charts, and Niko-Niko calendars can be presented in information radiators. The whole Sprint board (including the Sprint Backlog) can also be an information radiator.

Multiple Scrum Masters — Scrum teams always need Scrum Masters, even if they are mature and have many years of experience in using Scrum. A Scrum Master’s activities are not limited to training and coaching, they also protect the team and remove impediments. A very large international project probably uses multiple teams, and in this case, each team needs a Scrum Master. One person can be the Scrum Master for more than one team, but usually the time constraint forces us to use multiple Scrum Masters.

All increments should be releasable. — All Increments must be potentially releasable to enable usable feedback, regardless of the actual releases we may have.

A defect that has been discovered by the customer — Escaped defects are those we couldn’t find when we were developing; they have escaped our quality process, and been found by the customer.

Affinity estimation — Yes, that’s the name of this technique. By the way, batch estimation and mass story estimation are made-up terms.

Through Scrum-of-Scrums — When it’s required to use multiple teams in a project (for a single product), there will be Daily Scrums for each team to synchronize internally, and then one representative from each team will go to the Scrum-of-Scrums meeting to synchronize the teams.

Based on features — Scaled Scrum is the model that uses multiple Scrum teams for a single product. It follows all the basic Scrum framework rules, including the rule that says teams should be cross-functional. If elements of the product were broken down based on specialty (e.g. programming, testing, architecture), each of them would have to be taken care of by multiple teams and the team wouldn’t be cross-functional. Normally, each Product Backlog item should be completed by one team.

Refactoring — Refactoring is improving the code without changing its external behavior. It’s a good practice to spend some time every Sprint on refactoring the existing code, instead of developing new features.

You should help with the step that has become the bottleneck. — The complete work that is not pulled by the next step still belongs to you, and therefore, you have no capacity to work on a new item, so you should go help with the bottleneck.