SAFe Scaled Agile for Enterprise Certification Exam Latest Updated Graded A+

House of Lean - ANSWER Goal: Value Foundation: Leadership, Respect for People and Culture, Development Flow, Innovation, Relentless Improvement 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 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 Kaizen - ANSWER Lean principle,. We can do better.Reflection, continuous improvement as an enterprise value Leadership - ANSWER Lean foundation, management is trained, take responsibility, develop people 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 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 Actively manage queues - ANSWER Lean principle of product development flow. #2. Understand Little's Law. Control wait times by controlling queue lengths Understand and exploit variability - ANSWER Lean principle of product development flow. #3. Risk taking is central to value creation 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 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 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 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 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 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 Agile values: Individuals and interactions - ANSWER Over processes and tools Agile values: working software - ANSWER Over comprehensive documentation Agile values: customer collaboration - ANSWER Over contract negotiation Agile values: responding to change - ANSWER Over following a plan Agile drivers in the triangle. - ANSWER Value and quality driven, the vision creates feature estimates, fix the dates and float the scope Agile benefits - ANSWER Early value delivery drives first to market, fast feedback, profitability, makes money faster, reduces risk, delivers better fit for purpose SAFe core values - ANSWER Alignment, Code quality, Transparency, program execution Four SAFe business results - ANSWER Increased employee engagement, 20-50% increase in productivity, 30-70% faster time to market, 50% defect reduction Describe an Agile team - ANSWER Empowered, self organizing, self managing, cross functional, deliver fully tested code every two weeks How does an Agile team deliver value? - ANSWER In user stories 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 How do program level safe teams deliver value? - ANSWER In features and benefits 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 How does portfolio level SAFe deliver value? - ANSWER In business and architectural epics What is the product owner's content authority? - ANSWER User stories What is product management content authority? - ANSWER Features What is the typical ratio of product management to product owners? - ANSWER One PM to four PO What is the typical size of an Agile Release Train - ANSWER 5-12 teams 50-125 people What is the typical ART program increment time box? - ANSWER 10 weeks What are the shared teams in Agile Release Train? - ANSWER DevOps, UX, System Architect, RTE How often is the team demo in the ART? - ANSWER Every two weeks How often is the inspect and adapt in an ART? - ANSWER Every 10 weeks 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 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 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 What is the Release Train Engineer's role in ART? - ANSWER The Chief Scrum Master for the train. What is Product Management's role in the ART? - ANSWER Own, define,and prioritize the Program Backlog What is the System's Architect role in ART? - ANSWER Provide architectural guidance and technical enablement to the teams on the train. What is the Systems team role in the Art? - ANSWER Provide process and tools to integrate and evaluate assets early and often What are the Business Owner's responsibilities in the ART?' - ANSWER The key stakeholders on the Agile Release Train What is the ART program vision? - ANSWER Expresses strategic intent, may be expressed in a variety of forms. 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. What is the function of features in the program backlog? - ANSWER Features are those behaviors of the system that directly fulfill some user need. What do the estimates in the program backlog mean? - ANSWER They are only estimates and do not imply committed delivery What is the key driver for the Team backlog? - ANSWER Program priorities 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 What does a story point represent? - ANSWER Single number for volume, complexity, knowledge, uncertainty Is ART cadence without synchronization enough? - ANSWER No. Synchronize with cadenence to assure delivery. 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 What is estimating poker? - ANSWER Estimating poker combines expert opinion, analogy, and disaggregation for quick but reliable estimates Who are included in estimating poker? - ANSWER Team members. The PO participates but does not estimate What are the benefits of estimating in the team? - ANSWER Increases accuracy by including all perspectives, builds understanding, creates shared commitment Who should not create estimates for the team backlog? - ANSWER Managers, Architect, Select Group What is normalized estimation? - ANSWER Normalized story point estimating provides the economic basis for estimating work within and across programs Are defects estimated? - ANSWER Yes. Defects are included in the team backlog What is release planning? - ANSWER Cadence based release planning meetings are the pacemaker of the Agile Enterprise How often is release planning done for ART? - ANSWER Every 8-12 weeks How long is the release planning meeting for ART? - ANSWER Two days Who owns the feature priorities in the ART release planning? - ANSWER Program Management Who owns the story planning and high level estimates in the ART release planning? - ANSWER Development team Who are the intermediaries for governance, interfaces, and dependencies in the ART release planning? - ANSWER Architects and UX What is the result of the ART release planning meeting? - ANSWER A committed set of program objectives for the next PI What are the inputs to the ART release planning process? - ANSWER Vision and top ten features What are the outputs from the ART release planning process? - ANSWER Team and PI objectives, and program board What does the program board visualize? - ANSWER Program board visualizes Features, WIP, dependencies divided into sprints by team What are objectives? - ANSWER Brief summaries in business terms of what each team intends to deliver in the upcoming PI How can we align to a mission in the release planning? - ANSWER Using PI objectives we can align to a mission What are team's PI objectives? - ANSWER Team PI Objectives often will map directly to the features but not always Team objectives - ANSWER Features, aggregation of a set of features, milestones, architectural feature, major refactoring What are stretch objectives? - ANSWER They provide reliability and guard bandwidth Are stretch objectives included in the commitment? - ANSWER No. This makes it more reliable. Unknowns should be moved here 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 Who facilitates and kicks off the release planning event? - ANSWER Release Train Engineer Who represents the business context in the release planning event? - ANSWER The Executive Who presents the vision, feature and benefits in the release planning event? - ANSWER Program Manager Who presents the SWOT in the release planning event? - ANSWER The Executive Who gives the planning guidance in the release planning event? - ANSWER Release Train Engineer Who conducts the SoS in the release planning event? - ANSWER Release Train Engineer What is ROAM? - ANSWER Addressing. Program risks: Resopved, Owned, Accepted, Mitigated What is the last activity of release planning day 1? - ANSWER Management review and problem solving What does release planning Management review and problem solving include? - ANSWER Make adjustments to scope and objectives 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 What do business owners do in the team breakout 2 of release planning? - ANSWER Assign business value to release objectives 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 What is the final plan review - in release planning day 2? - ANSWER Teams and Business Owner peer review all final plans 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 What happens after all PI release plans have been presented? - ANSWER Review of the remaining program risks and impediments What is release planning. Confidence vote? - ANSWER Fist of five for hitting objectives What is the last activity of release planning day 2? - ANSWER Retrospective What is the vision? - ANSWER It communicates strategic intent What is the content vision? - ANSWER Where are we headed with this solution, what problem does it solve, features and benefits, to who, NFR What are common formats for the vision? - ANSWER Rolling wave briefings, vision doc, preliminary data sheet, draft press release What are sources for vision - ANSWER Strategic themes, portfolio backlog, customer, PM, architect and team input What is a roadmap? - ANSWER It guides the delivery of features over time What are program epics? - ANSWER They carry large initiatives into program backlog split portfolio epics for implementation How are Program Epics handled? - ANSWER They are split into features in the program backlog. May require budget approval and lightweight business case How is portfolio epic implemented? - ANSWER Via one or more ARTs How is Program Epic implementes - ANSWER via one ART. Can be multi PI What are the sources of Program Epics? - ANSWER Portfolio epics, large local team scope What are features? - ANSWER Behaviors of the system that directly fulfill some user need How is a feature expressed? - ANSWER As a phrase How is value expressed? - ANSWER In terms of benefits How are features handled? - ANSWER They are identified, prioritized, estimated, and maintained on the program backlog How do features deliver? - ANSWER Business benefits What is feature acceptance criteria? - ANSWER Used to prove the value is there What do business benefits impact? - ANSWER Economic prioritization of the feature, and are consist met with key strategic themes When is acceptance criteria defined? - ANSWER During program backlog refinement Why does acceptance criteria contain? - ANSWER They reflect functional requirements and system qualities What is the key to economic outcomes in a flow system? - ANSWER Job sequencing If you only quantify one thing quantify? - ANSWER Cost of delay 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 How do you prioritize features for optimal ROI? - ANSWER Using WSJF What is WSJF? - ANSWER Weighted Shortest Job First When the cost of delay is equal... - ANSWER Do the shortest job first When the time is equal... - ANSWER Do the highest CoD first When nothing is equal... - ANSWER Do the WSJF first Formula for WSJF? - ANSWER COD / Duration (job size) What are the components of CoD? - ANSWER Business value, Time critically, Risk reduction How to estimate the components of CoD? - ANSWER Involve the team, use modified Fibonacci, give always 1 value first in the column How are program backlog features prioritized? - ANSWER Using WSJF What is Agile Architecture? - ANSWER Every team deserves to see the big picture, and are empowered to design their part Principles of Agile Architecture? - ANSWER Emergent design, intentional architecture, architectural runway What is emergent design? - ANSWER Teams grow the system design as user stories require What is intentional architecture? - ANSWER It fosters team alignment and defines architectural runway What is Architectural Runway? - ANSWER Existing code is ready to immediately support new functionality What is used to support architectural decisions? - ANSWER Prototyping and modeling Where is the architectural runway located in SAFe? - ANSWER At the boundary on the program level What builds up the architectural runway? - ANSWER Architectural features What consumes the Architectural runway? - ANSWER Business features Define decentralized architectural decision making - ANSWER It supports emergent design intentionally What is systems architect role in decentralized architectural decision making? - ANSWER General guidance, system level constraints, integrity, maintainability, avoid duplication What is the Team role in decentralized decision making? - ANSWER Emergent design, development contributes runway, improve refactoring techniques What is refactoring? - ANSWER Improved design, code base without changing external system behavior Architectural runway is built... - ANSWER Incrementally, validated early and often, provides "just enough" Architectural runway is assisted by? - ANSWER Design spikes, emergent design, refactoring modeling, test automation What are NFRs? - ANSWER System qualities which support end user functionality and system goals Examples of NFR? - ANSWER Reliability, usability, scalability, maintainability Are NFR backlog items? - ANSWER No. But the are constraints Portfolio level NFRs apply to...? - ANSWER All ARTS Program level NFRs apply to ..? - ANSWER System as a whole Team level NFRs apply to...? - ANSWER Feature or component in team's domain How to handle a NFR in backlog? - ANSWER Create items to implement or evolve them Who is responsible for the Architectural Runway? - ANSWER PM has feature authority, and systems architect has design authorization How to ensure that architectural runway is built continuously? - ANSWER Plan for capacity and resources, add work to program backlog What is a system demo? - ANSWER Occurs every two week to provide integrated view of all team's work Who hosts the system demo? - ANSWER System team