ASM AGILE WAY OF THINKING
PRACTICE EXAM QUESTIONS WITH
COMPLETE ANSWERS
12 guiding Principles that support Agile Manifesto (first 6) - ANSWER-1.Our highest
priority is to Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable
software
2. All the welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes
harness change for the customers competitive advantage.
3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months,
with a preference to the shorter timescale.
4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout project.
5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support
they need and trust them to get the job done.
6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a
development team is face-to-face conversation.
12 guiding Principles that support Agile Manifesto (last 6) - ANSWER-7. Working
software is the primary measure of progress.
8. Agile processes promote sustainable Development. The sponsors, developers, in
users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design it enhances agility.
10. Simplicity, the art of maximizing the amount of work not done, is essential.
11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing
teams.
12. At regular intervals the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes
and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
SCRUM evolution - ANSWER--introduced in 1986 by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro
Nonaka
-a new approach to increase speed and flexibility
benefits of SCRUM - ANSWER--higher productivity and lower development costs (by
reducing waste and irregularities by only developing what is absolutely essential for
customer)
-Improved stakeholder (customer) satisfaction (by collaboration btwn dev/cust to help
with changes and needs)
-Higher quality software (using techniques like test driven development, continuous
integration, exceptance test driven development, and refactoring can lead to nearly
defect free software)
-improved employee engagement and job satisfaction (by empowering a team to be
self-organizing, the team can determine how they are going to deliver value to customer
and establish a sustainable pace)
,-Faster time to market and early ROI (by incrementally delivering value/software to
customer in short iterations, working software can be deployed sooner to customer)
SCRUM features - ANSWER--simplicity and proven results
-encompasses agile engineering techniques
-emphasizes small teams and team empowerment
-welcomes changes to requirements
-allows working from a source of prioritized work items
-daily status meetings
-offers team commitment to shippable software at end of each sprint
Checklist for SCRUM adoption - ANSWER--Has the investment in SCRUM paid off?
-What is our next area of improvement
-Should we continue with SCRUM?
-Are we better off than before?
-Are we reproducing better products?
-Do our products have fewer defects?
-Are we able to ship faster than before?
Agile Methods - ANSWER--Scrum
-Kanban
-Feature Driven Development (FDD)
-Crystal
-Lean
-Extreme Programming (XP)
-Dynamic Systems Development Methodology (DSDM)
Values and Practices shared by all Agile methods - ANSWER--embracing change
-light weight or lean documentation
-Daily Stakeholder collaboration
-Incremental delivery
-Continuous improvement
Waterfall Approach : Software Development Life Cycle - ANSWER-1. Initial - collect all
of the requirements necessary
2. Design - determine software structure
3. Implementation - develop software
4. Verification - test software for correctness and acceptance
5. Maintenance - after software has been deployed
Waterfall Approach - Challenges - ANSWER-Dealing with Change
-Expensive (ie: if you discover critical design flaw in verification, or if requs change
during implementation)
-Leads to rework
Change if resisted compromises customer collaboration
,Waterfall Approach - Effective - ANSWER-When projects want to migrate features or
products from one platform to another
-Both the problem and solution must be clear
Extreme Programming (XP) - ANSWER-XP objectives:
-Respond to high cost of changing requs
-Establish strong, robust engineering practices
**EX: if testing is good, lets perform all types of tests (unit testing, integration testing,
and acceptance testing)
If design is good lets do design all the time ( and retrospectives at the end of each
iteration)
If simplicity is good, lets do the simplest possible thing (eliminate anything that does not
add value)
If review is good , lets perform reviews (continuously improve by making sure we do
reviews and retrospectives at the end of each iteration)
If communication is good, lets encourage communication (make sure our team
space/tools encourage face to face and osmotic communication)
If using short iterations is good, lets perform shortest possible iteration (get regular
stakeholder feedback in order to improve the quality of our software and make sure we
are delivering the value costumer wants by doing shortest possible iterations)
XP-introduced Standard Practices - ANSWER--Test driven development (where the
team writes the test before developing the code)
-Continuous Integration (the practice of regularly integrating new code into the system,
and using automated testing to determine the status of the integration)
-On-site customer (essentially made the customer part of the team, on-site, and
participate w/the team on a daily basis)
-User stories (quick and effective way to capture customers requs and make sure there
is an agreement btwn the customer and developers regarding whats to be developed)
Other XP Practices - ANSWER--Creating a coding standard for the project
-Collective code ownership
-Pair programming
-Establishing a sustainable pace forever
- Creating a system metaphor to increase communication effectiveness
XP practice enbaled through Pair Programming - ANSWER-Collective Code Ownership-
pair programming ensures that every line of code has been seen by at least 2
developers, hence it directly compliments the practice of collective code ownership
Characteristics of XP Teams - ANSWER-- Self-organizing: teams empower to
themselves how they are going to execute the work of the project w/out using up-down
management in control)
- Cross functional: having generalized specialists as team members (specialize in one
area but have enough knowledge to participate in other roles part of a XP team)
-Compromise and collaborate
, XP Team members - ANSWER--Customer
-Coach
-Programmer
-Trackers
-Testers
XP Roles - ANSWER-3 Categories:
- Customers: Business experts-product managers, domain experts, interaction
designers, business analysts (ideally there will be 2 for each 3 programmers)
-Programmers: implementation experts and generalizing specialists (ideally 6-10 on a
team)
-Testers: quality experts focused on- Unit Testing, Integration Testing, Acceptance and
Exploratory Testing (ideally 1 for each 6 developers)
Crystal Method - ANSWER--developed by Alistair Cockburn
-Designed for projects ranging from small teams developing low critical solutions to
large teams developing critical solutions
-strong on communication
Crystal levels of criticality - ANSWER-1. Comfort
2. Discretionary money
3. Essential money
4. Life
-Depending on the level of criticality in project there may be additional need for
verifications validations and trace-ability measures)
Crystal Key Principles - ANSWER-1. Frequent Delivery
2. Focus
3. Reflective Improvement
4. Ease of access to experts
5. Personal Safety
6. Technical Enviroment
7. Osmotic Communication
DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development Method) - ANSWER-- created in 1990's
-Is a comprehensive method documented in the form of an
e-book that is available freely on URL: www.dsdm.org
-alt rev version published in 2007
-links well with Project Management techniques like Prince 2 (popular in UK)
-good at time boxing and prioritization
DSDM key Principles - ANSWER-1. Involvement is necessary to develop the right
business solutions
2. Requirements may evolve, however timescale fixed (the concept of time boxing)
3. Early delivery because it results in early ROI from the value created
PRACTICE EXAM QUESTIONS WITH
COMPLETE ANSWERS
12 guiding Principles that support Agile Manifesto (first 6) - ANSWER-1.Our highest
priority is to Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable
software
2. All the welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes
harness change for the customers competitive advantage.
3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months,
with a preference to the shorter timescale.
4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout project.
5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support
they need and trust them to get the job done.
6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a
development team is face-to-face conversation.
12 guiding Principles that support Agile Manifesto (last 6) - ANSWER-7. Working
software is the primary measure of progress.
8. Agile processes promote sustainable Development. The sponsors, developers, in
users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design it enhances agility.
10. Simplicity, the art of maximizing the amount of work not done, is essential.
11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing
teams.
12. At regular intervals the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes
and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
SCRUM evolution - ANSWER--introduced in 1986 by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro
Nonaka
-a new approach to increase speed and flexibility
benefits of SCRUM - ANSWER--higher productivity and lower development costs (by
reducing waste and irregularities by only developing what is absolutely essential for
customer)
-Improved stakeholder (customer) satisfaction (by collaboration btwn dev/cust to help
with changes and needs)
-Higher quality software (using techniques like test driven development, continuous
integration, exceptance test driven development, and refactoring can lead to nearly
defect free software)
-improved employee engagement and job satisfaction (by empowering a team to be
self-organizing, the team can determine how they are going to deliver value to customer
and establish a sustainable pace)
,-Faster time to market and early ROI (by incrementally delivering value/software to
customer in short iterations, working software can be deployed sooner to customer)
SCRUM features - ANSWER--simplicity and proven results
-encompasses agile engineering techniques
-emphasizes small teams and team empowerment
-welcomes changes to requirements
-allows working from a source of prioritized work items
-daily status meetings
-offers team commitment to shippable software at end of each sprint
Checklist for SCRUM adoption - ANSWER--Has the investment in SCRUM paid off?
-What is our next area of improvement
-Should we continue with SCRUM?
-Are we better off than before?
-Are we reproducing better products?
-Do our products have fewer defects?
-Are we able to ship faster than before?
Agile Methods - ANSWER--Scrum
-Kanban
-Feature Driven Development (FDD)
-Crystal
-Lean
-Extreme Programming (XP)
-Dynamic Systems Development Methodology (DSDM)
Values and Practices shared by all Agile methods - ANSWER--embracing change
-light weight or lean documentation
-Daily Stakeholder collaboration
-Incremental delivery
-Continuous improvement
Waterfall Approach : Software Development Life Cycle - ANSWER-1. Initial - collect all
of the requirements necessary
2. Design - determine software structure
3. Implementation - develop software
4. Verification - test software for correctness and acceptance
5. Maintenance - after software has been deployed
Waterfall Approach - Challenges - ANSWER-Dealing with Change
-Expensive (ie: if you discover critical design flaw in verification, or if requs change
during implementation)
-Leads to rework
Change if resisted compromises customer collaboration
,Waterfall Approach - Effective - ANSWER-When projects want to migrate features or
products from one platform to another
-Both the problem and solution must be clear
Extreme Programming (XP) - ANSWER-XP objectives:
-Respond to high cost of changing requs
-Establish strong, robust engineering practices
**EX: if testing is good, lets perform all types of tests (unit testing, integration testing,
and acceptance testing)
If design is good lets do design all the time ( and retrospectives at the end of each
iteration)
If simplicity is good, lets do the simplest possible thing (eliminate anything that does not
add value)
If review is good , lets perform reviews (continuously improve by making sure we do
reviews and retrospectives at the end of each iteration)
If communication is good, lets encourage communication (make sure our team
space/tools encourage face to face and osmotic communication)
If using short iterations is good, lets perform shortest possible iteration (get regular
stakeholder feedback in order to improve the quality of our software and make sure we
are delivering the value costumer wants by doing shortest possible iterations)
XP-introduced Standard Practices - ANSWER--Test driven development (where the
team writes the test before developing the code)
-Continuous Integration (the practice of regularly integrating new code into the system,
and using automated testing to determine the status of the integration)
-On-site customer (essentially made the customer part of the team, on-site, and
participate w/the team on a daily basis)
-User stories (quick and effective way to capture customers requs and make sure there
is an agreement btwn the customer and developers regarding whats to be developed)
Other XP Practices - ANSWER--Creating a coding standard for the project
-Collective code ownership
-Pair programming
-Establishing a sustainable pace forever
- Creating a system metaphor to increase communication effectiveness
XP practice enbaled through Pair Programming - ANSWER-Collective Code Ownership-
pair programming ensures that every line of code has been seen by at least 2
developers, hence it directly compliments the practice of collective code ownership
Characteristics of XP Teams - ANSWER-- Self-organizing: teams empower to
themselves how they are going to execute the work of the project w/out using up-down
management in control)
- Cross functional: having generalized specialists as team members (specialize in one
area but have enough knowledge to participate in other roles part of a XP team)
-Compromise and collaborate
, XP Team members - ANSWER--Customer
-Coach
-Programmer
-Trackers
-Testers
XP Roles - ANSWER-3 Categories:
- Customers: Business experts-product managers, domain experts, interaction
designers, business analysts (ideally there will be 2 for each 3 programmers)
-Programmers: implementation experts and generalizing specialists (ideally 6-10 on a
team)
-Testers: quality experts focused on- Unit Testing, Integration Testing, Acceptance and
Exploratory Testing (ideally 1 for each 6 developers)
Crystal Method - ANSWER--developed by Alistair Cockburn
-Designed for projects ranging from small teams developing low critical solutions to
large teams developing critical solutions
-strong on communication
Crystal levels of criticality - ANSWER-1. Comfort
2. Discretionary money
3. Essential money
4. Life
-Depending on the level of criticality in project there may be additional need for
verifications validations and trace-ability measures)
Crystal Key Principles - ANSWER-1. Frequent Delivery
2. Focus
3. Reflective Improvement
4. Ease of access to experts
5. Personal Safety
6. Technical Enviroment
7. Osmotic Communication
DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development Method) - ANSWER-- created in 1990's
-Is a comprehensive method documented in the form of an
e-book that is available freely on URL: www.dsdm.org
-alt rev version published in 2007
-links well with Project Management techniques like Prince 2 (popular in UK)
-good at time boxing and prioritization
DSDM key Principles - ANSWER-1. Involvement is necessary to develop the right
business solutions
2. Requirements may evolve, however timescale fixed (the concept of time boxing)
3. Early delivery because it results in early ROI from the value created
