Question 1

A pharmaceutical company is using an agile approach to streamline its drug development and testing
process. However, there are also some strict FDA requirements they must follow, so they need to tailor
those methods somewhat. What should they focus on as they do this?

1. Understanding how the agile practices work together

2. Getting buy-in from all the project stakeholders
3. Maximizing the efficiency of agile practices
4. Making sure the changes are a collaborative decision by the team
Question 2

You are on an XP team developing an augmented reality role-playing game designed to be

played on public transport. The team has decided it will be helpful to develop some personas.
What will these personas represent?

1. Team roles
2. Game players
3. Prototype designs
4. Coarse-grained requirements
Question 3

You’re taking the PMI-ACP exam and come to a question about how agile teams handle risk. How
should you think through this question to find the correct answer?

1. Compare the question to what you learned in your Scrum training.

2. Draw upon your real-world experiences working on agile teams.
3. Answer based on your expertise as a Scrum Master and team coach.
4. Pick the answer that best reflects basic agile values and principles.
Question 4

Your IT department is planning the release of new driver management software to its taxi fleet. The
steering committee is debating whether to hire a usability testing service as part of the project costs
and asks for your input.

1. You say the most economical way to test the screens would be near the end of the
project when they are done and less likely to change.
2. You explain that finding issues earlier can save the project lots of money in the long
run.
3. You explain that defects found via pair programming are less costly to fix than those
found via review or inspection.
4. You point out that testing the screens near the end of the project will leave very little
time to incorporate changes.
Question 5

Your XP team is trying to increase the efficiency of your interview process for gathering requirements.
What is one thing you should be focusing on?

1. Reducing the waiting time

2. Minimizing the planning process
3. Improving the quality of the questions
4. Reducing the number of questions
Question 6

Your six-person team designs robotic prosthetics for disabled veterans. Although you all have a good
grasp of the different parts in the process, each team members specializes in one area, such as coding,
framework design, or building and testing the prototypes. You’re proud of the innovative products
you’ve created over the years, which are highly regarded in the industry and have won international
awards. However, within the company your team is notorious for loud arguments that can be heard by
anyone passing nearby. This has led to a perception by management that the group has a morale
problem, so they have decided to hire an agile coach to "help everyone get along." What will your new
coach will focus on first?

A. Teaching people how to resolve conflicts in a healthy way

B. Cross-training people to become generalizing specialists

C. Observing how people are using agile practices and processes

D. Helping to resolve disputes and overcome hard feelings

Question 7

Your senior web designer just came down with the flu in the middle of an iteration. As team leader,
what should you do?

1. Meet with the team to find out how much of the planned work will be done.

2. Ask the two other designers to work overtime.

3. Postpone the product demo until the iteration goal is done.

4. Call his functional manager, and ask for a new designer for the rest of the iteration.
Question 8

A team member has asked if they can work from home to save on commuting time and costs. Which
response best describes agile’s approach to location and communications?

1. Yes, if you are more productive that way, it will offset the disadvantages of missing out on face-
to-face communication.

2. Yes, if you agree to video conferencing for the team meetings and technical discussions, it will
be almost like having you here anyway.

3. Maybe, let’s try it and review how well it’s working in the next retrospective to see if the other
team members are okay with it.

4. No, if you aren’t here, the entire team will suffer from the lack of face-to-face communication
with you.
Question 9

You’re teaching a one-day training course for new product owners at your company, which uses the
Scrum methodology. In your opening remarks, what do you explain is the key responsibility of the
product owner role?

1. Problem solving and continuous improvement

2. Acting as servant leader to the team

3. Planning the iterations and releases

4. Maximizing value to the organization

Question 10

Your team is working on the second release of a "Lunch Club" location-based app that finds your
friends in the area, along with local restaurants that match your preferences. The product owner, Joy,
has just added a new "Pet Friendly" restaurant feature to the backlog that he’d like you to include in
the upcoming release. What’s most likely to happen because of this?

1. The "Pet Friendly" feature will be included in the next iteration.

2. The "Accepts Bitcoin" feature won’t be included in this release.

3. Team members will work longer hours to get the new feature done for this release.

4. Joy will bring in extra contract resources so you can get the new feature done.
Question 11

When does progressive elaboration take place?

1. Whenever the backlog is updated

2. Continuously throughout the project

3. During the review and retrospective meetings

4. In the iteration planning meetings

Question 12

Your PMO wants to know why your team is using task boards and sticky notes on a whiteboard to track
the progress of your work. They point out that all project leaders have a license for the corporate
project management tool that supports dependency tracking, Monte Carlo analysis, and resource
balancing. How do you respond?

1. We like to be able to see our progress at a glance.

2. We don’t want just anyone to be able to update our plan.

3. We tried the corporate PM tool, but it didn’t have the features we needed.

4. As an agile team, we prefer a more back-to-basics approach.

Question 13

If their servant leader is effective, what are we likely to see on an agile team?

1. They will collaborate smoothly and harmoniously with little conflict.

2. They will probably argue a lot while learning to work together.

3. They will learn to suppress their disagreements and work together.

4. They will disagree more and more as they get to know each other.
Question 14

Your distributed agile team is discussing the requirements for the first release with the product owner.
She would like the team to devote the first release to delivering a minimal viable product. What does
she mean by this?

1. Build only the functionality the end users will use the most.

2. Determine the most efficient and least costly technological approach.

3. Deliver the smallest package of features that will be useful to users.

4. Identify the most basic features that will allow the product to work.
Question 15

Your company designs and builds wearable fitness-tracking devices. You’ve asked the delivery team to
prepare a product roadmap for the new device they’re working on. As project sponsor, what will you be
looking for on their roadmap?

1. How the team is planning to balance risk reduction with value delivery

2. An overview of the device’s functionality and planned releases

3. Outline of the team’s technological approach and proof of concept

4. Any opportunities to deliver value earlier than planned

Question 16

Kara has been assigned to your project, but she still has some responsibilities supporting her previous
project. What’s the best way to estimate her availability for your project?

1. Ask her to record how much time she spends working on your project, and use this to estimate
availability.

2. Subtract the average time she has been spending on the other project from her schedule, along
with 20 percent overhead for meetings.

3. To avoid excessive documentation, just assume that 50 percent of her time will be available to
your project.

4. Assume she will be available 50 percent of her time minus 20 percent overhead for meetings on
either project.
Question 17

A business user is questioning your team’s kaizen approach and asks why you don’t spend more time
to do it right the first time rather than creating a quick prototype and then trying to fix it up. You
respond by saying, "Prototypes are an effective way of confirming and uncovering requirements and
testing technical options. Then through continuous improvement ________." Which ending of this
statement wouldn’t be aligned with the kaizen philosophy?

1. We improve our processes to be more efficient

2. We enhance our product to deliver more business value

3. We iterate toward what is really required by the customer

4. We test for optimal visibility and transparency

Question 18

Your co-located team is developing an implanted medical device for people with blood sugar
sensitivities. There have been some misunderstandings between the team and the business subject
matter experts about how sample values and display response times should be shown on the device.
As the team coach, what’s the best way to address this problem?

1. Arrange quarterly meetings with the business subject matter experts to view and discuss
sample screens of how the data will be shown on the device.

2. Meet once again with the business subject matter experts to validate the requirements to
ensure all parties fully understand what is needed.

3. At each iteration demo, discuss how the response times are displayed and clarify any issues
raised about the test results.

4. Hold a requirements workshop to validate the technical specifications for the device and ensure
everyone understands the requirements.
Question 19

As Scrum Master, you read online that a competitor is about to release a new product that offers the
same innovative functionality the team is working on. What should you do?

1. Cancel the project.

2. Ask the product owner if this news changes the viability of the project.

3. Do some research to determine whether the team’s product will still have a unique angle.

4. Tell the product owner to immediately reprioritize the backlog.

Question 20

This team started the project with 54 points of functionality in the backlog, and they have just finished
iteration 8. Their burndown chart per iteration since starting the project is shown here. At the start of
iteration 5, was this team ahead of, or behind schedule to date?

1. We can’t tell that from this chart.

2. Although iteration 4 met its goals, overall, they are still behind because of slow progress in the
first three iterations.

3. They are falling behind at that point, although they will make up the shortfall in the next
iteration.

4. They are a bit ahead of schedule at this point.

Question 21

An electronics company is working on a new laptop design that incorporates retinal scanning for user
authentication. The team has created a working prototype. However, the product owner calculates that
its production cost would be too high, so she suggests that they simplify the design and use cheaper
and larger components. How should the team respond?

1. That should work since we have already tested all the functionality.

2. We won’t know if that will work until we finish building the actual product.

3. We’ll do a risk-based spike to see how the component costs will be impacted by international
currency fluctuations.

4. We’ll do an architectural spike to see if we can rework the laptop to get the savings you are
looking for.
Question 22

You’re a programmer on an XP team and would like to attend a weekend workshop to brush up on
the coding skills you’ll need for the upcoming phase of the project. You’d also like to take a day
off during the week to compensate for working on the weekend. Who should you go to for help
arranging this?

1. Your teammates need to decide if this will interfere with getting the work done.

2. Your team coach will evaluate this request and help get it approved.

3. The customer will determine whether this will interfere with the project goals.

4. The project sponsor must approve requests for spending and schedule changes.
Question 23

A new agile team has already identified a list of potential risks and ranked them by severity. The
next step is to analyze the risks for avoidance and mitigation actions that might be taken. Since
the list is very long, the team is trying to narrow down which risks to focus on first. Using a
severity scale of 1 to 3 (low to high severity), which of the following categories of risks should
they evaluate first?

1. The risks ranked as high impact and low probability

2. The risks ranked as high probability and low impact

3. The risks ranked as both medium probability and medium impact

4. The risks ranked as high impact and low probability and those ranked as low impact and high
probability would be tied for top priority.
Question 24

The product owner is frustrated because the team’s estimates are always too low. Each time it turns
out that some necessary steps were left out, such as testing or integration, but the variance isn’t
consistent. How should the product owner address this issue?

1. Add a multiplication factor to the estimates based on the worst-case variance from the team’s
estimate to the actual duration.

2. Visit the team room every day to make sure they are using the most efficient approach to
getting the work done.

3. Discuss each estimate with the team to make sure all the work involved in building the story is
included.

4. Agile methods don’t require accurate estimates; knowledge work is inherently variable and
cannot accurately be estimated.
Question 25

At a Steering Committee meeting the CFO asks why the project repeats multiple iterations of build,
test, and evaluate. when it would be more cost-efficient to complete each of these activities in
their entirety and then release the specialist resources. How do you respond?

1. This approach improves team cohesion, collaboration, and productivity.

2. This approach provides earlier return on the investment in this project.

3. This approach follows the recommended best practices for the agile approach.

4. This approach offers more visibility and transparency for monitoring the status of the work.
Question 26

You have been asked to assess the adoption of agile across several teams in your organization.
Which team is best implementing the agile mindset?

1. A team that isn’t consistently using agile practices and isn’t sure what those practices are trying
to accomplish

2. A team that is consistently using agile practices but is working with a fixed upfront plan

3. A team that isn’t consistently using agile practices, but the team members are working
cooperatively to achieve their goals

4. A team that is consistently using agile practices, but team members require a lot of direction to
keep development progressing
Question 27

You’re leading an advertising team that is designing flyers for a political candidate. This is a
temporary team that was formed for the duration of the campaign season, and most of the team
members are new to agile. When you announce that the group will be holding regular
retrospectives every other Friday, several team members ask how this can be a good use of their
time as election day draws closer. How do you respond?

1. Because of the tight deadline, it will help to regularly figure out what’s working and what’s
holding us back.

2. To help the next temporary campaign team, we’ve been asked to record which approaches work
well and which don’t.

3. Since this team is temporary, it’s important to gather as a group to regularly review and refine
our mission.

4. Because the work is so urgent, we have to coordinate our efforts and define "done" for each
flyer so we don’t get off track.
Question 28

The website for the product your team is developing has been deployed for three months, and each
month you have been getting fewer new visitors. The product owner suggests that Five Whys
might be helpful in this situation. How do you respond?

1. Yes, that will be a good way to brainstorm how to improve our search engine optimization.

2. Maybe, that could help us generate some new solutions to try, but it won’t solve the problem.

3. Sure, that can help us find inefficiencies and streamline the user experience.

4. Good idea, that will help us figure out the underlying reasons for the problem.
Question 29

Your company is planning a move to a new building, and facilities management is interviewing you
about your team’s requirements. How do you respond?

1. We require an adjoining room for our team meetings and information radiators.

2. We need an empty space without any cubicles that is big enough to accommodate all our desks.

3. We should be close enough together to discourage any private conversations.

4. Our desks need to be facing each other so everyone can see what everyone else is doing.
Question 30

As team coach, you overhear three team members debating the best way to design the acceptance test
for user story 7.12. They seem to be at a stalemate. How should you respond?

1. Gather the team to discuss the issue and come up with a solution.

2. As the team coach, you should join the conversation and offer your opinion about the best
design.

3. Since this issue is an impediment to progress, you should evaluate the options and identify the
best design for them.

4. You should all meet with the customer to come up with a collaborative decision.
Question 31

What isn’t a key focus of the agile approach?

1. Delivering early return on investment

2. Adapting to change and uncertainty

3. Measuring progress

4. Reducing risk as soon as possible

Question 32

During the Q & A after your presentation on agile adoption, an attendee asks how an agile approach
can possibly work for a project that has a hard deadline that can’t be missed. How will you respond?

1. If there’s enough budget available, there should be no problem meeting all the requirements by
the deadline.

2. Neither agile nor traditional methods can guarantee delivery by a fixed date, so pick the
approach you are most familiar with.

3. If the deadline is that critical, it would be safer to just create a prototype that is guaranteed to
be ready in plenty of time.

4. As long as there’s some flexibility in the product scope, an agile approach is ideal for projects
with fixed deadlines.
Question 33

Your team is using the lean approach for a project that involves developing safety software for self-
driving cars. Which waste reduction effort would you be most interested in pursuing?

1. Minimize the effort required to develop and test a feature.

2. Shorten the time it takes to deploy a new feature after it’s identified.

3. Balance throughput with progressively iterated cycles of work in progress.

4. Optimize the team’s cycle time while mitigating technical debt.

Question 34

Four coworkers are studying for the PMI-ACP exam together, and they have gotten into an argument
about lead time, cycle time, and throughput. Who is right?

1. Jorge says lead time is usually a subset of cycle time.

2. Rainer says cycle time is usually a subset of lead time.

3. Mara says it can be either way since the two terms can be used interchangeably.

4. Aiko says it doesn’t matter since cycle time and lead time aren’t that relevant anyway.
Question 35

To fulfill the responsibilities of a servant leader, which of these interpersonal skills would be most
important to have?

1. Make decisions independently without relying on others.

2. Efficiently resolve conflicts between other people.

3. Help project stakeholders manage change and challenges.

4. Understand and influence the emotions of others.

Question 36

Your engineering team is designing a packaging robot for the food industry that can pick and pack
items from a moving conveyer. The product owner is also an engineer, and he thinks it’s a big waste of
the team’s time to create a risk-adjusted backlog. You explain that creating this tool will:

1. Help us schedule the completion of each item on your list of threats and issues.

2. Allow us to balance continuous improvement with progressive elaboration.

3. Assign a quantifiable business value to each risk response action.

4. Timebox the coarse-grained estimate of each risk’s impact on the product.

Question 37

A chemical processing company has assembled a task force to find ways to reduce emissions from a
recently opened facility, and the group has decided to use a Kanban approach. Which statement
reflects how they will work together?

1. Use a graphical tool to plan and document their processes.

2. Have spontaneous discussions about processes whenever an issue arises.

3. Carefully analyze and document the interim goals of the process.

4. Use task boards with limits on work in progress to plan their processes.
Question 38

A start-up software company is developing a gaming app aimed at entertaining casual players for a few
minutes at a time in between other tasks. Each time the app is refreshed, it presents a new puzzle or
game. The app includes an algorithm for suggesting new games based on the player’s cumulative
thumbs up and down ratings for different types of games. The team is trying to decide which feature to
develop in the next iteration. What criteria should they use?

1. The feature that delivers the most value toward the iteration and release goals

2. The feature that will best balance value delivery with risk reduction

3. The feature identified by the product owner after discussion with the development team

4. The feature identified by the development team after discussion with the product owner
Question 39

David, the product owner for the team you’re leading, is working with four development teams on
different parts of a large, complex solution. He tells you he’s concerned because your team is using a
considerably smaller story point unit than the other three teams. How do you respond to him?

1. The size of each team’s story point doesn’t matter since this is just a relative concept, not an
actual metric.

2. A story point unit has to be used consistently, so we will switch to the size used by the other
teams.

3. Our story point has to be smaller since our part of the solution is the most detailed.

4. We’ve decided that this is the story point unit that works best for us.
Question 40

You notice that over the last month, your team’s work in progress has increased. This is a troubling
sign, indicating that you have more ______.

1. Work than you can get done

2. Difficult technical problems

3. Blockages in the workflow

4. Inaccurate estimates
Question 41

Your team has run into a tricky question about a stakeholder’s requirements that is holding up their
progress. However, she is traveling and isn’t available for an in-person meeting. What should you do?

1. Call her on the phone.

2. Send her an email.

3. Wait until she’s back in the office to meet face to face.

4. Ask another stakeholder what she needs.

Question 42

Your team is developing a mobile alert aggregator for social media updates and trending news items.
They want to use the MoSCoW prioritization scheme, but people have different ideas of what "must
have" means. How would you explain this category to them?

1. These are the features that need to be delivered in the first release.

2. This is the functionality that allows the system to work properly but isn’t essential to include.

3. These are the requirements that will add quantifiable value to the solution.

4. These are the basic requirements that make the system a viable, functioning product.
Question 43

While observing the team’s stand-up meeting, the product owner realizes that one of the developers is
confused about a business rule. How should the product owner address this?

1. Speak up immediately and clarify the issue to avoid any further confusion.

2. Take a few minutes to talk to the developer after the stand-up.

3. Wait until the sprint review to explain how the product increment needs to be changed to be
acceptable.

4. Wait for the sprint retrospective to provide the feedback so everyone can learn from it.
Question 44

You’re the Scrum-Master for a team developing in-cab dispatch software for a trucking company. A
week before a pilot with a small group of beta test drivers, the ticket printing functionality required for
Department of Transportation regulations isn’t working. You have to decide whether to ask the drivers
to create paper tickets, as they have done in the past, or to delay the pilot until that functionality is
ready. Which agile value is involved in resolving this issue?

1. Responding to change over following a plan

2. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

3. Working software over comprehensive documentation

4. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Question 45

You are working with a group of teachers who are using an agile approach to design a letters and
numbers course for kindergarten classes. Everyone seems to have a different opinion about how to
select the exercises for the course. As a facilitator, how can you best help them resolve this stalemate
and move forward?

1. Train them in conflict resolution skills.

2. Have each person share their feelings about why each option is important.

3. Reach agreement on the first set of exercises and then work out the others later.

4. Create a decision spectrum to document the different views for discussion.

Question 46

The Dog Walk Cooperative social media app lets members pick up local dogs to take for a walk while they are out
for a walk themselves. The company’s tag line is: "Ensuring walks have more dogs and dogs have more walks."
The development team is using a task board to track their progress, as shown here. It is the last day of the first
week of a two-week sprint. Based on their task board, how is the Dog Walk Cooperative team doing?

1. They’re falling behind because an impediment has arisen.

2. The first week has been slow, but they still expect to finish the sprint backlog.

3. They are ahead of schedule and should finish the sprint backlog early.

4. They won’t know how well they are doing until their final velocity numbers are posted.
Question 47

On your project team, which is developing pacemaker reporting software, two of the developers are arguing about
how to design the user interface. This is most likely an example of ____.

1. Storming

2. Convergence

3. Self-direction

4. Usability testing
Question 48

Your team is struggling with formatting their user stories in the Role/Functionality/ Business Benefit
format. They ask you, their agile coach, what impact it will have on the project if they just skip the
parts of this format that are hard to figure out. You say, "If we do that, then ______."

1. End users won’t understand how to use the product

2. We won’t know why each piece of functionality is important

3. The product owner won’t understand what we have built

4. We won’t be able to deliver early business value

Question 49

An established agile team that is building software integrations for their corporate ERP system is using
planning poker to estimate the user stories for release 12.06. What are they trying to determine?

1. How long it will take to develop and test release 12.06

2. When release 12.06 will be ready to deploy

3. How much time the first iteration will take in ideal time

4. The relative size in points of the stories they have reviewed

Question 50

You’re the Scrum-Master for a team whose velocity has been averaging 50 to 60 points per two-week
sprint for the last three months. The product owner tells you he would like 140 points of functionality to
be done for the next release. How do you respond?

1. That’s 6 weeks of work; is that an acceptable timeframe for the release?

2. Sorry, there’s no way the team can get 140 points done in a single sprint.

3. We can try to get it done, but we’ll have to omit the lower priority features.

4. Our velocity is on a steady upward trend, so let’s plan the release in 4 or 5 weeks.