PMI-ACP Lite Mock Exam 6a Practice Questions

Test Questions
1. Often times during release planning user stories are categorized and organized by
theme. Which of the following agile artifact is often used to show organization and
progress of user stories by theme?

A. Theme parking garage

B. Theme runway
C. Story theme chart
D. Parking lot chart

2. What is a project buffer?

A. Extra time added to each time-boxed value for a task to account for delays,
obstacles, and other unforeseen issues to help predict an accurate project
completion date.
B. Extra time added to the beginning of a project to account for team discovery
C. Extra time added to the end of a project to account for delays, obstacles, and
other unforeseen issues to help predict an accurate completion date.
D. Extra time added throughout a project to account for reflection workshops

3. On a burndown chart, two series are typically charted. Select the response that lists
those two series (also referred to as lines).

A. The net and gross work remaining

B. The actual and ideal work remaining
C. The estimated and ideal work remaining
D. The actual and net work remaining

4. What is a story point?

A. Fixed unit of testing effort.

B. Dynamic unit of testing effort.
C. Dynamic unit of development effort.
D. Fixed unit of development effort.

5. In agile estimating and planning, what is 'incremental' revenue?

A. Revenue retained through the development of new product features or services

that prevent existing customers from stopping use of the existing product.
B. New revenue realized through the sales of products or services to new
customers.
C. Additional revenue realized through the sales of new product features or
services to existing customers.

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 PMI-ACP Lite Mock Exam 6a Practice Questions

D. New revenue found in a hidden value stream.

6. What is affinity estimating?

A. A method to estimate time to market.

B. A method to estimate user story work effort.
C. A method to estimate customer reaction to product features.
D. Another name for planning poker.

7. When estimating the relative work effort to develop user stories, agile teams have
both ideal days and story points as a method for estimation. What should agile teams
be weary of doing with these methods?

A. Using both estimate methods simultaneously in a project.

B. Using ideal days too early in a project
C. Forgetting to convert both methods into story velocity for a common basis of
estimation
D. Using story points too early in a project

8. How can an agile team estimate the relative size of developing a user story?

A. Using story points

B. Using decomposition
C. Using velocity
D. Using aggregation

9. How are planning poker and affinity estimating similar?

A. They are both methods used in agile to estimate task difficulty.

B. They are both methods used in agile to estimate risk.
C. They are both methods used in agile to estimate value.
D. They are both methods used in agile for relative sizing of the work effort
involved for developing user stories.

10. Kyle's team just completed a sprint. The team had estimated that it could complete 45
story points, but only completed 30 story points in the sprint. How many story points
would be a safe estimate for to estimate for the next sprint?

A. 45
B. 30
C. 50
D. 40

11. Besides using story points to estimate the relative size of a user story, how else may
an agile team estimate user story size?

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 PMI-ACP Lite Mock Exam 6a Practice Questions

A. Using exact time-boxing

B. Using ideal days
C. Using heuristics
D. Using ideal velocity

12. When is it appropriate to estimate tasks for an iteration?

A. Both during iteration planning and during the iteration itself

B. Only during release planning
C. During the iteration
D. During iteration planning

13. In agile estimating and planning, what is 'new' revenue?

A. New revenue found in a hidden value stream.

B. Additional revenue realized through the sales of new product features or
services to existing customers.
C. Revenue retained through the development of new product features or services
that prevent existing customers from stopping use of the existing product.
D. New revenue realized through the sales of products or services to new
customers.

14. Name an agile planning technique used to estimate the point value of a user story.

A. Planning poker
B. Texas Hold'Em
C. Narrowband Delphi
D. Delphi narrowband

15. What agile estimation technique is conducted using a deck of cards for quickly
estimating the relative work effort of developing user stories in a product backlog?

A. Affinity estimation
B. Planning poker
C. SMART
D. Planning game

Answers

1. D - A parking lot chart is an agile artifact used to organize and categorize user stories by
theme. A parking lot chart typically includes the name of the identified themes, the number
of stories and story points it includes, and a progress chart to show the completion
percentage of story points. For example, a parking lot chart could have a theme of 'database'
with 6 user stories worth 80 story points at a 50% completion. A 50% completion would
indicate that 40 story points had been completed, but NOT necessarily that 3 stories had been

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 PMI-ACP Lite Mock Exam 6a Practice Questions

completed because not all stories are equivalent in effort. [Agile Estimating and Planning.
Mike Cohn.] [Agile estimation]
2. C - A project buffer is extra time added to the end of a project to account for delays,
obstacles, and other unforeseen issues to help predict an accurate completion date. A project
buffer can be estimated using several methods. Three commonly used methods are 1) square
root of the sum of squares method, 2) Critical chain project management method (CCPM), 3)
halving the sum of most likely estimates. The square root of the sum of squares method
involves finding a local safety for all tasks, squaring all the local safeties, summing these
squares, and then finding the square root of the sum. The Critical chain project management
method (CCPM) is the sum of half the local safeties of all tasks. The local safety is the
difference between the 50% confidence estimate and the 90% confidence estimate. The
halving the sum of most likely estimates method involves adding all the most likely
estimates and dividing by two. [Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.] [Agile
estimation]
3. B - A project burndown chart is an often used information radiator to show iteration
progress. It charts two series: the actual work remaining and ideal/estimated work remaining.
The vertical axis is the work unit (often story points or hours) and the horizontal axis is
iteration duration (typically in number of days). The ideal/estimated work series is a straight,
downward sloping line originating on the vertical axis at the value of work to be completed
(e.g., 20 story points) and extending to the horizontal axis (i.e., 0 story points) on the last day
of the iteration. The actual series is dependent upon the agile team's productivity and the task
complexity and is updated daily. The actual series is typically volatile and is not a straight
line but ebbs and flows as the project team tackles the development process. [Agile
Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.] [Agile estimation]
4. D - A story point is a fixed unit of development effort. It is used in the relative sizing of user
stories to estimate work effort involved with development. Story points are not time-based,
meaning [Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.] [Agile estimation]
5. C - Additional revenue is revenue realized through the sales of new product features or
services to existing customers. [Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.] [Agile
estimation]
6. B - Affinity estimating is a method to predict the work effort, typically in story points, of
developing a user story. It is particularly useful for large product backlogs. Although several
methods exist, the basic affinity estimating method involves sizing user stories on a scale
from small to large. The scale can be a Fibonacci sequence or t-shirt sizes and is typically
taped to a wall in a large conference room. Participants then attach their user stories to the
wall as estimates. It is often done in silence and has several iterations until the user stories
have been estimated. [The Art of Agile Development. James Shore.] [Agile estimation]
7. A - Agile teams should agree to one method of estimation, either story points or ideal days,
as both use different units of measurement and can lead to confusion. [Agile Estimating and
Planning. Mike Cohn.] [Agile estimation]
8. A - Agile teams typically use story points to estimate the relative size or effort of developing
a user story [Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.] [Agile estimation]
9. D - Both planning poker and affinity estimation are agile techniques used to size the work
effort of developing user stories. [Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.] [Agile
estimation]

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 PMI-ACP Lite Mock Exam 6a Practice Questions

10. B - Estimating how many user story points a team can complete in a sprint/iteration should
be based upon its previous iterations, if possible. If Kyle's team estimated 45 story points in
its first sprint but completed only 30 story points, it would be wise to estimate no more than
30 for its next sprint/iteration. [Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.] [Agile
estimation]
11. B - Instead of using story points, agile teams may estimate the relative sizes of user stories
using ideal days. Ideal days represents the amount of days - uninterrupted by meetings,
personal life, non-working days, or any other delays, obstacles or distractions - that it would
take a single person to build, test, and release the user story, relative to other user stories in
the backlog. [Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.] [Agile estimation]
12. A - It is appropriate to estimate tasks both during iteration planning and throughout the
iteration. [Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.] [Agile estimation]
13. D - New revenue is revenue realized through the sales of products or services to new
customers. [Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.] [Agile estimation]
14. A - Planning poker is a common agile estimation technique used to estimate the relative
point value of a user story. [Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.] [Agile estimation]
15. B - Planning poker is based upon the wideband Delphi estimation technique. It is a
consensus-based technique for estimating effort. Sometimes called scrum poker, it is a
technique for a relative estimation of effort, typically in story points, to develop a user story.
At a planning poker meeting, each estimator is given an identical deck of planning poker
cards with a wide range of values. The Fibonacci sequence is often used for values for
planning poker (i.e., 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5,8,etc.); another common sequence is (question mark, 0,
1/2, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, and 100). A planning poker meeting works as follows: 1) a
moderator, not estimating, facilitates the meeting. 2) the product owner/manager provides a
short overview of the user story and answers clarifying questions posed by the developers.
Typically the product owner does not vote. 3) Each estimator selects an estimate of work
effort by selecting a card, 4) Once everyone has selected a card, everyone overturns their
card concurrently, 5) Estimators with high and low estimates are given a chance to defend
positions. 6) The process repeats until there is consensus. The developer who owns the user
story is typically given higher credence. [Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.] [Agile
estimation]

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