SAFe 4 Practitioner Certification
How do you define the "Activity" within the container?
Activity is what they can do with the system
What happens at Iteration boundaries?
Adjustments
What is the formula for the "Average wait time"
Average wait time = Average queue length divided by average processing rate
Define an infrastructure enabler story?
Builds development and testing frameworks that enable a faster and more efficient development process
Define an architecture enabler story?
Builds the architectural runway, which enables smoother and faster development
Define an exploration enabler story?
Builds understanding of what is needed by the customer, to understand prospective solutions and evaluate alternatives
How do you define the "business value" within the container?
Business value is why they want to do the activity
Describe the "data methods" technique when splitting a user story
Complexity can be in the interface rather than the functionality itself. Split stories to build the simplest interface first
What is the purpose of Iteration planning and commit?
Define and commit to what will be build in the iteration
We use size to estimate what?
Duration
When does initial sequencing happen?
During the PI Planning
Define a compliance enable story?
Facilitate specific activities such as verification and validations, documentation, sing-offs, regulatory submissions and approvals
What is the role of the System Architect/Engineer?
Has the technical responsibility for the overall architectural and engineering design of the system. Provides architectural and technical guidance to the teams on the train.
Describe the "use case scenarios" technique when splitting a user story
If use cases are used to represent complex interaction, the story can be split via the individual scenarios
What is the role of an RTE?
Is a servant leader who facilitates and guides the work of the ART. Acts like a chief SM
What is the role of Product Management?
Is the main content authority guiding the train. Owns the prioritizes the Program Backlog
What provides clarity, commitment, and management information during Iteration Planning?
Iteration Goals
What is the result of the iteration planning and commit?
Iteration Goals and backlog of the team's commitment
What is the foundation of the House of Lean
Leadership
Describe the "business rule variations" technique when splitting a user story?
Often provide a straightforward splitting scheme
What happens in the Program Backlog when sequencing stories?
Primary economic prioritization happens in the Program Backlog
Scrum has 3 roles and 4 key events, what are they?
Roles > PO, SM, and Development Team Events > Iteration planning, Daily, iteration review, and iteration retrospective
Describe the "simple/complex" technique when splitting a user story
Simplify! What's the simplest version that can possibly work?
Describe the "deferring system qualities" technique when splitting a user story
Sometimes functionality isn't that difficult. More effort may be required to make it faster...or more precise..or more scalable
Describe the "operations" technique when splitting a user story
Split by type of operation: Create Read Update Delete (CRUD)
Describe the "major effort" technique when splitting a user story
Split into several parts, with first requiring a most effort. More functionality can be added later on
We establish velocity by looking at what?
The average output of the last iteration
What is capacity allocation and what does it help
The development team plans all work to be included in the team backlog for a healthy balance?
Define Enabler Stories?
They build the groundwork for future user stories
How do you define the "user role" within the container?
User role is the description of the person, device, or system doing the action
What is the cover over the top of the SAFe House of Lean
Value
Describe the "variations in data" technique when splitting a user story
Variations in data provide additional opportunities
SAFe for Lean Enterprises is a....
knowledge base of proven, integrated principles, practices, and competencies for Lean, Agile, and DevOps
The Agile Release Train (ART) consists of what?
1) A Virtual organization of 5-12 teams (50-125+ individuals) that plans, commits, and executes together 2) Program Increment (PI) is a fixed time box; default is 10 weeks 3) Synchronized Iterations and PIs 4) Aligned to a common mission via a single Program Backlog 5) Operates under architectural and UX guidance 6) Frequently produces valuable and valuable System Level Solutions
What does "Relentless Improvement" stand for in the House of Lean?
1) A constant sense of danger 2) Optimize the whole 3) Consider facts carefully, then act quickly 4) Apply lean tools to identify and address root causes 5) Reflect at key milestones; identify and address shortcomings
Describe the "Break out a spike" technique when splitting a user story
1) A story or feature may not be understood well enough to estimate. Build a technical or functional spike to figure it out, then split the story based on that result 2) Sometimes the team needs to develop a design, or prototype an idea 3) Spikes are demonstrable, like any other story
Define acceptance criteria?
1) Acceptance criteria provide the details of the story from a testing point of view 2) Acceptance criteria are created by the agile team
Iteration Goals serve 3 purposes and what are they?
1) Align team members to a common purpose 2) Align Program Teams to common PI Objectives and manage dependencies 3) Provide continuous management information
Story points are relative; they are not connected to what?
1) Any specific units of measure 2) Compare with other stories (e.g. 8 point story would take 4 x longer than a 2 point story)
It is far less desirable to organize teams around?
1) Architectural layer (i.e. Platform, middleware, UI, DB, business logic, etc.) 2) Other (Programming languages, spoken language, technology, location)
What is a feature benefit hypothesis?
1) Benefit hypothesis justifies Feature implementation cost and provides business perspective when making scope decisions 2) Business benefits impact economic Prioritization of the feature
What does "Value" stand for in the House of Lean?
1) Best quality and value to people and society 2) High morale, Safety and customer delight
Define the 3'c?
1) Card - written on a card or in a tool and may annotate with notes 2) Conversation - details are in a conversation with the PO 3) Confirmation - Acceptance criteria confirms the story correctness
What is the SM's role at the team level?
1) Coaches the team 2) Ensures that the team follows agile principles and practices 3) Facilitates processes and meetings 4) Removes impediments and barriers 5) Protects the team from external forces
Lean Portfolio Management consists of 4 key atributes
1) Connects the portfolio to the enterprise strategy 2) Creates Lean Budgets and investment guardrails 3) manages portfolio operations 4) Provides Lean governance across value streams
Define the Team Backlog?
1) Contains all the work the team needs to work on 2) Created by the PO/Team 3) Prioritized by PO 4) Contains user and enabler stories - User stories provide Customers with value - Enabler stories build the infrastructure and architecture that makes user stories possible 5) NFRs are constraints on the backlog
What are the 4 key areas of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline
1) Continuous Exploration 2) Continuous Integration 3) Continuous Deployment 4) Release on Demand
What is the SM's role at the Enterprise level?
1) Coordinates with other SM's, the System Team, and shared team members in the ART PI Planning meetings 2) Works with the above teams throughout each Iteration and PI 3) Coordinates with other SM's and the RTE in Scrum of Scrums 4) Fosters normalized estimating within the team 5) Helps teams operate under architectural and portfolio governance, system-level integration, and System Demos 6) Fosters adoption of agile technical practices
What are the responsibilities of the Development Team?
1) Create and refine user stories and acceptance criteria 2) defines, builds, tests, deliver stories 3) develop and commit to team PI Objectives and iteration plan
Within Team and Technical Agility there are 3 key atributes
1) Cross-functional, self-organizing teams that define, build, test, and possibly deploy value 2) Teams use Scrum and Kanban for team agility 3) Apply Built-in Quality practices for Technical Agility - Lean and Agile principles and practices - Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) - eXtreme Programming (XP) - Code Quality - Design patterns and practices - Agile modeling
DevOps in SAFe uses the acronym "CALMR" and what does it stand for?
1) Culture of shared responsibility 2) Automation of Continuous Delivery Pipeline 3) Lean Flow accelerates delivery 4) Measurement of everything 5) Recovery enables low risk releases
3 steps in the path of BDD are?
1) Discovery of behavior 2) Formulation of specific tests 3) Automation of tests
What is the role of a PO at the Enterprise level?
1) Establishes the sequence of backlog items based on program priorities, events, and dependencies with other teams 2) Operates as part of an extended Product Management Team, usually reporting via a 'fat dotted line' to Product Management 3) Understands how the Enterprise backlog Model operates with Epics, Capabilities, Features, and Stories 4) Uses PI Objectives and Iteration Goals to communicate with management 5) Coordinates with other Product Owners, the System Team, and shared services in the PI Planning meetings 6) Works with other Product Owners and the Product Management team throughout each Iteration and PI
Teams can be organized around what types of development teams?
1) Features 2) Components
Define Solution Features for the Program Backlog?
1) Features are services that fulfill user needs 2) Feature is an industry-standard term familiar to marketing and Product Management 3) Expressed as a phrase, value is expressed in terms of benefits 4) Features are identified, prioritized, estimated, and maintained in the Program Backlog
What are the key functions when establishing velocity before historical data exists?
1) For every full-time developer and tester on the team, give the team 8 points (adjust for part-timers) 2) subtract 1 point for every team member vacation day and holiday 3) Find a small story that would take about a half-day to develop and a half-day to test and validate, and call it a 1 4) Estimate every other story relative to that one 5) Never look back (don't worry about recalibrating)
Four configurations provide the right solution for each enterprise and they are?
1) Full Configuration 2) Large Solutions Configuration 3) Portfolio Configuration 4) Essential Configuration
Use Component Teams only when?
1) High reuse, high technical specialization, critical NFRs 2) Creating each component as a 'potentially replaceable part of the system, with well-defined interfaces'
Describe the "Work flow steps" technique when splitting a user story
1) Identify specific steps that a user takes to accomplish a work flow, then implement the work flow in increments
Why is estimating a whole-team exercise?
1) Increases accuracy by including all perspectives 2) Builds understanding 3) Creates shared commitment
Define the INVEST model used when writing user stories?
1) Independent - story should be independent of all other stories 2) Negotiable - story should only share the why and what but not the how (i.e. solution) 3) Valuable - story should add value to a customer that uses the feature, product/solution 4) Estimable - story should provide enough information to be understood by the team and estimated 5) Small - story should be small enough in size to be completed in as little time as possible (i.e. few weeks to a few days) 6) Testable - story should be understood enough by the team as to define them (i.e. acceptance criteria)
What are the four types of enabler stories?
1) Infrastructure 2) Architecture 3) Exploration 4) Compliance
Increased variability creates what?
1) Large batch sizes 2) High utilization 3) Severe project slippage 4) handoff 5) dispersed/distributed teams 6) poor infrastructure
What does "Leadership" stand for in the House of Lean?
1) Lead the change 2) Know the way; emphasize life-long learning 3) Develop people 4) Inspire and align with mission; minimize constraints 5) Decentralize decision-making 6) Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
What are the 5 core competencies of the Lean Enterprise
1) Lean-Agile Leadership 2) Team and Technical Agility 3) DevOps and Release on Demand 4) Business Solutions and Lean Systems Engineering 5) Lean Portfolio Management
What do long queues create?
1) Longer lead times 2) Increased risk 3) More variability 4) Lower quality 5) Less motivation
What is the role of a PO in at the team level?
1) Member of the agile team 2) Provides a single voice for the Customer and stakeholders 3) Owns and manages the Team Backlog 4) Defines and accepts requirements (i.e. backlog items) 5) Makes the hard calls on scope and content
Within DevOps and Release on Demand there are 4 key atributes
1) Not every organization needs continuous delivery; They all need the ability to Release on Demand 2) DevOps provides the culture, Automation, Lean-Flow, Measurement, and Recovery that enables continuous delivery 3) Agile Release Trains (ARTs) are teams of agile teams 4) ARTs are organized around Release on Demand through the Continuous Delivery Pipeline; many ARTs also operate the solution
What does "Flow" represent in the House of Lean?
1) Optimize continuous and sustainable throughput of value 2) Avoid start-stop-start project delays 3) Build quality in; flow depends on it 4) Understand, exploit and manage variability 5) Integrate frequently
What is the process of the iteration planning an commit?
1) PO defines the what 2) The team defines the how and how much 3) 4 hrs max
What does "Innovation" represent in the House of Lean?
1) Producers innovate; customers validate 2) Get out of the office (Gemba) 3) Provide time and space for creativity 4) Apply innovation accounting 5) Pivot without mercy or guilt
What are the ART Roles at the Program Level in SAFe?
1) Release Train Engineer (RTE) 2) Product Manager 3) System Architect/Engineer
What are the 4 pillars holding the roof up of the House of Lean
1) Respect for people and culture 2) flow 3) innovation 4) Relentless improvement
Within Business Solutions and Lean Systems Engineering there are 4 key atributes
1) Solution Trains coordinate multiple Agile Release Trains and suppliers 2) Manage frequent integration 3) Continuously address compliance concerns 4) Architect for scale, modularity, release-ability, and serviceability
What are the SAFe Lean-Agile Principles?
1) Take an economic view 2) Apply system thinking 3) Assume variability; preserve options 4) Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles 5) Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems 6) Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths 7) Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning 8) Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers 9) Decentralize decision-making
What is the reciprocal commitment in the iteration planning and commit?
1) Team commits to delivering specific value 2) Business commits to leaving priorities unchanged during the iteration
What are the 6 key functions during an Iteration Planning flow session?
1) Team establishes its velocity 2) Team clarifies and estimates the stories 3) Team optionally breaks stories into tasks 4) Process continues while there is more capacity 5) Team synthesizes Iteration Goals 6) Everyone commits
What does "Respect" represent in the House of Lean?
1) The people who do all the work 2) The customer is whomever consumes your work - Don't overload them - Don't make them wait - Don't force them to do wasteful work - Don't impose wishful thinking 3) Build long-term partnerships based on trust 4) Culture change comes last not first 5) to change the culture you have to change the organization
What is Kanban?
1) Visualize work flow 2) Limit WIP 3) Improve flow
A story point is a singular number that represents 4 criteria?
1) Volume: How much is there? 2) Complexity: How are is it? 3) Knowledge: what do we know? 4) Uncertainty: What's not know?
What are the 10 techniques to splitting user stories (i.e. PI and Iterative planning)
1) Work flow steps 2) Business rule variations 3) Major effort 4) Simple/Complex 5) Variations in data 6) Data methods 7) Defer system qualities 8) Operations 9) use-case scenarios 10) Break out a spike
A team meets their commitments by doing what two key functions?
1) by doing everything they said they would do 2) In the event that it is not feasible, they must immediately raise a red flag
User Stories are defined as?
1) containers for user and customer value 2) Written using the following template - As a "user role" I want "activity", so that "business value"
What are the responsibilities of the PO?
1) defines and accepts stories 2) acts as the customer for developer questions 3) Works with Product Management to plan releases 4) a team has only one PO, who may be dedicated to one or two teams
Collocation?
1) enhances productivity 2) critical for agile teams to be effective 3) recommended for programs to have efficient product development flow
What is estimating poker and who is involved?
1) estimating poker combines expert opinion, analogy, and disaggregation for quick but reliable estimates 2) all dev team members participate
Within Lean-Agile Leadership you have 4 key atributes
1) exemplify the core values 2) embrace a Lean-Agile mindset 3) Apply the SAFe principles 4) Lead the transformation
You want Feature Teams that have 3 key attributes for faster delivery?
1) fastest velocity 2) To minimize dependencies 3) To develop T-Shaped skills
What is are feature acceptance criteria?
1) feature acceptance criteria are typically defined during Program Backlog refinement 2) Acceptance criteria reflect functional and nonfunctional requirements
What is the power of "Ba"?
1) is its self-organizing nature 2) resolve contradictions through dialogue 3) energized with intentions, vision, interest, and mission 4) leaders provide autonomy, variety, trust, and mission 5) there is creative chaos 6) team is challenged to question every norm of development 7) equal access to information at all levels is critical
What does the "System Team" do?
1) provides processes and tools to integrate and evaluate assets early and often 2) builds the development infrastructure and manages environments 3) assists with test automation strategies and adoption 4) Provides and supports full system integration 5) Performs end-to-end system and performance testing 6) stages and supports the systems demos
What is eXtreme Programing (XP)?
1) provides the basis for technical agility > TDD > Coding Standards > Pair Programming > Refactoring > User Story > Continuous Integration > Test-Driven Development > Simple Design > Automated Testing > Collective Ownership
If you have distributed/dispersed teams they must be compensated with what?
1) remote interaction (video-conferencing) 2) Collaboration tools online
What are the responsibilities of the SM?
1) runs team meetings, coaches agile mindset and practices 2) removes impediments, protects the team from outside influence 3) attends Scrum of Scrum meetings 4) May be a part-time role for a team member (25-50%), or a single SM may be shared across 2-3 teams
The PO and Team sequence work based on what?
1) story priorities inherited from Program Backlog priorities 2) Events, Milestones, releases, and other commitment made during PI Planning 3) Dependencies with other teams 4) Local Priorities 5) Capacity allocations for defected, maintenance, and refactors
What does a healthy capacity allocation team backlog consist of?
1) user stories 2) technical debt/maintenance 3) bug fixes/defects 4) enhancements
What is the desired iteration length on average (i.e. sprint cycle)?
2 weeks
What is the cycle used to define Iterations and Program Increments to learn fast?
> Plan, Do, Check, Adjust (PDCA)
Control variability with?
> Planning cadence (i.e. single interval)
What does agile look like when turning the iron triangle upside-down?
> cost and schedule are at the top and are variable (i.e. constraints) > Features are at the bottom and are fixed > This model drives value and quality not a plan
