Weekend Quiz W2

As part of the Estimate Activity Durations process, the project manager facilitates a sprint planning meeting with the product owner and Scrum team. The project manager breaks down the user stories into low-level tasks, estimates the time required in hours, and determines the sprint backlog based on the team’s capacity. Despite meticulous planning, the sprint fails. What might the project manager have done differently ?

• Asked the team to prioritize the product backlog before determining the sprint backlog
• Assigned the identified low-level tasks to specific individuals in the project schedule
• Empowered the team to determine how many user stories they can complete during the sprint
• Used story points instead of hours while estimating the size of the user stories and tasks

An experienced agile practitioner was explaining the benefits of empowered, self-organizing, and self-directing teams. Some agile team members then complained that their manager is not very agile as demonstrated by their very directive style of communication. How would the agile practitioner most likely respond to this comment?

• The team is still in the storming stage, which requires a lot of direction.
• The team is already in the norming stage, which requires a lot of direction
• The project has a very tight schedule and must be managed by directives.
• Theory is one thing, and real life is a totally different story.

An agile leader facilitates a retrospective, where team members angrily blame each other for violating working agreements. What should the agile leader do first?

• Ignore the situation and continue the retrospective as planned
• Request that the team members discuss their feelings openly
• Be aware of their own personal emotions to keep them in check
• Do whatever is needed to make everyone at the meeting happy

scrum team has just begun developing user stories for their current iteration. Based on the lessons learned at the previous iteration retrospective, the team should do more swarming in this iteration. How would the behaviour of the team members change?

• All team members would work on the same user story at the same time.
• The team would hold more meetings with the project stakeholders.
• Each team member would be in charge of a user story and assign others to work on it.
• Two or more team members would work on a user story until it is done.

The product owner for an agile project has another project at the same time. As a result, the product owner spends very little time with the development team and the product is suffering. What should an agile practitioner on this team do first?

• Coach the product owner on the importance of participating in the team events
• Escalate the issue to the project sponsor
• Request a new product owner be assigned to the project
• Have the scrum master fill a dual role as Agile encourages generalizing specialists

You have been commissioned by your company to propose a cost-efficient strategy for a new leading-edge server farm. While researching options, you identify the power source to be a large expense of maintaining servers. You narrow the power source choices down to four options with the following attributes: A. Chemical energy has an investment of $1,000,000, return on investment of 25%, and NPV of $200,000, B. Solar energy has an investment of $1,500,000, a payback period of 3 years, and NPV of $350,000, C. Wind energy has an investment of $2,000,000, a payback period of 2 years, and NPV of $250,000, D. Thermal energy has an investment of $1,800,000, a benefit-cost ratio of 2, and NPV of $175,000, Which of these power options should you propose based on the net present value (NPV)?

• Chemical energy
• Solar energy
• Wind energy
• Thermal energy

A project manager has yet to be assigned to a project. The project sponsor asked a group from the project management office (PMO) to get together and discuss the high-level risks of the project and the overall project risk for inclusion in the project charter. After the meeting, the sponsor receives feedback that two of the participants dominated the meeting and others did not have the opportunity to provide their insights. How might this situation have been avoided?

• Delaying project initiation until a project manager was named
• Ensuring that someone in the group was skilled in meeting management
• Designating someone with strong conflict management skills to lead the meeting
• Assigning a skilled facilitator to lead the meeting

A developer joins a new agile team after working with a different team for 3 years. The developer's former manager keeps asking her for help resolving defects from their previous project. As a result, the developer multitasks and cannot fully dedicate herself to either project, negatively impacting the throughput of both and making both teams frustrated. What is the best course of action for the project manager who leads the current project?

• Allow the developer to support both projects
• Recommend the termination of both projects
• Escalate the issue to the project sponsor
• Remove a few items from the product backlog

What is meant by RACI?

• Responsible, Accountable, Confirm, Inform
• Recommended, Accountable, Consulted, Inform
• Responsible, Accountant, Consulted, Inform
• Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Inform

At the beginning of your project, you were authorized to offer incentives to the designers to work in your company's office building for the duration of the project. You secured a temporary workspace to accommodate the entire project design team in a common area. This strategy allows them to work in proximity to one another to enhance their ability to preforms a unified design team. What tool or technique did you use in this scenario?

• Virtual teams
• Collocation
• Forming
• Strategic placement