ACP ACP Continuous Improvement 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is 'waste' in the context of Lean-Agile thinking?
- Defects found during sprint review
- Any activity that consumes resources without adding customer value (Correct answer)
- Work completed outside business hours
- Features requested by stakeholders
Correct answer: Any activity that consumes resources without adding customer value
Lean identifies waste as any non-value-adding activity, and agile teams work continuously to identify and eliminate these inefficiencies.
Question 2: What does a burn-down chart primarily help an agile team improve?
- Code quality metrics
- Individual developer productivity
- Awareness of remaining work and pace, enabling adjustments to meet sprint goals (Correct answer)
- Customer satisfaction scores
Correct answer: Awareness of remaining work and pace, enabling adjustments to meet sprint goals
Burn-down charts give teams real-time visibility into remaining work versus time, helping them identify when scope or pace adjustments are needed.
Question 3: What root cause analysis technique is commonly used in agile retrospectives?
- SWOT analysis
- The 5 Whys technique (Correct answer)
- Risk register review
- Story mapping
Correct answer: The 5 Whys technique
The 5 Whys technique involves repeatedly asking why to dig past symptoms and identify the true root cause of a problem.
Question 4: What agile metric tracks the rate at which a team resolves defects versus introducing new ones?
- Sprint velocity
- Release burn-up
- Defect escape rate (Correct answer)
- Lead time
Correct answer: Defect escape rate
Defect escape rate measures how many defects slip past the team into production, helping track whether quality practices are improving over time.
Question 5: What is 'value stream mapping' used for in agile improvement efforts?
- Mapping stakeholder relationships
- Planning product roadmaps
- Visualizing the end-to-end flow of work to identify bottlenecks and waste (Correct answer)
- Documenting software architecture
Correct answer: Visualizing the end-to-end flow of work to identify bottlenecks and waste
Value stream mapping traces the path a work item takes from request to delivery, revealing delays, handoffs, and non-value-adding steps.
Question 6: What does 'cycle time' measure in agile continuous improvement?
- The length of a sprint
- The time spent in daily standups
- The time it takes to complete a work item from start to finish (Correct answer)
- The time between major releases
Correct answer: The time it takes to complete a work item from start to finish
Cycle time measures how long a single work item takes to move through the entire development process, and reducing it is a key continuous improvement goal.
ACP ACP Continuous Improvement 2
What is 'waste' in the context of Lean-Agile thinking?