ACP Strategic Planning 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A product owner wants a quick, relative way to rank 40 backlog items with stakeholders. Which technique fits best?
- Monte Carlo simulation
- Dot voting (multi-voting) (Correct answer)
- Earned value analysis
- Critical path method
Correct answer: Dot voting (multi-voting)
Dot voting lets stakeholders quickly express relative priority across many items.
Question 2: Payback period analysis tells a sponsor:
- How long it will take to recover the initial investment (Correct answer)
- The total profit over the product's life
- The rate of return that makes NPV zero
- The cost of delaying a feature
Correct answer: How long it will take to recover the initial investment
Payback period measures the time needed for returns to equal the initial investment.
Question 3: Why might an agile team release smaller increments more frequently instead of one large release?
- To reduce the need for a product owner
- To avoid any customer involvement
- To start earning value earlier and reduce risk through early feedback (Correct answer)
- To make documentation unnecessary
Correct answer: To start earning value earlier and reduce risk through early feedback
Frequent incremental releases deliver value sooner and surface problems early.
Question 4: During iteration planning, what should guide which backlog items the team selects?
- The developers' favorite technologies
- The longest items first
- Items randomly chosen to balance workload
- The iteration goal, backlog priority, and the team's capacity (Correct answer)
Correct answer: The iteration goal, backlog priority, and the team's capacity
Teams select the highest-priority items that support the iteration goal and fit their capacity.
Question 5: An executive asks for a three-year detailed plan with exact feature dates. What is the most appropriate agile response?
- Provide a high-level roadmap with themes, and explain detail will be refined over time (Correct answer)
- Refuse to plan beyond one iteration
- Produce a fixed Gantt chart and never change it
- Ask the team to commit to all dates now
Correct answer: Provide a high-level roadmap with themes, and explain detail will be refined over time
Agile offers a coarse long-range roadmap and progressively elaborates detail as the work nears.
Question 6: What is the main purpose of a sprint (iteration) goal in strategic planning?
- To list every task the team will do
- To give the team a focused objective that ties iteration work to broader product goals (Correct answer)
- To set individual performance targets
- To replace the definition of done
Correct answer: To give the team a focused objective that ties iteration work to broader product goals
An iteration goal connects the iteration's work to the product strategy and gives the team flexibility in how to reach it.
Question 7: Which factor makes cost of delay a useful input for prioritization?
- It measures how many developers are needed
- It shows how complex the code will be
- It quantifies the value lost for each period a feature is not delivered (Correct answer)
- It replaces the need for estimates
Correct answer: It quantifies the value lost for each period a feature is not delivered
Cost of delay expresses the economic impact of waiting, helping teams sequence work by urgency and value.
