Agile Business Analysis Agile Business Analysis 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is the key difference between a product roadmap and a sprint backlog in Agile Business Analysis?
- A product roadmap is created by the development team; a sprint backlog is created by stakeholders
- A product roadmap shows high-level direction over time; a sprint backlog contains the work committed for one iteration (Correct answer)
- A product roadmap lists technical tasks; a sprint backlog lists business requirements
- A product roadmap is fixed; a sprint backlog changes every day
Correct answer: A product roadmap shows high-level direction over time; a sprint backlog contains the work committed for one iteration
The product roadmap provides a strategic view across releases, while the sprint backlog is a tactical list of tasks for the current sprint.
Question 2: In the context of Agile BA, what is 'story splitting' used for?
- Breaking large epics into smaller, deliverable user stories (Correct answer)
- Dividing the development team into smaller sub-teams
- Separating functional from non-functional requirements
- Splitting the sprint into two sub-iterations
Correct answer: Breaking large epics into smaller, deliverable user stories
Story splitting decomposes large or complex stories into smaller, independently deliverable pieces that fit within a sprint.
Question 3: Which elicitation technique is MOST effective when stakeholders are geographically dispersed and cannot meet in person?
- Focus groups
- Document analysis
- Virtual collaborative workshops using digital tools (Correct answer)
- On-site observation
Correct answer: Virtual collaborative workshops using digital tools
Virtual collaborative workshops using digital tools like Miro or MURAL enable effective remote elicitation across distributed teams.
Question 4: What is the purpose of a 'walking skeleton' in Agile development?
- A prototype with only the user interface, no backend
- A minimal end-to-end implementation that exercises the full architecture (Correct answer)
- A sprint plan with only the highest-priority stories
- A list of risks identified before the project starts
Correct answer: A minimal end-to-end implementation that exercises the full architecture
A walking skeleton is a thin slice of the system that implements a small end-to-end function to validate the architecture early.
Question 5: A business analyst is working with a team using Kanban. Which metric BEST indicates whether the team is managing work-in-progress effectively?
- Velocity
- Cycle time (Correct answer)
- Story points per sprint
- Number of user stories in the backlog
Correct answer: Cycle time
Cycle time measures how long work items take from start to completion, reflecting how well WIP limits are being managed in Kanban.
Question 6: In Agile Business Analysis, what is the role of 'non-functional requirements' (NFRs)?
- They describe features the product owner doesn't want to prioritize
- They define system qualities like performance, security, and scalability that constrain how the system works (Correct answer)
- They are optional enhancements added after launch
- They replace functional requirements in technical sprints
Correct answer: They define system qualities like performance, security, and scalability that constrain how the system works
NFRs define quality attributes and constraints such as response time, security standards, and reliability that the system must satisfy.
Question 7: Which technique is BEST for visually representing how a user interacts with a system across multiple steps to achieve a goal?
- Fishbone diagram
- User story map (Correct answer)
- RACI matrix
- Burndown chart
Correct answer: User story map
A user story map organizes stories by the user's journey, showing the sequence of activities needed to achieve their goal.
What is the key difference between a product roadmap and a sprint backlog in Agile Business Analysis?