APM Agile Metrics & Reporting 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A team's cumulative flow diagram shows bands expanding and then compressing dramatically. What does this most likely indicate?
- The team is accelerating delivery sustainably
- Batch processing followed by a bottleneck release (Correct answer)
- WIP limits are working perfectly
- The team's velocity is increasing
Correct answer: Batch processing followed by a bottleneck release
Expanding bands followed by compression in a CFD typically indicates batch processing where work accumulates then gets released at once.
Question 2: Which Agile metric is most useful for predicting when a fixed-scope release will be completed?
- Velocity combined with remaining story points (Correct answer)
- Daily standup attendance rate
- Number of user stories in the backlog
- Team happiness index
Correct answer: Velocity combined with remaining story points
Dividing remaining story points by average velocity gives a predicted number of sprints needed to complete a fixed-scope release.
Question 3: What does a 'red-amber-green' (RAG) status report communicate in Agile portfolio management?
- Specific defect counts per feature
- High-level health status of initiatives for quick stakeholder review (Correct answer)
- Detailed sprint velocity data
- Individual team member performance ratings
Correct answer: High-level health status of initiatives for quick stakeholder review
RAG status provides a quick visual health indicator for portfolio initiatives, enabling stakeholders to identify issues at a glance.
Question 4: A product team tracks 'customer-reported defects per release.' This metric primarily measures which quality dimension?
- Internal quality
- Escaped defect quality (Correct answer)
- Technical debt
- Code coverage
Correct answer: Escaped defect quality
Customer-reported defects per release measures escaped defect quality — how many defects slip through internal checks and reach end users.
Question 5: In SAFe, what does the 'Program Predictability Measure' track?
- Individual sprint velocity
- The percentage of PI Objectives achieved versus planned (Correct answer)
- Number of features in the backlog
- Team happiness survey scores
Correct answer: The percentage of PI Objectives achieved versus planned
SAFe's Program Predictability Measure shows what percentage of planned PI Objectives were actually achieved, reflecting ART reliability.
Question 6: A team notices their lead time has doubled over three sprints despite stable velocity. What is the most likely root cause?
- The team is delivering higher quality work
- Work items are spending more time waiting before being started (Correct answer)
- Story points are being inflated
- The Definition of Done has been simplified
Correct answer: Work items are spending more time waiting before being started
Stable velocity with increasing lead time usually means work items are spending more time in queue states before active work begins.
Question 7: Which metric helps an Agile team determine if their estimation process is improving over time?
- Estimation accuracy trend (planned vs. actual story points) (Correct answer)
- Total number of story points delivered
- Number of retrospectives held
- Stakeholder satisfaction score
Correct answer: Estimation accuracy trend (planned vs. actual story points)
Tracking planned versus actual story points over time reveals whether the team's estimation accuracy is improving across sprints.
APM Agile Metrics & Reporting 3
A team's cumulative flow diagram shows bands expanding and then compressing dramatically.
What does this most likely indicate?