Mixed Deck — All Certified Agile Service Manager Topics Flashcards
100 cards from real Certified Agile Service Manager practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 20 Mixed Deck — All Certified Agile Service Manager Topics flashcards as text
In Scrum, what event provides the opportunity for the team to inspect the Increment and adapt the Product Backlog?
Answer: Sprint Review
The Sprint Review is held at the end of the Sprint to inspect the Increment and gather stakeholder feedback to adapt the backlog.
What is the primary purpose of the Sprint Retrospective in an Agile service environment?
Answer: To inspect and adapt the team's processes and interactions
The Sprint Retrospective focuses on inspecting how the Sprint went regarding people, interactions, processes, and tools, then identifying improvements.
An Agile Service Manager is tasked with improving the Change Enablement practice (formerly Change Management) to better support a DevOps environment. Which two aspects, derived from Agile and Lean thinking, are key to this transformation?
Answer: Shortening feedback loops and delivering value in small increments.
DevOps, inspired by Agile and Lean, thrives on rapid feedback and iterative delivery. By releasing small, incremental changes, the risk of each deployment is reduced. Short feedback loops, enabled by monitoring and testing, allow teams to quickly detect and remediate issues. This approach contrasts with traditional change management that often involves large, risky releases and lengthy approval cycles.
In Scrum for Service Management, 'service capacity' is BEST represented in sprint planning by:
Answer: The team's available story points or hours after accounting for support duties
Capacity planning in Scrum accounts for all commitments including BAU support, so teams only pull work they can realistically complete.
Which Agile practice is most useful for reviewing service performance metrics and identifying improvement actions as a team?
Answer: Sprint retrospective
The sprint retrospective is the dedicated ceremony for the team to inspect their performance and define concrete improvement actions.
Which Agile SM concept describes the team's collective accountability for service quality rather than assigning blame to individuals?
Answer: Shared ownership
Shared ownership means the entire team is responsible for outcomes, fostering collaboration and reducing blame culture.
What role does a retrospective play in Agile service management process improvement?
Answer: It provides a regular forum for the team to inspect and adapt their working practices
Retrospectives give teams a structured opportunity to reflect on recent work and identify actionable improvements to their processes.
Which Agile practice involves breaking stories into the smallest possible piece that still delivers user value?
Answer: Story splitting
Story splitting (or story decomposition) is the practice of dividing large user stories into smaller, independently valuable pieces.
What is a 'service catalog' in ITSM and Agile Service Management?
Answer: A documented list of available IT services along with their descriptions and request procedures
A service catalog is a centralized directory of IT services that customers can request, including details on scope, SLAs, and how to obtain them.
The Agile Manifesto was written in 2001 as a reaction against what type of development approach?
Answer: Heavy, bureaucratic, plan-driven methodologies
The Agile Manifesto was written as a reaction against heavy, bureaucratic, and overly plan-driven software development methodologies.
What is the role of a service owner in an Agile Service Management environment?
Answer: To act as the single accountable person for the end-to-end delivery and improvement of a service
The service owner is accountable for a specific service's performance, improvement, and alignment with business needs.
A CASM practitioner is asked to design a change management process. Which Agile approach is most appropriate?
Answer: Design a lightweight process with a small change advisory board meeting in short cadences
An Agile change process is lightweight, with frequent short cadence reviews rather than heavy sequential approvals, balancing speed with governance.
In Agile process design, 'timeboxing' is used primarily to:
Answer: Create fixed time boundaries that force prioritization and prevent endless scope creep
Timeboxing sets a fixed time limit on activities, forcing teams to prioritize what matters most and delivering value incrementally rather than pursuing perfection indefinitely.
Which of the following is a key Agile principle for designing a new Problem Management process that ensures continuous learning and adaptation?
Answer: Integrating regular, mandatory retrospectives for the Problem Management team to review process effectiveness and identify improvements.
Agile process design emphasizes building in feedback loops to enable continuous improvement. Retrospectives are a core Agile practice where a team inspects its own performance and processes to identify what works well and what can be improved. By integrating this practice into the Problem Management process, the team ensures it is constantly learning and adapting its approach to be more effective.
During the Daily Scrum, what is the primary purpose of the three standard questions?
Answer: Inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the plan
The Daily Scrum is an inspect-and-adapt event where the team plans the next 24 hours of work toward the Sprint Goal.
What does 'Done' mean in the context of Scrum's Definition of Done?
Answer: A shared understanding of the quality standards an Increment must meet
The Definition of Done is a formal description of the quality standards that must be met before an Increment is considered complete.
Which scenario best demonstrates a 'balanced scorecard' approach to service measurement in Agile SM?
Answer: Measuring financial, customer, process, and learning dimensions simultaneously
A balanced scorecard combines multiple dimensions — financial, customer, internal process, and growth — to give a holistic view of service performance.
Which of the following BEST describes the role of the Scrum Master within an Agile Service Management team?
Answer: To remove impediments, facilitate Scrum events, and coach the team on Agile practices.
The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. Their primary responsibilities include coaching the team in Scrum, helping them to be self-managing, facilitating Scrum events as needed, and removing impediments to the team's progress. They do not manage the team or assign tasks.
The primary output of a successful Sprint Retrospective in an Agile Service Management context should be:
Answer: At least one concrete, actionable process improvement item for the team to implement in the next Sprint.
The main goal of an Agile Retrospective is to identify actionable steps to improve the team's process in the upcoming work cycle. It is a forward-looking event focused on continuous improvement, not on assigning blame or creating extensive reports for management. The team should leave with a clear idea of at least one experiment or change to implement.
What is the significance of 'work in progress (WIP) limits' for agile process improvement?
Answer: They prevent context switching and improve flow by capping concurrent tasks
WIP limits reduce context switching and multitasking overhead, which improves throughput and helps teams identify process constraints faster.