Certified Agile Service Manager Agile Estimation and Planning 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is the primary purpose of story points in Agile estimation?
- To measure the exact number of hours a task will take
- To represent the relative effort, complexity, and risk of a user story (Correct answer)
- To assign monetary cost to each backlog item
- To determine the number of developers needed for a sprint
Correct answer: To represent the relative effort, complexity, and risk of a user story
Story points represent the relative size of work, accounting for effort, complexity, and uncertainty rather than a fixed time estimate.
Question 2: Which Agile estimation technique uses sequential rounds where team members simultaneously reveal their estimates?
- T-shirt sizing
- Dot voting
- Planning Poker (Correct answer)
- Affinity estimation
Correct answer: Planning Poker
Planning Poker uses cards revealed simultaneously to avoid anchoring bias, then discussion occurs when estimates differ.
Question 3: In Scrum, what does team velocity represent?
- The maximum number of user stories allowed in a sprint
- The average number of story points completed per sprint over recent sprints (Correct answer)
- The speed at which developers write code per hour
- The number of bugs resolved in a single release
Correct answer: The average number of story points completed per sprint over recent sprints
Velocity is the average story points a team completes per sprint, used to forecast future sprint capacity.
Question 4: What is the main goal of Sprint Planning in Scrum?
- To review completed work with stakeholders
- To retrospectively analyze what went wrong in the last sprint
- To define what can be delivered in the sprint and how the work will be achieved (Correct answer)
- To update the product roadmap for the next quarter
Correct answer: To define what can be delivered in the sprint and how the work will be achieved
Sprint Planning produces a Sprint Goal and Sprint Backlog by selecting items from the Product Backlog and defining how they will be completed.
Question 5: What does 'Definition of Done' (DoD) establish in an Agile team?
- The acceptance criteria unique to each individual user story
- A shared checklist of quality standards that must be met for work to be considered complete (Correct answer)
- The sprint backlog items selected for the current iteration
- The minimum features required for a product release
Correct answer: A shared checklist of quality standards that must be met for work to be considered complete
The Definition of Done is a consistent set of criteria applied to every backlog item, ensuring a shared understanding of completeness across the team.
Question 6: Which estimation technique groups backlog items into broad size categories such as Small, Medium, Large, and Extra-Large?
- Planning Poker
- Bucket system
- T-shirt sizing (Correct answer)
- Fibonacci estimation
Correct answer: T-shirt sizing
T-shirt sizing uses clothing size labels to quickly categorize relative effort, making it useful for large backlogs or early roadmap planning.
Question 7: What is capacity planning in the context of Scrum Sprint Planning?
- Determining the total budget available for a project
- Calculating the number of story points completed in all previous sprints
- Assessing the available working hours or effort team members can contribute in a sprint (Correct answer)
- Estimating the number of user stories that can fit into a product release
Correct answer: Assessing the available working hours or effort team members can contribute in a sprint
Capacity planning accounts for actual team availability—considering vacations, meetings, and other commitments—to determine realistic sprint commitments.
Certified Agile Service Manager Agile Estimation and Planning 1
What is the primary purpose of story points in Agile estimation?