Certified Agile Service Manager General Practice 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: When applying Agile to IT service management, which type of backlog would contain service improvement initiatives alongside incident reduction work?
- Release backlog
- Sprint backlog
- Service improvement backlog (Correct answer)
- Risk register
Correct answer: Service improvement backlog
A service improvement backlog captures all ongoing and planned improvements to services and processes, blending operational and strategic work.
Question 2: A CASM practitioner wants to measure whether a service change delivered expected business value. What should they examine?
- Number of story points completed in the sprint
- Key performance indicators defined before the change was deployed (Correct answer)
- Team velocity trend over the last six sprints
- Number of change requests submitted
Correct answer: Key performance indicators defined before the change was deployed
Pre-defined KPIs tied to business outcomes are the correct benchmark for evaluating whether a change delivered its intended value.
Question 3: Which Agile ceremony is MOST equivalent to an ITIL service review meeting?
- Daily standup
- Sprint planning
- Sprint review (Correct answer)
- Backlog refinement
Correct answer: Sprint review
The sprint review, like an ITIL service review, brings stakeholders together to assess delivered outcomes and align on future direction.
Question 4: In Agile Service Management, 'swarming' on an incident means:
- Ignoring the incident until the next sprint
- Multiple team members collaborating simultaneously to resolve a critical issue quickly (Correct answer)
- Escalating the incident to senior leadership immediately
- Logging the incident and scheduling it for future review
Correct answer: Multiple team members collaborating simultaneously to resolve a critical issue quickly
Swarming pools team capacity on a single critical problem to resolve it faster than sequential individual efforts would allow.
Question 5: What is the role of 'acceptance criteria' in Agile service delivery?
- Define conditions that must be met for a work item to be considered complete by the customer (Correct answer)
- Set minimum qualifications for hiring new team members
- Determine vendor selection criteria for outsourcing
- Establish financial thresholds for project approval
Correct answer: Define conditions that must be met for a work item to be considered complete by the customer
Acceptance criteria are specific, testable conditions agreed upon with the customer that confirm a user story or service meets their needs.
Question 6: A service team is applying the Agile concept of 'inspect and adapt' to their SLA targets. What does this involve?
- Setting SLA targets once and never revising them
- Periodically reviewing SLA performance data and adjusting targets or processes based on findings (Correct answer)
- Removing SLAs entirely to increase team flexibility
- Delegating SLA management to external auditors
Correct answer: Periodically reviewing SLA performance data and adjusting targets or processes based on findings
Inspect and adapt applied to SLAs means regularly reviewing whether targets are being met and using data to drive process or target improvements.
Question 7: Which statement BEST describes the relationship between DevOps and Agile Service Management?
- DevOps replaces Agile Service Management entirely
- DevOps and Agile Service Management are complementary — DevOps extends Agile principles into deployment and operations (Correct answer)
- Agile Service Management prohibits DevOps practices
- DevOps is only applicable to software development, not IT services
Correct answer: DevOps and Agile Service Management are complementary — DevOps extends Agile principles into deployment and operations
DevOps extends Agile collaboration and automation into deployment pipelines and operations, making the two approaches mutually reinforcing.
Certified Agile Service Manager General Practice 5
When applying Agile to IT service management, which type of backlog would contain service improvement initiatives alongside incident reduction work?