Certified Agile Service Manager Kanban, Lean, and DevOps 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In Kanban, what does the concept of 'classes of service' primarily help teams manage?
- Team member skill levels
- Different urgency levels and risk profiles of work items (Correct answer)
- The number of work items per sprint
- Customer satisfaction scores
Correct answer: Different urgency levels and risk profiles of work items
Classes of service categorize work items by urgency and risk so teams can apply appropriate policies and prioritization rules.
Question 2: Which Lean principle focuses on creating a smooth, uninterrupted movement of value from request to delivery?
- Identify value
- Map the value stream
- Create flow (Correct answer)
- Establish pull
Correct answer: Create flow
The 'Create Flow' principle aims to eliminate interruptions and bottlenecks so work moves continuously through the value stream.
Question 3: In DevOps, what is the primary purpose of a 'deployment pipeline'?
- To manage team communication
- To automate the process of getting code from version control to production (Correct answer)
- To prioritize the product backlog
- To define service level agreements
Correct answer: To automate the process of getting code from version control to production
A deployment pipeline automates build, test, and release stages so code changes can flow safely and quickly to production.
Question 4: A Kanban team notices their cycle time keeps increasing even though WIP limits are respected. What should they investigate first?
- Increasing team headcount
- Blockers and impediments within workflow stages (Correct answer)
- Reducing the number of work item types
- Changing the definition of done
Correct answer: Blockers and impediments within workflow stages
Rising cycle time despite WIP compliance usually indicates hidden blockers slowing work through individual stages.
Question 5: Which DevOps practice involves running the same automated tests on every code commit to detect integration problems early?
- Continuous Delivery
- Continuous Integration (Correct answer)
- Continuous Deployment
- Feature Toggles
Correct answer: Continuous Integration
Continuous Integration (CI) merges code frequently and runs automated tests on every commit to catch integration issues early.
Question 6: In Lean thinking, 'muda' refers to:
- The pace of customer demand
- Any activity that consumes resources without adding value (Correct answer)
- The ideal state of a process
- A technique for root cause analysis
Correct answer: Any activity that consumes resources without adding value
Muda is the Japanese term for waste — any activity that uses resources but does not add value from the customer's perspective.
Question 7: What does the Kanban metric 'throughput' measure?
- The average time an item spends in the system
- The number of work items completed per unit of time (Correct answer)
- The total number of items currently in progress
- The percentage of items delivered on time
Correct answer: The number of work items completed per unit of time
Throughput measures how many work items are completed in a given period, indicating a team's delivery rate.
Certified Agile Service Manager Kanban, Lean, and DevOps 2
In Kanban, what does the concept of 'classes of service' primarily help teams manage?