Certified Agile Service Manager Kanban, Lean, and DevOps 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In DevOps, 'shift left' testing means:
- Moving testing activities earlier in the development lifecycle (Correct answer)
- Assigning testing to left-handed team members
- Reducing the number of test cases
- Delaying testing until after deployment
Correct answer: Moving testing activities earlier in the development lifecycle
Shifting left moves testing closer to development so defects are caught earlier when they are cheaper and easier to fix.
Question 2: Which Lean concept describes matching the pace of production to the rate of customer demand?
- Kaizen
- Takt time (Correct answer)
- Jidoka
- Poka-yoke
Correct answer: Takt time
Takt time is the available production time divided by customer demand rate, setting the rhythm for delivering value.
Question 3: A Kanban board shows items consistently piling up in the 'Testing' column. Using a systems thinking approach, what is the most appropriate first action?
- Add more testers immediately
- Analyze why testing is slower than upstream stages and address the constraint (Correct answer)
- Remove WIP limits from the testing column
- Move some testing work to developers
Correct answer: Analyze why testing is slower than upstream stages and address the constraint
The Theory of Constraints approach requires identifying and addressing the root cause of the bottleneck before making other changes.
Question 4: In the context of Agile Service Management, how does DevOps complement ITSM processes?
- By replacing ITSM entirely with automation
- By accelerating delivery while maintaining governance and stability (Correct answer)
- By eliminating the need for change management
- By outsourcing all IT operations to cloud providers
Correct answer: By accelerating delivery while maintaining governance and stability
DevOps enhances ITSM by enabling faster, automated delivery while preserving the governance that ITSM processes provide.
Question 5: Which practice in DevOps provides the ability to quickly revert a deployment if a critical defect is detected?
- Blue-green deployment (Correct answer)
- Waterfall releases
- Manual approval gates
- Big-bang releases
Correct answer: Blue-green deployment
Blue-green deployments maintain two identical production environments so traffic can instantly switch back to the stable version.
Question 6: In Lean, the '5 Whys' technique is primarily used to:
- Prioritize a backlog of features
- Identify the root cause of a problem (Correct answer)
- Estimate the cost of process improvements
- Define the value stream map
Correct answer: Identify the root cause of a problem
The 5 Whys iteratively asks 'why' to drill past symptoms and uncover the underlying root cause of a problem.
Question 7: What is the key difference between 'Continuous Delivery' and 'Continuous Deployment' in DevOps?
- Continuous Delivery requires more testing than Continuous Deployment
- Continuous Delivery still requires manual approval before production release; Continuous Deployment releases automatically (Correct answer)
- Continuous Deployment is slower than Continuous Delivery
- They are identical practices with different names
Correct answer: Continuous Delivery still requires manual approval before production release; Continuous Deployment releases automatically
Continuous Delivery ensures software is always release-ready but uses a manual gate, while Continuous Deployment pushes every passing build straight to production.
Certified Agile Service Manager Kanban, Lean, and DevOps 3
In DevOps, 'shift left' testing means: