DA Process and Lifecycle Management 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In Disciplined Agile, which lifecycle is best suited for a team working on a data warehouse project where requirements are well-understood and the solution can be built incrementally?
- Lean lifecycle (Correct answer)
- Continuous Delivery: Agile lifecycle
- Exploratory (Lean Startup) lifecycle
- Continuous Delivery: Lean lifecycle
Correct answer: Lean lifecycle
The Lean lifecycle is ideal for well-understood, streamlined delivery where teams pull work from a backlog without fixed iterations.
Question 2: A DA team notices that their Definition of Done (DoD) is being ignored under deadline pressure. What is the BEST response according to DA guidance?
- Remove the DoD temporarily to speed up delivery
- Escalate to the portfolio team to extend the deadline
- Treat DoD violations as technical debt and address them in a dedicated sprint
- Inspect why the DoD is being compromised and improve the process to sustain it (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Inspect why the DoD is being compromised and improve the process to sustain it
DA emphasizes continuously improving the process so that quality standards like the DoD can be maintained sustainably.
Question 3: Which Disciplined Agile lifecycle explicitly includes a 'Prove the architecture' milestone before full construction begins?
- Agile lifecycle (Correct answer)
- Lean lifecycle
- Program (SAFe-style) lifecycle
- Exploratory (Lean Startup) lifecycle
Correct answer: Agile lifecycle
The DA Agile lifecycle includes an Elaboration phase milestone called 'Prove the architecture' to de-risk technical direction early.
Question 4: A DA team is working on a safety-critical medical device. Which lifecycle option is MOST appropriate?
- Continuous Delivery: Lean lifecycle
- Exploratory (Lean Startup) lifecycle
- Program lifecycle
- Agile lifecycle with extended compliance layers (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Agile lifecycle with extended compliance layers
The Agile lifecycle can be extended with compliance milestones and rigor required for safety-critical domains while retaining agility.
Question 5: In DA's process goal diagram for 'Develop on Cadence; Release on Demand,' what does 'release on demand' primarily mean?
- Releases are triggered by sprint end dates
- Releases happen whenever the business needs them, decoupled from development cadence (Correct answer)
- Releases require full regression testing before each deployment
- Releases are scheduled quarterly by the portfolio team
Correct answer: Releases happen whenever the business needs them, decoupled from development cadence
Release on demand means the team can deploy to production independently of their development cadence, driven by business need.
Question 6: Which statement BEST describes the role of 'WIP limits' in a DA Lean lifecycle?
- They cap the number of team members assigned to each story
- They restrict the total number of features in the product backlog
- They limit the number of items in each workflow state to improve flow (Correct answer)
- They define the maximum number of bugs allowed before a release
Correct answer: They limit the number of items in each workflow state to improve flow
WIP limits in Lean constrain the number of work items in any workflow stage to reduce multitasking and improve throughput.
Question 7: A program-level DA team is coordinating work across five sub-teams. Which lifecycle is specifically designed to address this scenario?
- Exploratory (Lean Startup) lifecycle
- Continuous Delivery: Agile lifecycle
- Program lifecycle (Correct answer)
- Lean lifecycle
Correct answer: Program lifecycle
The DA Program lifecycle orchestrates multiple teams working together on a large solution, addressing cross-team coordination challenges.
DA Process and Lifecycle Management 2
In Disciplined Agile, which lifecycle is best suited for a team working on a data warehouse project where requirements are well-understood and the solution can be built incrementally?