DA Process and Lifecycle Management 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In Disciplined Agile, what is the PRIMARY purpose of the Inception phase?
- To complete all requirements documentation before development starts
- To align the team on vision, feasibility, and initial architecture before full construction (Correct answer)
- To release the first increment to end users
- To conduct retrospectives from the previous project
Correct answer: To align the team on vision, feasibility, and initial architecture before full construction
Inception aligns stakeholders and the team on project vision, feasibility, initial architecture, and team formation before construction begins.
Question 2: A DA team wants to experiment with a new business model before committing to full development. Which lifecycle MOST directly supports this?
- Agile lifecycle
- Lean lifecycle
- Exploratory (Lean Startup) lifecycle (Correct answer)
- Continuous Delivery: Lean lifecycle
Correct answer: Exploratory (Lean Startup) lifecycle
The Exploratory lifecycle uses Lean Startup principles—build-measure-learn—to validate business hypotheses with minimum viable experiments.
Question 3: According to DA, which factor is MOST important when choosing a team's lifecycle?
- The lifecycle used by the largest competitor
- The lifecycle mandated by the enterprise architecture team
- The context of the team including domain, risk, and team experience (Correct answer)
- The number of story points planned for the release
Correct answer: The context of the team including domain, risk, and team experience
DA's 'Choose your WoW' principle means teams select lifecycles based on their specific context, not a one-size-fits-all mandate.
Question 4: In DA's Agile lifecycle, what happens during the Transition phase?
- The team transitions from Scrum to Kanban
- The solution is deployed, users are trained, and the team hands off or winds down (Correct answer)
- New team members are onboarded mid-project
- The team transitions from inception to construction
Correct answer: The solution is deployed, users are trained, and the team hands off or winds down
The Transition phase covers production deployment, user training, support handoff, and project closure activities.
Question 5: Which DA concept describes the idea that teams should continuously refine their process rather than selecting a framework and rigidly adhering to it?
- Guided Continuous Improvement (GCI)
- Inspect and Adapt
- Choose Your WoW (Way of Working) (Correct answer)
- Pragmatic Agility
Correct answer: Choose Your WoW (Way of Working)
'Choose Your WoW' embodies DA's philosophy that teams should own, tailor, and continuously evolve their way of working to fit their context.
Question 6: A DA team practicing the Continuous Delivery: Agile lifecycle runs two-week sprints but deploys to production daily. This BEST illustrates which concept?
- Release on demand decoupled from development cadence (Correct answer)
- Violation of the CD:Agile lifecycle rules
- A hybrid Scrum-Kanban anti-pattern
- Continuous integration without continuous delivery
Correct answer: Release on demand decoupled from development cadence
CD:Agile teams maintain a sprint cadence for planning while deploying independently whenever the pipeline passes, illustrating release on demand.
Question 7: In the DA framework, 'milestones' in a lifecycle serve what PRIMARY purpose?
- To trigger payment installments to vendors
- To provide risk-reduction checkpoints where stakeholders assess whether to continue, pivot, or stop (Correct answer)
- To measure individual team member performance
- To synchronize all enterprise programs on a common schedule
Correct answer: To provide risk-reduction checkpoints where stakeholders assess whether to continue, pivot, or stop
DA milestones are risk-reduction decision points where stakeholders evaluate progress, learnings, and viability before proceeding further.
DA Process and Lifecycle Management 3
In Disciplined Agile, what is the PRIMARY purpose of the Inception phase?