DAC Organizational Change Leadership 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In Disciplined Agile, which leadership style is most effective when guiding an organization through early-stage agile transformation?
- Authoritative command-and-control
- Servant leadership that removes impediments (Correct answer)
- Laissez-faire leadership with no direction
- Transactional leadership focused on rewards
Correct answer: Servant leadership that removes impediments
Servant leadership enables teams by removing obstacles and supporting self-organization, which is foundational to DA transformations.
Question 2: A DA Coach encounters passive resistance from middle managers during an agile transformation. What is the BEST initial approach?
- Escalate immediately to senior leadership
- Engage managers in co-creating the change vision (Correct answer)
- Bypass managers and work directly with teams
- Document resistance and ignore it temporarily
Correct answer: Engage managers in co-creating the change vision
Co-creating the change vision with resistant stakeholders builds ownership and reduces passive resistance.
Question 3: Which Disciplined Agile principle best supports sustainable organizational change?
- Optimize flow
- Be pragmatic
- Enterprise awareness (Correct answer)
- Make all work visible
Correct answer: Enterprise awareness
Enterprise awareness ensures that local changes align with broader organizational context, making transformations sustainable.
Question 4: When using the GuidedContinuousImprovement (GCI) approach in DA, what is the primary role of a DA Coach?
- Prescribing a fixed process framework to follow
- Facilitating the team in choosing and improving their own way of working (Correct answer)
- Enforcing compliance with PMI standards
- Tracking velocity and reporting to management
Correct answer: Facilitating the team in choosing and improving their own way of working
GCI positions the DA Coach as a guide who helps teams choose and evolve their WoW rather than mandating a fixed process.
Question 5: An organization wants to scale agile practices across 50 teams. Which DA strategy should a coach recommend to manage the complexity of this change?
- Roll out one uniform framework to all teams simultaneously
- Coordinate teams through a centralized CoE with strict governance
- Apply a tailored approach per team context while sharing learnings enterprise-wide (Correct answer)
- Wait until pilot teams reach maturity before expanding
Correct answer: Apply a tailored approach per team context while sharing learnings enterprise-wide
DA's context-sensitive approach means each team tailors its WoW while the organization benefits from shared learning networks.
Question 6: Which change model does Disciplined Agile most closely align with when addressing organizational resistance?
- Waterfall change gates
- Kotter's 8-Step Change Model (Correct answer)
- Six Sigma DMAIC cycle
- Prince2 change control
Correct answer: Kotter's 8-Step Change Model
Kotter's model — creating urgency, building coalitions, and sustaining change — aligns well with DA's enterprise-aware transformation approach.
Question 7: A DA Coach notices that transformation initiatives consistently stall after initial excitement fades. What does this most likely indicate?
- The teams lack technical skills
- There is insufficient psychological safety in the organization
- The change lacks anchoring mechanisms and leadership reinforcement (Correct answer)
- The agile framework selected was inappropriate
Correct answer: The change lacks anchoring mechanisms and leadership reinforcement
Stalling after initial momentum signals that change anchoring — embedding new behaviors into culture — has not occurred.
DAC Organizational Change Leadership 2
In Disciplined Agile, which leadership style is most effective when guiding an organization through early-stage agile transformation?