DAC Scaling Agile Frameworks 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: When scaling agile, the DA toolkit recommends addressing 'Organizational Impediments' at what level?
- Individual team retrospectives only
- At the team level, escalating to the portfolio when unresolved
- At an organizational or enterprise level where authority exists to remove systemic blockers (Correct answer)
- During the annual strategic planning cycle
Correct answer: At an organizational or enterprise level where authority exists to remove systemic blockers
Organizational impediments that individual teams cannot resolve must be addressed at the organizational level where the authority to remove systemic blockers exists.
Question 2: In SAFe, the Agile Release Train (ART) operates on what cadence?
- A 1-week sprint cadence aligned to the fiscal year
- A Program Increment (PI) of 8–12 weeks containing several iteration sprints (Correct answer)
- A monthly release cycle determined by the Release Train Engineer
- A continuous flow with no fixed cadence
Correct answer: A Program Increment (PI) of 8–12 weeks containing several iteration sprints
The ART in SAFe operates on a Program Increment (PI) cadence, typically 8–12 weeks, which contains multiple 2-week iterations.
Question 3: A DAC coach observes that two teams in a scaled environment are developing duplicate functionality independently. Which DA process blade is most directly relevant to resolving this?
- Govern Delivery Team
- Develop Test Strategy
- Reuse Assets (Correct answer)
- Build Quality In
Correct answer: Reuse Assets
The 'Reuse Assets' process blade in DA directly addresses how teams can share and leverage existing assets to avoid duplication of effort.
Question 4: Which statement best describes DA's stance on choosing between SAFe, LeSS, Scrum@Scale, and Nexus?
- DA mandates that organizations use SAFe for enterprise-scale agility
- DA recommends LeSS as the default because it preserves the most Scrum practices
- DA is framework-agnostic and treats all scaling approaches as valid options in its toolkit (Correct answer)
- DA discourages the use of any pre-existing scaling framework in favor of custom solutions
Correct answer: DA is framework-agnostic and treats all scaling approaches as valid options in its toolkit
DA is a toolkit that treats SAFe, LeSS, Scrum@Scale, Nexus, and others as valid options from which practitioners can draw based on context.
Question 5: In a scaled agile environment, 'PI Planning' is a key event in SAFe. What is the primary output of a PI Planning session?
- A detailed project plan with fixed milestones for the entire year
- Team PI Objectives and a Program Board showing cross-team dependencies (Correct answer)
- A prioritized product backlog owned by the Release Train Engineer
- Individual performance goals for each team member on the ART
Correct answer: Team PI Objectives and a Program Board showing cross-team dependencies
PI Planning produces Team PI Objectives and a Program Board that visualizes cross-team dependencies and risks for the upcoming Program Increment.
Question 6: Which DA scaling strategy involves temporarily co-locating team members from different teams to resolve a complex cross-team problem?
- Communities of Practice
- Swarming (Correct answer)
- Mob Programming
- Spike
Correct answer: Swarming
Swarming in DA involves multiple team members or cross-team collaboration converging on a single problem or impediment to resolve it quickly.
Question 7: When using the DA toolkit to scale, what does 'Guided Continuous Improvement (GCI)' provide to organizations?
- A fixed transformation roadmap prescribed by PMI for enterprise agility
- Proven process improvement goals organized by DA process blade to guide evolution (Correct answer)
- A compliance checklist for SAFe PI Planning certification
- Automated tooling that tracks team velocity across all agile teams
Correct answer: Proven process improvement goals organized by DA process blade to guide evolution
GCI provides proven process improvement goals organized by DA process blade, giving organizations a structured path to improve their ways of working over time.
DAC Scaling Agile Frameworks 3
When scaling agile, the DA toolkit recommends addressing 'Organizational Impediments' at what level?