ICP Agile Planning & Estimation 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is the primary purpose of story points in Agile estimation?
- To measure the number of hours required to complete a user story
- To provide a relative measure of effort, complexity, and uncertainty for a user story (Correct answer)
- To track the number of lines of code to be written
- To assign a dollar cost to each feature
Correct answer: To provide a relative measure of effort, complexity, and uncertainty for a user story
Story points represent a relative measure of effort, complexity, and risk — not actual time — allowing teams to estimate without committing to exact hours.
Question 2: During Planning Poker, what happens when team members reveal widely different estimates for the same user story?
- The highest estimate is automatically selected to be safe
- The Scrum Master decides the final estimate
- The team discusses the reasons for the difference to reach a shared understanding (Correct answer)
- The story is immediately moved to the icebox
Correct answer: The team discusses the reasons for the difference to reach a shared understanding
Wide divergence in Planning Poker is a signal to discuss assumptions and hidden complexity, ultimately improving shared understanding before re-estimating.
Question 3: What is velocity in Agile planning?
- The speed at which individual developers write code
- The average number of story points a team completes per sprint (Correct answer)
- The number of user stories created in the product backlog
- The rate at which the product owner adds new features
Correct answer: The average number of story points a team completes per sprint
Velocity is the average amount of work (measured in story points) a team completes per sprint, used to forecast future delivery capacity.
Question 4: Which Fibonacci-like sequence is most commonly used in Agile story point estimation?
- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
- 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 (Correct answer)
- 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12
- 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30
Correct answer: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21
The Fibonacci-like sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21) is used because larger gaps between numbers reflect the increasing uncertainty in estimating larger items.
Question 5: What is the 'Definition of Ready' (DoR) in Agile planning?
- A checklist confirming that a user story is complete and ready to ship
- A set of criteria that a backlog item must meet before the team can pull it into a sprint (Correct answer)
- The release approval process signed off by stakeholders
- A document describing the team's working agreement
Correct answer: A set of criteria that a backlog item must meet before the team can pull it into a sprint
The Definition of Ready defines the criteria a user story must meet — such as being well-understood, sized, and testable — before it can be brought into sprint planning.
Question 6: During sprint planning, who is ultimately responsible for selecting how much work the team commits to?
- The Product Owner, who sets the sprint scope based on business priority
- The Scrum Master, who enforces capacity limits
- The Development Team, based on their capacity and past velocity (Correct answer)
- Stakeholders, based on the release deadline
Correct answer: The Development Team, based on their capacity and past velocity
The Development Team owns the commitment because they best understand their capacity and the technical complexity involved in completing the work.
Question 7: What is the main benefit of using relative estimation over absolute (hour-based) estimation in Agile?
- It gives management precise dates to communicate to clients
- It eliminates the need for sprint planning meetings
- It reduces psychological anchoring and reflects the natural human ability to compare rather than measure precisely (Correct answer)
- It allows teams to skip backlog refinement sessions
Correct answer: It reduces psychological anchoring and reflects the natural human ability to compare rather than measure precisely
Relative estimation leverages humans' natural aptitude for comparison, reducing anchoring bias and improving accuracy over time better than hour-based estimates.
ICP Agile Planning & Estimation 1
What is the primary purpose of story points in Agile estimation?