ICP Risk Management & Mitigation 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In agile, risks are often surfaced during which ceremony?
- Sprint Review
- Daily Standup (Correct answer)
- Sprint Retrospective
- Backlog Refinement
Correct answer: Daily Standup
The Daily Standup surfaces blockers and risks quickly, enabling the team to address impediments before they escalate.
Question 2: Which agile practice directly reduces the risk of delivering the wrong product?
- Continuous integration
- Frequent customer collaboration and feedback loops (Correct answer)
- Velocity tracking
- Test-driven development
Correct answer: Frequent customer collaboration and feedback loops
Frequent customer collaboration ensures the team validates assumptions early, reducing the risk of building a product that does not meet user needs.
Question 3: A 'risk-adjusted backlog' refers to:
- A backlog sorted only by business value
- A backlog where high-risk items are prioritized for early validation (Correct answer)
- A backlog filtered to remove uncertain stories
- A backlog maintained by the risk manager
Correct answer: A backlog where high-risk items are prioritized for early validation
A risk-adjusted backlog intentionally places high-risk or high-uncertainty items early so the team learns quickly and avoids late surprises.
Question 4: What is the purpose of a 'spike' in agile risk management?
- To assign risk ownership to a team member
- To time-box research and reduce uncertainty on a risky item (Correct answer)
- To escalate a risk to senior management
- To defer a risky story to a future sprint
Correct answer: To time-box research and reduce uncertainty on a risky item
A spike is a time-boxed investigation that produces knowledge, reducing technical or requirements uncertainty before committing to implementation.
Question 5: Which risk response strategy involves changing the project plan to eliminate the risk entirely?
- Mitigate
- Transfer
- Avoid (Correct answer)
- Accept
Correct answer: Avoid
Avoidance eliminates the threat by removing the cause or changing plans so the risk can no longer occur.
Question 6: An agile team discovers a dependency on an external vendor that could delay a release. The best first step is to:
- Remove the dependency from the backlog
- Make the dependency visible and discuss mitigation options with the team (Correct answer)
- Escalate immediately to the executive sponsor
- Accept the risk and continue sprinting
Correct answer: Make the dependency visible and discuss mitigation options with the team
Transparency is a core agile value; surfacing the dependency allows the team and stakeholders to collaboratively explore mitigation or alternative solutions.
Question 7: In the context of agile risk management, 'risk burn-down' tracks:
- How quickly the team completes story points
- The reduction in overall risk exposure over time as risks are resolved (Correct answer)
- The number of defects found per sprint
- Budget consumed on risk mitigation activities
Correct answer: The reduction in overall risk exposure over time as risks are resolved
A risk burn-down chart shows how total risk exposure decreases sprint-by-sprint as risks are addressed or retired.
ICP Risk Management & Mitigation 2
In agile, risks are often surfaced during which ceremony?