Agile, Scrum & Kanban Methods Flashcards

During a Sprint, a stakeholder directly asks a developer to add an unplanned feature. What should the developer do?

Answer: Refer the stakeholder to the Product Owner to evaluate and potentially add it to the backlog

Unplanned work requests should go through the Product Owner, who manages priorities and protects the Sprint Goal from scope changes.

What is 'Gemba' in the context of Lean-Agile practices?

Answer: Going to where the actual work happens to observe and understand

Gemba (the actual place) is a Lean practice of going to where work is done to directly observe processes, understand problems, and identify improvement opportunities.

In Kanban, which metric measures the predictability of delivery by tracking how long different types of work items take?

Answer: Lead time distribution

Lead time distribution (often displayed as a histogram or scatter plot) shows the range and predictability of how long items of similar type take to complete.

Which Agile principle from the Agile Manifesto addresses sustainable development?

Answer: Agile processes promote sustainable development; the sponsors, developers, and users should maintain a constant pace

The Agile Manifesto states that sustainable pace is essential — teams should be able to maintain their development pace indefinitely without burnout.

A Scrum team notices that they consistently fail to complete all Sprint Backlog items. What is the BEST first step?

Answer: Revisit estimation practices and team capacity in the retrospective

Consistent under-delivery is a signal of estimation or capacity planning issues best addressed through retrospective inspection and improved planning techniques.

What is the 'Five Dysfunctions of a Team' model most commonly applied to in Agile contexts?

Answer: Understanding team collaboration and trust barriers

Patrick Lencioni's model (absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, inattention to results) helps teams diagnose and improve collaboration.

In the context of Agile, what does 'Definition of Ready' (DoR) mean?

Answer: The set of conditions a backlog item must meet before being accepted into a sprint

Definition of Ready defines the minimum criteria (e.g., clear acceptance criteria, sized, no blocking dependencies) that a backlog item must satisfy before it can enter a sprint.