PMI DASSM - Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) Exam

The Continuous Delivery Lean life cycle is suitable when there is an experienced team working on a product or service where the requirements change frequently, potentially daily. This life cycle supports frequent deployments and quick feedback loops, making it ideal for environments where requirements are dynamic and evolve rapidly. Options A, D, and E do not align with the conditions that necessitate a Continuous Delivery Lean approach, as they involve either less experienced teams or slower-evolving requirements.

Guided continuous improvementextends the Kaizen loop strategy by providing structured, context-specific guidance to teams on how to identify and implement techniques likely to be effective for their unique circumstances. This method emphasizes learning from experience, adjusting practices based on outcomes, and aligning improvements with the organization's goals, enhancing the team's ability to adapt and improve continuously.

Options A (Cross-team learning), C (Explicit workflow policies), and D (Communities of Practice) are valuable for learning and improvement but do not specifically focus on providing guided, context-sensitive strategies for improvement.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and a Minimum Business Increment (MBI) serve different purposes in the Disciplined Agile framework. An MVP (Option C) represents the smallest version of a product that can be released to customers to provide feedback and validate assumptions, whereas an MBI (Option D) is a small, deployable unit of value that builds upon an existing product and is designed to deliver business value incrementally. Option D is correct because an MBI is generally built incrementally on top of an existing product to enhance or add new capabilities. The other options do not correctly describe the relationship or distinction between MVP and MBI in the DA framework.

In a Disciplined Agile team, the role of the team lead is not typically to make decisions on product priorities or the product roadmap. These responsibilities usually belong to the Product Owner, who represents the customer and stakeholders, prioritizes the backlog, and defines the product vision. The team lead's responsibilities include guiding the team through improvement actions (A), facilitating collaboration (B), and helping the team evolve their Way of Working (WoW) (D). Hence, "C. Providing timely decisions on priority and product roadmap" is not a role for the team lead.

True: On an Agile team, the Product Owner is the go-to person for business domain information. The Product Owner is responsible for defining the product vision, managing the product backlog, and acting as the primary liaison between the development team and stakeholders. They provide clarity on business requirements, priorities, and customer needs, ensuring that the team understands what is needed to deliver value. The Product Owner's deep knowledge of the business domain makes them the authoritative source for business-related questions and guidance.

Minimum Business Increments (MBIs) and Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) have different intentions. An MVP is designed to test a new product idea quickly and cost-effectively, with minimal functionality, to learn from customer feedback. An MBI, on the other hand, represents the smallest piece of business functionality that can deliver value to customers and stakeholders while aligning with strategic goals. While both aim to deliver value quickly, the MBI focuses on delivering tangible business value, whereas the MVP is more about validating product-market fit.

In Disciplined Agile, teams are encouraged to be flexible andevolve their life-cyclebased on their context, learning, and needs. As teams gain experience, they may start with one life-cycle model and later transition to another that better suits their situation (e.g., moving from Scrum-based to Lean continuous delivery). This flexibility enables the team to optimize their way of working for continuous improvement.

Options A, B, and C are not correct. The inception phase does not last until the architecture is proven; the transition phase is not necessarily about the amount of functionality built; Agile and Lean life-cycles can include inception and transition phases.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

The Disciplined Agile framework emphasizes that long-standing product teams are generally more effective than ad-hoc or project-based teams. This is because stable, cross-functional teams develop stronger relationships, improve collaboration, and build a deeper understanding of the product and customer needs over time. Long-standing teams can leverage their accumulated knowledge and experience, resulting in higher productivity and better quality outcomes. This aligns with the DA's principles of fostering team continuity and encouraging long-term team formation to improve agility and efficiency within organizations. The DA approach supports a team-based way of working rather than frequent team reorganization, which can disrupt team dynamics and reduce effectiveness.

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In the PMI Disciplined Agile framework, "Governance" is a process blade that focuses on providing oversight and direction to ensure that the organization aligns with its objectives and complies with relevant policies and standards. A senior management team monitoring work across various areas, providing guidance, and resolving escalated issues is a clear example of governance. The purpose of governance is to ensure that teams are operating effectively and efficiently, aligned with organizational goals, and that risks are managed appropriately. Portfolio management (Option A) deals with investment decisions and balancing the portfolio, while the other options (Business Operations, Finance, Product Management) focus on different aspects of the organization.

True: A value stream does indeed begin and end with a customer. In Disciplined Agile, a value stream represents the sequence of activities an organization undertakes to deliver a product or service that is of value to a customer. It starts with a customer need or demand and ends with the delivery of value to that customer. The focus on value streams helps organizations optimize the flow of value, reduce waste, and enhance customer satisfaction by aligning all activities around delivering what the customer truly needs.