DAF Practice Questions 2 — 50 Questions

Question 1

You are leading a project with highly complex requirements. Which strategy does DA suggest for 'Explore Initial Scope'?

Accepted Answer

Use active stakeholder engagement and modeling. Disciplined Agile recommends exploring initial scope through active stakeholder engagement combined with modeling techniques such as user story mapping, impact mapping, and lightweight prototypes. This approach acknowledges that complex requirements cannot be fully specified upfront and are best discovered collaboratively with the people who will use and fund the solution.

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Write a full requirements document

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Delegate to the architecture team

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Guess the requirements

Question 2

Which DA process goal is specifically concerned with the early stages of a project to ensure the team is aligned?

Accepted Answer

Inception.. Inception is the Disciplined Agile (DA) process goal focused on the early stages of a project — aligning the team around a shared vision, scope, and initial architecture before delivery work begins. It covers activities like forming the team, identifying stakeholders, and setting up the initial plan. The other goals address later lifecycle concerns such as delivery, continuity, and velocity improvement.

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Ensure Continuity.

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Produce Potentially Consumable Solution.

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Improve Team Velocity.

Question 3

A team is building a high-criticality system (e.g., medical software). What is the DA approach to documentation?

Accepted Answer

Tailor documentation to meet regulatory and quality needs. DA's guidance is to tailor documentation to the actual regulatory, quality, and stakeholder needs of the system being built. For high-criticality systems like medical software, that means producing the traceability, design records, and verification evidence required by standards such as IEC 62304 or FDA design controls, but doing so incrementally rather than upfront. The principle is 'just enough documentation, just in time' scaled to risk.

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Rely solely on automated test cases as documentation

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No documentation is required as per Agile principles

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Document everything in detail before starting

Question 4

When applying the DA 'Choose Your WoW' tool, which factor is most important?

Accepted Answer

The team's current context. The 'Choose Your WoW' tool in Disciplined Agile is fundamentally about tailoring the way of working to the team's specific context. The most important factor is the team's current situation, including their size, distribution, skills, culture, and the nature of the work. This context-driven approach ensures that the chosen practices are fit for purpose rather than imposed from outside.

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The budget available

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Executive preference

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The latest industry trend

Question 5

What is 'Velocity' in an agile project?

Accepted Answer

A measure of the volume of work a team completes per iteration. Velocity is a measure of the amount of work a team completes in a given iteration.

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The total number of bugs found in the product

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The number of hours worked by the team

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The speed at which the project manager moves tasks

Question 6

Your organization is struggling with 'Shadow IT'—teams buying their own software without oversight. What is the Disciplined Agile view on this?

Accepted Answer

Provide organizational guidance on standards while allowing for innovation. Disciplined Agile advocates for a balanced approach to Shadow IT, where the organization provides guidance on standards and governance while still allowing teams the flexibility to innovate. This means establishing clear guidelines for software procurement and usage, but not imposing rigid bans that stifle innovation. The goal is to enable teams to make informed decisions that align with enterprise objectives.

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Fully decentralize all IT procurement decisions

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Force all teams to use legacy software only

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Ban all software purchases by individual teams

Question 7

When applying the DA toolkit, what is the best way to handle conflicting advice from different agile experts?

Accepted Answer

Evaluate the trade-offs of both approaches within the context of your team's unique situation.. Disciplined Agile is a pragmatic, context-driven toolkit rather than a prescriptive method, so conflicting expert advice is resolved by weighing trade-offs against your team's specific situation. Option C reflects the DA principle of 'choice is good' — you tailor practices based on your context, not on authority or avoidance. The DA toolkit explicitly provides guidance for choosing between options via its process goals and decision points.

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Follow your current process to avoid conflict.

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Combine both approaches into one process.

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Choose the advice from the most famous expert.

Question 8

A team has decided to add a new 'quality assurance' practice to their WoW. According to DA, what should they do first?

Accepted Answer

Evaluate the practice in the context of their team's goals and constraints.. In DA, every practice decision — including adding a new quality assurance practice — must be evaluated against the team's specific goals, constraints, and context factors before adoption. DA's 'choose your WoW' philosophy treats practices as options with trade-offs, not as universal best practices to be adopted on faith. The team should first assess whether the practice addresses a real problem, what it costs in effort and complexity, and how it fits their existing way of working.

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Check if it's the 'standard' practice in the company.

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Ask the vendor for a recommendation.

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Adopt it immediately and see if it works.

Question 9

Which of the following is considered 'Waste' (Muda) in a software development process?

Accepted Answer

Developing features that the customer will never use.. In lean/Disciplined Agile thinking, waste (Muda) is any activity that consumes resources without creating value for the customer. Developing features the customer will never use is the canonical example of 'extra features' waste (overproduction), because the effort, code, and maintenance burden deliver zero customer value. Eliminating it via prioritization, MVP thinking, and validated learning is a core DA principle.

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Performing automated unit tests.

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Conducting a sprint demo.

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Collaborating on design documents.

Question 10

Which THREE of these are considered 'wastes' (muda) in a software development context?

Accepted Answer

Waiting for information. In Lean software development, muda (waste) refers to any activity that consumes resources without creating value for the customer. Option B (Waiting for information) is correct because idle time spent blocked on handoffs, approvals, or missing requirements adds delay and no customer value. Option D (Defect rework) is correct because reworking bugs or failed builds is pure waste—effort spent correcting work that should have been done right the first time, echoing the Lean principle of building quality in. Option E (Unnecessary features) is correct because building functionality the customer did not request (overproduction/extra features) consumes effort and increases complexity without delivering value. By contrast, option A (Code reviews) is a value-adding quality practice that catches defects early, and option C (Team collaboration) is essential knowledge-sharing that reduces waste rather than creating it, so neither is classified as muda.

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Code reviews

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Team collaboration

Question 11

A team is using a basic Kanban approach and wants to improve their throughput. Which step is most aligned with the DA toolkit?

Accepted Answer

Review their current process goals and experiment with a practice that limits WIP.. The DA (Disciplined Agile) toolkit emphasizes empirical process improvement through inspecting current goals and experimenting with practices. Limiting WIP is a core Lean/Kanban practice that directly improves flow and throughput by reducing multitasking and bottlenecks. Reviewing process goals and experimenting aligns with DA's guided continuous improvement philosophy.

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Increase team member hours.

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Ignore the bottleneck and work faster.

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Switch to a full Scrum implementation.

Question 12

A team has decided to use the 'Scrum' lifecycle. According to DA, what is the next step after selecting the lifecycle?

Accepted Answer

Identify and address the process goals within the lifecycle.. In Disciplined Agile (DA), after selecting a lifecycle (such as Scrum), the team must identify and address the process goals that are relevant to that lifecycle. Process goals are the foundational activities that guide how the team will work, and they must be tailored to the team's context. This step ensures that the team doesn't just adopt a superficial set of ceremonies but instead focuses on the underlying goals that drive success. Only after addressing these goals can the team effectively start executing the lifecycle.

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Report the choice to the executive sponsor.

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Start the first sprint immediately.

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Hire a Scrum expert to manage the team.

Question 13

What is the role of the 'Definition of Done' (DoD) in an agile project?

Accepted Answer

To create a clear, shared understanding of what constitutes a completed work item. The DoD provides a shared understanding of quality and completeness for an increment.

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To replace the need for project manager oversight

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To tell the team how long a task should take

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To act as a contract for external vendors

Question 14

In the DA framework, what is the 'Transition' phase primarily focused on?

Accepted Answer

Deployment and release. In Disciplined Agile, the Transition phase focuses on deploying the solution to production and releasing it to stakeholders. It covers activities like release planning, deployment, and operational readiness, ensuring the solution is delivered and supported. This phase follows Construction and precedes ongoing operations and continuous improvement.

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Continuous improvement

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Requirement gathering

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Team building

Question 15

Which THREE of the following represent ways to reduce handoffs?

Accepted Answer

Automating the delivery pipeline to minimize manual intervention.. Option A is correct because automating the delivery pipeline (e.g., CI/CD with automated build, test, and deploy stages) removes the manual handoffs between development, QA, and operations that occur when artifacts are passed between people or teams. Option B is correct because co-locating team members who need to collaborate frequently replaces formal, asynchronous handoffs with direct, high-bandwidth communication, reducing the transfer of work between separate locations or groups. Option C is correct because cross-functional teams that own features end-to-end keep the skills needed for the whole value stream (dev, test, ops) within one team, eliminating the sequential handoffs to external specialist teams. Option D does not belong because outsourcing to a vendor creates additional organizational boundaries and handoffs rather than reducing them. Option E does not belong because adding a management layer to monitor transfers adds coordination overhead and does not remove the handoffs themselves.

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Outsourcing non-core tasks to a specialized vendor.

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Adding an extra layer of management to monitor transfers.

Question 16

What is the primary benefit of the 'Process Goal' structure in the DA toolkit?

Accepted Answer

It provides a clear way to navigate and choose practices.. The 'Process Goal' structure in the DA toolkit provides a clear way to navigate and choose practices by organizing them around what the team wants to achieve rather than prescribing a fixed set of steps. Each process goal describes a desired outcome and offers a range of practices that can be selected based on context. This structure supports the 'Choose Your WoW' philosophy by making it easier to identify relevant practices.

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It replaces the need for a Project Manager.

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It ensures that teams only use Lean practices.

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It forces teams to adopt a specific lifecycle.

Question 17

Which THREE of the following factors would influence your choice of lifecycle within the DA toolkit?

Accepted Answer

The regulatory compliance requirements.. Option A (regulatory compliance requirements) is correct because the DA (Disciplined Agile) toolkit requires lifecycle selection to account for governance and compliance obligations; highly regulated environments favor more predictive, phase-gated lifecycles with documented control points, while low-regulation contexts can safely use agile or lean approaches. Option C (the maturity of the team) is correct because team capability and experience directly shape which lifecycle is viable: a less experienced or newly formed team typically needs the structure and guidance of a predictive or hybrid lifecycle, whereas a mature, self-organizing team can operate effectively with a continuous delivery or lean lifecycle. Option E (the duration of the project) is correct because project length influences lifecycle fit: short, well-bounded efforts suit agile or lean continuous approaches, while long, complex initiatives with evolving scope often benefit from hybrid or predictive lifecycles with staged governance. Options B (office wall color) and D (team member salaries) are incorrect because they are irrelevant environmental or compensation details that have no bearing on the factors DA uses to guide lifecycle selection, such as compliance, team maturity, project duration, delivery cadence, and solution complexity.

Answer

The color of the team's office walls.

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The salary of the team members.

Question 18

What is the role of 'Enterprise Awareness' in the DA toolkit?

Accepted Answer

To encourage team members to act in the best interest of the organization. Enterprise Awareness in DA is a guiding principle that encourages individuals and teams to consider the whole organisation when making decisions, rather than optimising only for their local team. It pushes teams to act in the best interest of the enterprise, even when that means accepting a locally suboptimal outcome. This is distinct from standardisation or reporting mandates.

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To ensure everyone works the same way

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To report all team activities to management

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To limit the team to internal tasks

Question 19

If you have a 'bottleneck', how does increasing local efficiency at a non-bottleneck step affect the system?

Accepted Answer

It increases the pile-up at the bottleneck.. Increasing speed at a non-bottleneck simply pushes more work to the bottleneck, increasing the pile-up without increasing system throughput.

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It reduces the cycle time of the entire system.

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It has no effect on the system.

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It improves the total throughput of the system.

Question 20

Which THREE of the following actions support the Lean principle 'Build Quality In'?

Accepted Answer

Using automated regression testing.. Option C (Using automated regression testing) is correct because it embeds quality checks into the delivery pipeline, catching defects immediately after each change rather than letting them accumulate, which directly supports building quality in at the source. Option D (Performing continuous integration) is correct because CI automatically builds and tests every commit, providing fast feedback and preventing integration defects from compounding, which is a core mechanism for building quality into the product. Option E (Implementing Test-Driven Development (TDD)) is correct because writing tests before code forces quality requirements into the design and implementation from the start, eliminating defects at the earliest possible point. Option A (Deferring testing until the end of the project) is not correct because late-stage testing allows defects to accumulate and violates the build-quality-in principle of early detection. Option B (Relying on manual testing by an external team) is not correct because outsourcing manual testing creates delayed, non-continuous feedback and does not embed quality into the development process itself.

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Deferring testing until the end of the project.

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Relying on manual testing by an external team.