DAF Practice Test 6 — 10 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.

Answer

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.

Answer

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.

Answer

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.

Answer

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.

Answer

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.

Answer

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.

Answer

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.

Answer

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.

Answer

Code reviews

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Team collaboration