PMI-ACP Practice Exam 1 — 20 Questions

Question 1

A project is failing to deliver value because the features are too large. What is the recommended strategy?

Accepted Answer

Decompose epics into smaller, investable user stories.. When features are too large to deliver value, the recommended agile strategy is to decompose epics into smaller, investable user stories that can be completed and delivered incrementally. Smaller stories enable faster feedback, reduce risk, and allow the team to deliver value continuously rather than in large, infrequent batches.

Answer

Stop the project.

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Hire more testers.

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Keep the features large to avoid complexity.

Question 2

A team is using a WIP (Work In Progress) limit of 3 on their 'Testing' column. A developer moves a fourth item into 'Testing' because the current items are blocked by a third party. What is the most agile way to handle this?

Accepted Answer

Stop starting new work and assist the testers or address the block with the third party.. When a WIP limit is reached and items are blocked, the agile response is to stop starting new work and swarm on the blockage — either helping testers or resolving the third-party dependency. This respects the WIP limit, exposes the impediment, and improves flow rather than hiding the problem.

Answer

Move the blocked items back to the 'Development' column.

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Increase the WIP limit to 4 to accommodate the new item.

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Ask the Product Owner to prioritize the next task for the developer.

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Allow the fourth item to move into testing to keep developers busy.

Question 3

A cross-functional team is struggling with siloed behavior. What is the best way to encourage an Agile mindset of shared responsibility?

Accepted Answer

Encourage the team to swarm on blockers and share the responsibility for the Sprint Goal.. To break down silos and encourage shared responsibility, the best approach is to have the team swarm on blockers and collectively own the Sprint Goal. Swarming means multiple team members collaborate on a single item to finish it faster, which promotes knowledge sharing and reduces handoffs. This directly fosters a cross-functional, shared-responsibility mindset.

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Require team members to work on their specific areas of expertise only.

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Compare the individual performance metrics of each team member during the retrospective.

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Assign specific tasks to individual team members and monitor their progress separately.

Question 4

A team feels that their daily stand-up is a waste of time. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a discussion on how to make it more valuable for them.. When a team finds the daily stand-up wasteful, the servant leader should facilitate a conversation about its purpose and format rather than impose or abandon it. The stand-up exists to enable daily inspection and adaptation, so the team should own how it is run. Facilitating a discussion (C) respects self-organization and lets the team redesign the ceremony to deliver value.

Answer

Start asking all the questions yourself.

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Tell them they have to do it because it is required.

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Cancel the stand-up.

Question 5

Which of the following is an effective technique for eliciting requirements from stakeholders?

Accepted Answer

Conducting user interviews or focus groups.. Conducting user interviews or focus groups is a direct, interactive elicitation technique that draws requirements straight from stakeholders through structured conversation, allowing the analyst to probe, clarify, and uncover latent needs. PMI-ACP and the Agile Manifesto emphasize 'individuals and interactions over processes and tools,' so face-to-face techniques like interviews and focus groups align with agile values. These methods produce rich, high-quality information that can be validated immediately with the stakeholder.

Answer

Building the entire product first and asking for feedback later.

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Guessing the requirements based on past projects.

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Waiting for the stakeholders to send an email.

Question 6

A team is struggling with 'groupthink' during planning. How can you facilitate better decision-making?

Accepted Answer

Use techniques like 'Silent Brainstorming' (e.g., 1-2-4-All) to gather diverse perspectives.. Groupthink occurs when the desire for harmony suppresses dissenting views. Silent Brainstorming techniques like 1-2-4-All gather input independently before discussion, which prevents dominant voices from anchoring the group and surfaces diverse perspectives. Option B directly addresses the root cause of groupthink.

Answer

Tell the team to be more vocal.

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Ask the team to vote by a show of hands.

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Call on each person one by one to give their opinion.

Question 7

The project stakeholders are unhappy because the delivered features do not align with the current organizational priorities. What should the practitioner do first?

Accepted Answer

Conduct a backlog grooming session with stakeholders to reprioritize based on business value.. When stakeholders report that delivered features don't match current organizational priorities, the root cause is almost always a stale or misaligned product backlog. The Product Owner owns backlog ordering, so the correct first move is to convene stakeholders and the PO to re-evaluate and reprioritize backlog items by business value. This restores alignment before any delivery work continues.

Answer

Ask the team to work overtime to finish the backlog faster.

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Update the release burn-down chart to reflect current progress.

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Change the definition of done to speed up delivery.

Question 8

Which THREE techniques help minimize context switching?

Accepted Answer

Strict WIP limits.. Strict WIP limits (A) are correct because capping the amount of work in progress forces the team to finish items before starting new ones, reducing the number of parallel tasks that pull attention in different directions and thus cutting context switching. Focusing on one feature at a time (C) is correct because single-piece flow keeps a person's cognitive effort on a single work item, eliminating the reload cost incurred when switching between features. Scheduling dedicated time for deep work (D) is correct because uninterrupted blocks allow sustained concentration on one task, preventing the frequent task-switching caused by fragmented calendars. Increasing the number of meetings (B) is not correct because more meetings fragment the day and create additional interruptions that increase context switching. Assigning multiple tasks to each person (E) is not correct because it multiplies concurrent work items per individual, which is precisely what raises context-switching overhead.

Answer

Increasing the number of meetings.

Answer

Assigning multiple tasks to each person.

Question 9

A team member is consistently finishing their tasks early but other members are struggling. How should the team respond to optimize flow?

Accepted Answer

Encourage the team member to assist others with their tasks.. In Agile, the team's goal is to optimize flow and deliver value collectively, not to maximize individual utilization. When one member finishes early, the most Agile-aligned response is to have them swarm on other tasks or pair with struggling teammates, which balances WIP and reduces bottlenecks. This supports the self-organizing, cross-functional team principle and avoids creating a new bottleneck by overloading one person.

Answer

Assign them more tasks than anyone else.

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Ignore the imbalance.

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Ask them to start working on next sprint's items.

Question 10

During a sprint planning session, the team realizes that the current sprint backlog contains items with significantly higher effort than the team's historical average velocity. What is the most appropriate action for the Scrum Master to facilitate?

Accepted Answer

Encourage the Product Owner to split the large backlog items into smaller, INVEST-compliant user stories.. When sprint backlog items are significantly larger than the team's historical velocity can absorb, the root problem is item size, not team capability. The Scrum Master should facilitate splitting oversized items into smaller, INVEST-compliant user stories so the team can deliver incrementally within the sprint and maintain a sustainable pace. This preserves flow and predictability.

Answer

Remove the items from the backlog entirely until the team's velocity improves.

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Assign the large items to senior developers only to ensure completion.

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Increase the sprint duration to accommodate the large items.

Question 11

The team is stuck in a 'blame game' after a failed release. How do you facilitate a transition to an Agile mindset?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a blame-free post-mortem focused on process gaps.. Facilitating a blame-free post-mortem focused on process gaps transitions the team to an agile mindset by emphasizing systemic improvement over individual fault. This aligns with agile values of respect, courage, and continuous learning.

Answer

Disband the team and create new ones.

Answer

Identify the individual responsible for the failure.

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Ask the manager to provide disciplinary actions.

Question 12

A team is feeling 'sprint fatigue'. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Discuss how to maintain a more sustainable pace in the next retrospective.. Sprint fatigue signals an unsustainable pace, and the Agile response is to address it through the team's own inspect-and-adapt mechanism. Discussing a more sustainable pace in the next retrospective (C) lets the team identify the causes — overcommitment, technical debt, lack of slack — and adjust. This aligns with the Agile principle that teams should work at a sustainable pace indefinitely.

Answer

Push them to work harder.

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Suggest they all take a vacation at once.

Answer

Cancel the next sprint.

Question 13

Which THREE practices contribute to a healthy, continuous delivery pipeline?

Accepted Answer

Automated deployment.. Automated deployment (B) is correct because it removes manual, error-prone release steps and lets validated builds be promoted to environments repeatably and quickly, which is essential for a continuous delivery pipeline. Continuous integration (D) is correct because developers frequently merge code into a shared mainline where each commit triggers an automated build and test cycle, catching integration defects early and keeping the codebase always releasable. Automated testing (E) is correct because a pipeline needs fast, reliable, repeatable verification (unit, integration, and other test suites) to gate each change without human bottlenecks, enabling safe frequent releases. The unmarked options do not belong: manual gatekeepers for every change (A) introduce delays and human bottlenecks that break the flow and speed of continuous delivery, and working without documentation (C) undermines maintainability, onboarding, and operational reliability rather than contributing to pipeline health.

Answer

Manual gatekeepers for every change.

Answer

Working without documentation.

Question 14

A Product Owner notices that the product backlog has grown significantly, making it difficult to find relevant work items. Which action should the Product Owner take to improve visibility?

Accepted Answer

Group related user stories under larger epics.. Grouping related user stories under larger epics improves backlog visibility by creating a hierarchical structure that reduces clutter while preserving detail at the story level. This is a standard backlog refinement technique that helps the Product Owner and team navigate large backlogs. It maintains traceability from high-level themes to granular work items.

Answer

Archive the entire backlog and start a new one.

Answer

Increase the number of items per page in the tool.

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Delete all old user stories to clear the clutter.

Question 15

During a sprint planning session, the team realizes a user story is too large to complete in one sprint. What is the most effective approach to handle this?

Accepted Answer

Decompose the story into smaller, independently deliverable user stories.. Decomposing the story into smaller, independently deliverable user stories is correct because it allows the team to complete valuable increments within the sprint, maintains flow, and adheres to the INVEST criteria (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable). This approach enables continuous delivery and reduces batch size, which is a core Agile principle.

Answer

Mark the story as blocked and move to the next sprint.

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Extend the sprint duration to accommodate the story size.

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Ask the developers to work overtime to finish it.

Question 16

A team is consistently missing sprint goals because they over-commit. What is the most Agile-aligned response?

Accepted Answer

Use historical velocity to guide future capacity planning.. The most Agile-aligned response to over-commitment is to use empirical data—specifically historical velocity—to forecast capacity and adjust the amount of work pulled into the sprint. Velocity provides a reliable, team-driven baseline for how much backlog can be completed in a sprint, enabling more accurate commitment. This supports the Agile principles of empirical process control and continuous improvement.

Answer

Stop doing retrospectives to save time for coding.

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Assign tasks to members by seniority to ensure speed.

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Increase the sprint length to provide more time.

Question 17

A team is doing 'Agile in name only' (Water-Scrum-Fall). What is your first step?

Accepted Answer

Assess current practices against Agile principles.. When a team is doing 'Agile in name only' (Water-Scrum-Fall), the first step is to assess current practices against Agile principles to identify gaps and understand the root causes. This diagnostic approach respects the team's context and avoids imposing changes without understanding the current state.

Answer

Fire the team and start over.

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Force them to adopt a specific framework.

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Do nothing, as long as they deliver.

Question 18

A team is struggling with high levels of 'technical debt' that slow down new feature delivery. What should the team do?

Accepted Answer

Allocate a percentage of each sprint's capacity to address technical debt.. Allocating a percentage of each sprint's capacity to technical debt (D) is the balanced agile approach: it continuously reduces debt while still delivering new features. This prevents the debt from compounding and slowing delivery further.

Answer

Request a new budget to hire external experts.

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Stop all new feature work for a year to fix everything.

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Ignore the debt and continue adding features.

Question 19

A team is struggling to finish their stories. How can you help them improve their Agile mindset?

Accepted Answer

Help them refine their stories to be smaller and clearer.. The core issue is that stories are too large or ambiguous, which prevents the team from completing them within a sprint. By helping the team refine stories to be smaller and clearer, you address the root cause: large stories increase uncertainty, make estimation harder, and often lead to carryover. This aligns with Agile principles of incremental delivery and continuous improvement, enabling the team to finish work and gain a sense of accomplishment, which reinforces the Agile mindset.

Answer

Tell them to work faster.

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Assign more work to fill their time.

Answer

Extend the sprint.

Question 20

A team is struggling to maintain a consistent cadence due to external dependencies. Which action best aligns with optimizing end-to-end flow?

Accepted Answer

Implement a formal dependency board to visualize blockers and upstream/downstream impacts.. A dependency board makes external blockers and their upstream/downstream impacts visible to the whole team, which is the core mechanism for optimizing end-to-end flow in Kanban/agile practice. Visualizing dependencies lets the team swarm on blockers, re-sequence work, and escalate early rather than discovering delays at sprint review. This directly addresses the root cause (unmanaged external dependencies) without changing the team's cadence.

Answer

Switch to Kanban to eliminate the need for sprint planning.

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Lengthen the sprint duration to allow more time for external teams to respond.

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Assign a dedicated project manager to track dependency status manually.