PMI-ACP Practice Test 4 — 25 Questions

Question 1

A new developer is struggling to adopt the team's pairing practices. What is the most appropriate action?

Accepted Answer

Coach the developer on the benefits of knowledge sharing.. In Agile, the Scrum Master or Agile coach serves the team by removing impediments and fostering collaboration, not by escalating or coercing. Coaching the developer on the benefits of knowledge sharing addresses the root cause—resistance often stems from misunderstanding or lack of psychological safety—and aligns with the servant-leadership principle. Pairing is a voluntary, collaborative practice; the coach's role is to help the developer see its value, not to mandate it.

Answer

Report the developer to HR.

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Force the developer to pair against their will.

Answer

Ask them to work alone until they are more comfortable.

Question 2

Which TWO roles are fundamental to the success of an agile team?

Accepted Answer

Scrum Master or Team Facilitator.. Option B (Scrum Master or Team Facilitator) is correct because this role is fundamental to an agile team: the Scrum Master serves the team by removing impediments, facilitating Scrum events (Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective), coaching the team in agile practices, and shielding it from external distractions, which directly enables self-organization and continuous improvement. Option D (Product Owner) is correct because the Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value delivered by the team, owning and ordering the Product Backlog, defining and refining backlog items, and acting as the single point of contact for stakeholder requirements and priorities, which keeps the team building the right thing. Option A (External Auditor) is not a core agile team role; auditing is a governance/compliance function performed outside the team and is not required for agile team success. Option C (Marketing Manager) is a business function that may interact with the Product Owner as a stakeholder but is not a fundamental agile team role. Option E (Chief Financial Officer) is an executive finance role concerned with budgeting and financial control, not a role defined within an agile team's structure.

Answer

External Auditor.

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Marketing Manager.

Answer

Chief Financial Officer.

Question 3

A user story lacks specific acceptance criteria. What is the risk to the development team?

Accepted Answer

The team will not know when the story meets requirements.. Acceptance criteria define the conditions a story must satisfy to be considered done, so without them the team has no objective way to know when the work is complete or whether it meets the user's needs. This ambiguity leads to rework, scope disputes, and stories that pass code review but fail acceptance because 'done' was never defined.

Answer

The sprint will end earlier than expected.

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The velocity will artificially increase.

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The story will be too small to estimate.

Question 4

An agile team is coordinating tasks across multiple cross-functional teams. Which meeting is most effective for synchronizing dependencies?

Accepted Answer

Scrum of Scrums.. The Scrum of Scrums is a scaled-agile ceremony where representatives (usually one per team) from multiple Scrum teams meet regularly to coordinate cross-team dependencies, integration points, and impediments. It is specifically designed to synchronize work across teams that share a product or delivery goal. Daily Stand-ups synchronize work within a single team, not across teams.

Answer

Sprint Retrospective.

Answer

Daily Stand-up.

Answer

Sprint Planning.

Question 5

Which THREE behaviors signal that a team is becoming self-organized? (Choose THREE)

Accepted Answer

The team feels comfortable asking for help when they are stuck.. Option A is correct because self-organizing teams exhibit psychological safety, where members openly admit impediments and ask peers for help rather than hiding problems or escalating everything to a manager. Option B is correct because self-organization includes owning and evolving the team's working agreements; acting on retrospective findings by adjusting their own norms demonstrates autonomy over how they work. Option C is correct because proactively identifying and resolving process blockers shows the team takes initiative for its own workflow instead of waiting for external direction. Option D is not correct because routing all communication through the Scrum Master creates a bottleneck and dependency, which is the opposite of self-organization. Option E is not correct because waiting for management to assign tasks reflects a command-and-control, directed team rather than a self-managing one.

Answer

The team only communicates through the Scrum Master.

Answer

The team waits for management to tell them which tasks to do next.

Question 6

During a sprint, the team realizes the current technical approach won't work. What is the most Agile action?

Accepted Answer

Pivot the approach and communicate the impact to the PO.. Agile embraces change and empirical learning — when the technical approach is proven unworkable, the team should pivot, adapt the plan, and transparently communicate the impact to the Product Owner. This preserves the sprint goal's value and allows the PO to re-prioritize scope if needed. Hiding or persisting with a broken approach violates transparency and wastes effort.

Answer

Continue the current path to avoid missing the sprint deadline.

Answer

Hide the issue and fix it next sprint.

Answer

Blame the architect for the bad design.

Question 7

The team is consistently underestimating their tasks, leading to unfinished work at the end of sprints. How do you coach them?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a discussion on why the estimates were off and how to refine their definition of 'done' and estimation criteria.. When a team consistently underestimates, the best coaching approach is to facilitate a discussion on why estimates were off and how to refine their definition of 'done' and estimation criteria. This promotes learning, transparency, and collective ownership of the estimation process, rather than imposing a fix.

Answer

Assign the tasks yourself to ensure they are estimated correctly.

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Change the estimation unit to hours instead of story points.

Answer

Increase their story points by a fixed multiplier.

Question 8

The team is feeling burned out. What is your role as a leader?

Accepted Answer

Work with the team to identify the causes of burnout and adjust their workload and processes accordingly.. The leader's role in addressing burnout is to work with the team to identify root causes and adjust workload and processes accordingly, because burnout is a systemic issue, not an individual failing. This approach aligns with agile principles of sustainable pace and servant leadership, where the leader facilitates solutions rather than prescribing them. By involving the team in diagnosis and remediation, the leader empowers them and addresses the underlying drivers of burnout.

Answer

Ask them to work harder to finish the project sooner.

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Tell the team to take more breaks.

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Tell the team to be more resilient.

Question 9

A product manager wants to add a new feature that will delay the release by two weeks. What is the best way to handle this?

Accepted Answer

Present the trade-off to the stakeholders to decide if the new feature is worth the delay.. When a new feature would delay a release, the agile-correct approach is to make the trade-off transparent and let the stakeholders decide whether the feature's value justifies the delay. The product manager's role is to surface the cost and benefit, not to unilaterally decide or hide the impact. This preserves stakeholder ownership of scope and schedule decisions.

Answer

Work overtime to meet the original date.

Answer

Implement it immediately.

Answer

Secretly add it and work late.

Question 10

Which THREE of the following foster psychological safety?

Accepted Answer

Encouraging members to challenge ideas. Option A is correct because encouraging members to challenge ideas signals that dissent and constructive debate are welcome, which is a core behavioral driver of psychological safety in teams. Option B is correct because supporting experimentation and learning reframes failure as a source of information rather than punishment, which reduces interpersonal risk and promotes speaking up. Option C is correct because a leader who openly admits mistakes models vulnerability and fallibility, giving team members permission to do the same without fear of retribution. Option D is not correct because a strict hierarchy of authority suppresses open communication and increases fear of speaking up, which erodes psychological safety. Option E is not correct because publicly blaming those who make errors punishes candor and risk-taking, directly undermining the trust and safety needed for teams to learn and innovate.

Answer

Creating a strict hierarchy of authority

Answer

Publicly blaming those who make errors

Question 11

An agile team is having trouble getting feedback from a remote stakeholder. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a session to find a collaborative tool or meeting time that works for everyone.. When a remote stakeholder is not providing feedback, the best action is to facilitate a session to find a collaborative tool or meeting time that works for everyone. This addresses the root cause—accessibility and communication preferences—and aligns with Agile's emphasis on customer collaboration and face-to-face interaction (or its virtual equivalent).

Answer

Stop the project until the stakeholder is available.

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Send the stakeholder a daily summary of the work.

Answer

Assume the stakeholder is not interested and proceed without them.

Question 12

A team is failing to 'self-organize'. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The leadership is still command-and-control.. Self-organization requires an environment of trust and autonomy where the team owns its process and decisions. When leadership still operates in a command-and-control style — assigning tasks, dictating how work is done, and requiring approvals — the team has no room to self-organize. The most likely cause is therefore the leadership style, not the team's intelligence, motivation, or tooling.

Answer

They are too smart.

Answer

They are lazy.

Answer

They have the wrong tools.

Question 13

A team is struggling with the transition to a new agile tool. How do you help?

Accepted Answer

Provide training and time for the team to experiment and adapt to the new tool.. Tool transitions fail when imposed without support. The agile-correct approach is to provide training and protected time for the team to experiment, make mistakes, and build fluency with the new tool. This respects the team's self-organization and leverages the empirical learning loop that agile promotes.

Answer

Ask the IT department to force the migration.

Answer

Force them to use the new tool starting tomorrow.

Answer

Use the old tool and the new one simultaneously.

Question 14

A team member is constantly checking their phone during meetings. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Discuss the importance of active participation and focus during meetings in a team retrospective.. A team member constantly checking their phone during meetings is a team-level behavior issue best addressed through the team's own improvement mechanism. Raising it in a retrospective — framed around active participation and focus — allows the team to discuss norms and agree on working agreements without singling anyone out. Option A uses the Agile team's natural feedback loop.

Answer

Ignore it.

Answer

Call them out during the meeting.

Answer

Take their phone away.

Question 15

An agile team is experiencing a high number of defects after release. What process should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Implement automated testing and continuous integration practices.. Implementing automated testing and continuous integration directly addresses the root cause of post-release defects by catching regressions early, running tests on every commit, and providing fast feedback to the team. CI ensures code is integrated and validated frequently, while automated tests (unit, integration, regression) reduce reliance on late-stage manual testing. This is a core agile engineering practice that improves quality sustainably.

Answer

Increase the time spent on manual testing at the end.

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Ignore minor defects.

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Outsource all coding.

Question 16

A team is struggling with technical debt. What is the most Agile way to handle it?

Accepted Answer

Incorporate technical debt reduction into the product backlog.. The most Agile way to handle technical debt is to make it visible and incorporate it into the product backlog, where it can be prioritized alongside other work based on business value and risk. This allows the team and Product Owner to make informed trade-offs and address debt incrementally. It ensures technical debt is not ignored or treated as a separate, low-priority project.

Answer

Wait for a dedicated 'refactoring' project.

Answer

Blame the developers.

Answer

Ignore it.

Question 17

Which TWO of the following are benefits of an Agile mindset?

Accepted Answer

Improved team collaboration and satisfaction. Option A is correct because an Agile mindset emphasizes self-organizing, cross-functional teams that collaborate closely through practices like daily standups and retrospectives, which measurably improves team morale and satisfaction. Option E is correct because Agile prioritizes delivering working, valuable increments to the customer in short iterations, enabling faster realization of business value compared with sequential waterfall delivery. The unmarked options do not belong: B is wrong because Agile increases, not reduces, communication through frequent ceremonies and feedback loops; C is wrong because Agile embraces emergent, evolving scope rather than fixed-scope predictability; and D is wrong because Agile values working software over comprehensive documentation but still requires sufficient documentation, not its elimination.

Answer

Less need for communication

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More predictable, fixed-scope projects

Answer

Elimination of all documentation

Question 18

During a multi-team project, teams are frequently blocked by infrastructure delays. What is the most effective way to address this at the organizational level?

Accepted Answer

Establish a dedicated 'Enabler' team or service-level agreement for infrastructure support.. When multiple teams are repeatedly blocked by infrastructure delays, the most effective organizational response is to create a dedicated enabler team or establish a service-level agreement (SLA) for infrastructure support. This removes the systemic bottleneck and allows delivery teams to focus on value-adding work, which is a core Agile scaling principle.

Answer

Escalate to the CEO.

Answer

Ask each team to build their own infrastructure.

Answer

Stop all infrastructure improvements.

Question 19

An agile team is using 'Story Points' for estimation. Why is this preferred over 'Hours' for backlog items?

Accepted Answer

It accounts for complexity, effort, and uncertainty without needing precise time forecasting.. Story points are a relative, unitless measure that captures complexity, effort, and uncertainty together, which is why they are preferred over hours for backlog estimation. Because humans are better at comparing items than forecasting absolute durations, relative sizing produces more reliable estimates and avoids false precision. Story points also decouple estimation from individual time tracking, supporting team-based planning.

Answer

It is required by the project management office.

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It makes it easier to track individual performance.

Answer

It ensures that every story takes exactly the same amount of time.

Question 20

Which TWO of the following are signs of a healthy Agile culture?

Accepted Answer

High level of transparency and honest communication. Option D is correct because a healthy Agile culture depends on transparency and honest communication: information radiators, visible backlogs, and open discussion of progress and impediments let the team inspect and adapt, which is the foundation of empirical process control. Option E is correct because psychological safety — team members feeling comfortable admitting mistakes — enables early problem surfacing, blameless retrospectives, and continuous improvement rather than hiding defects or risks. The unmarked options describe unhealthy or anti-Agile patterns: avoiding disagreements (A) suppresses the constructive conflict needed for better decisions, top-down management decisions (B) contradict Agile self-organizing teams, and measuring primarily individual output (C) undermines team accountability and encourages local optimization over delivering value.

Answer

Disagreements are avoided at all costs

Answer

Decisions are made top-down by management

Answer

Performance is measured primarily by individual output