PMI-ACP Leadership — Timed 10 Questions

Question 1

How can a leader best promote self-organization within an agile team?

Accepted Answer

Define the objective and let the team decide how to achieve it.. Providing clear goals but leaving the 'how' to the team is the essence of empowerment.

Answer

Attend every technical meeting to provide guidance.

Answer

Require all decisions to be approved by the leadership team.

Answer

Create detailed task lists for every team member.

Question 2

A team member is consistently negative during meetings. As a leader, what is your first step?

Accepted Answer

Discuss the behavior with them privately to understand the root cause.. Private, empathetic conversation is the first step in addressing behavioral issues.

Answer

Ignore the behavior, as it will resolve itself.

Answer

Call them out during the daily stand-up.

Answer

Ask the team to vote on whether to keep them in the squad.

Question 3

A team is consistently missing their sprint goals. What is the most effective way to empower the team to improve?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a root-cause analysis in the retrospective to identify process blockers.. Empowerment comes from allowing the team to inspect their own performance and own their process improvements.

Answer

Assign a mentor to watch every task developers perform.

Answer

Analyze the velocity data and set higher targets for the next sprint.

Answer

Replace the team members who are underperforming.

Question 4

Your team has high technical skill but lacks collaboration, with members working in silos. Which technique is most effective to foster a collaborative culture?

Accepted Answer

Introduce mob programming sessions for complex stories.. Mob programming or pair programming shifts the focus from individual tasks to collective ownership.

Answer

Set up a shared document repository for everyone to read.

Answer

Implement individual performance bonuses for the fastest developers.

Answer

Require daily status reports from every developer.

Question 5

A stakeholder requests a major change to the sprint backlog mid-sprint. How do you respond as an agile leader?

Accepted Answer

Ask the Product Owner to discuss the impact with the stakeholder and evaluate if the goal can still be met.. The agile leader protects the sprint goal while ensuring transparency regarding the impact of changes.

Answer

Ask the developers to work overtime to accommodate the request.

Answer

Reject the request immediately as it violates the sprint commitment.

Answer

Add the work to the sprint backlog immediately.

Question 6

During a retrospective, two senior team members disagree on the technical architecture for a new feature, leading to a standstill. How should you facilitate this?

Accepted Answer

Suggest a time-boxed experiment to test both approaches and compare outcomes.. A servant leader guides the team to reach a consensus or make a decision based on data, rather than imposing a solution.

Answer

Make the decision yourself to prevent further delay.

Answer

Ask the product owner to decide the architecture.

Answer

Vote on the approaches and go with the majority.

Question 7

You are coaching a team that is moving from a traditional command-and-control environment to agile. A stakeholder keeps bypassing the Product Owner to assign tasks directly to developers. What is your best course of action?

Accepted Answer

Discuss with the stakeholder how the Product Owner manages the backlog and why direct assignments disrupt flow.. Protecting the team's focus and the Product Owner's authority is a key responsibility of an agile leader.

Answer

Update the Scrum Guide to include strict penalties for stakeholders.

Answer

Instruct the developers to ignore the stakeholder's requests.

Answer

Have the developers log the work as 'technical debt' to keep track of it.

Question 8

A team is struggling with frequent interpersonal conflict during daily stand-ups. As an agile leader, what is your primary role in facilitating this?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a session to help the team establish team norms and communication protocols.. The servant leader role focuses on creating an environment where the team can resolve their own conflicts.

Answer

Cancel the daily stand-up until the team matures.

Answer

Report the conflict to the functional manager to handle disciplinary action.

Answer

Force the individuals to move to different squads.

Question 9

The team's velocity is highly inconsistent, causing frustration for the Product Owner. How should you address this as a coach?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a discussion on what factors are influencing the variance and how to manage them.. The leader should facilitate a conversation about stability, not force a specific velocity.

Answer

Mandate that the team increase their velocity by 20% next sprint.

Answer

Change the story point estimation technique to something faster.

Answer

Ask the team to stop using story points.

Question 10

A new team member is hesitant to speak during meetings. How do you coach them?

Accepted Answer

Create small, safe opportunities for them to contribute and acknowledge their input.. Building psychological safety is key to encouraging participation.

Answer

Force them to present every week.

Answer

Ask them in front of the group why they are so quiet.

Answer

Ignore them until they are ready to participate.