PMI-ACP Timed Practice Test 2 — 10 Questions

Question 1

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.

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Identify the individual responsible for the failure.

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Ask the manager to provide disciplinary actions.

Question 2

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.

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Cancel the next sprint.

Question 3

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 4

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 5

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.

Answer

Extend the sprint duration to accommodate the story size.

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Ask the developers to work overtime to finish it.

Question 6

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 7

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 8

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 9

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.

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Extend the sprint.

Question 10

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.

Answer

Assign a dedicated project manager to track dependency status manually.