SAFe-Agilist Practice Test 24 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A SAFe Release Train Engineer (RTE) is examining the Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD) for an Agile Release Train. The diagram shows a widening band for the 'In Progress' column over the past three Program Increments, while the 'Done' band remains relatively flat. What does this pattern most likely indicate about the ART's product development flow?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

The ART is experiencing a growing queue of work in progress, likely due to a bottleneck or excessive WIP.. A widening 'In Progress' band on a CFD indicates that work is entering the system faster than it is being completed, causing WIP to grow. This often points to a bottleneck or excessive WIP limits, which increases lead time and reduces flow. The ART should address the constraint and limit WIP to restore balance.

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The ART has too little work in progress and is underutilized.

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The ART has achieved a steady state of flow with balanced arrival and departure rates.

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The ART is increasing its throughput and delivering more value.

Question 2

When applying 'Manage Queue Lengths' to product development, why is it critical to keep queues short?

Accepted Answer

It minimizes the time to market and reduces the risk of delay.. Queues represent work that is started but not finished, effectively storing value that has not yet been realized. Long queues increase cycle time, lead to higher levels of uncertainty, and hide system inefficiencies. By keeping queues short, organizations receive earlier feedback, reduce the risk associated with large-scale commitments, and ensure that the most important work flows through the system as quickly as possible to deliver value.

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It forces team members to work faster to clear the backlog.

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It allows management to ignore the dependencies between teams.

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It ensures that the team always has a large buffer of work.

Question 3

An Agile Team is adopting SAFe and wants to ensure they are applying the core principles of Built-in Quality. Which two practices are essential for achieving Built-in Quality? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Test-First Development. Built-in Quality in SAFe is achieved through practices that embed quality into every step of development. Continuous Integration ensures frequent integration and automated testing, while Test-First Development ensures that code is written to pass tests and meets requirements. Together, these practices prevent defects from being introduced and caught late, supporting the team's ability to deliver value quickly and reliably.

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Deferring all testing to a separate QA phase after development

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Conducting thorough code reviews only at the end of each Iteration

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Using manual regression testing for every build

Question 4

Which concept best describes the shift from traditional, annual budgeting to Lean budgeting?

Accepted Answer

Funding value streams instead of specific projects.. Lean budgeting shifts the focus from funding individual projects to funding value streams. This approach reduces the overhead of constant project budgeting cycles and empowers the people closest to the work to make decisions within their budget. It encourages a focus on outcomes, enables faster response to change, and supports the continuous flow of value, which is essential for business agility in modern, complex environments.

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Centralized, project-based allocation of funds based on detailed cost estimates.

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Requiring all budget changes to be approved by the board of directors.

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Eliminating all budgeting processes to maximize team independence.

Question 5

What is the primary goal of the 'House of Lean'?

Accepted Answer

Value. The primary goal of the House of Lean is the Value. All pillars (Respect for People, Flow, Innovation, Relentless Improvement) and the foundation of leadership exist to support the delivery of value to the customer in the shortest sustainable lead time. Understanding this ensures that every action taken by the organization is evaluated based on whether it directly contributes to providing high-quality, valuable solutions to the end-user rather than just following a process.

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Maximize profit

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Employee happiness

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Process compliance

Question 6

An organization is beginning its SAFe transformation. Senior leadership wants to ensure that the change is sustained over time by building a strong guiding coalition. Which TWO actions are most critical for developing an effective guiding coalition? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Include influential leaders from various functions and levels who have credibility and can drive change.. A guiding coalition must combine influential leaders from various functions and levels with the authority to act decisively. Including diverse credible leaders ensures broad influence, while empowerment allows the coalition to remove impediments and drive change without bureaucratic delays. These two actions together create the foundation for sustaining a SAFe transformation.

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Rotate coalition members every quarter to ensure fresh perspectives and broad participation.

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Limit coalition membership to managers who have direct control over budgets and can enforce compliance.

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Ensure the coalition is composed exclusively of senior executives to maintain authority and decision-making speed.

Question 7

Which of the following best describes the 'Respect for People' pillar in the House of Lean?

Accepted Answer

Empowering individuals to grow and participate in the development process. Respect for people means fostering a culture of psychological safety, enabling employees to take risks, learn, and grow. It involves acknowledging that people do the work and that they are the primary source of innovation. This pillar is essential because it builds the trust necessary for teams to be transparent about problems, which is the only way to achieve relentless improvement and high-quality outcomes in a complex system.

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Providing the highest possible salaries for developers

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Following the instructions of management without question

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Removing all accountability for individual performance

Question 8

A SAFe Agilist is facilitating a retrospective with an Agile Release Train (ART) that has just completed its first Program Increment (PI). The ART delivered all committed PI Objectives but discovered that some features did not meet customer needs. Which SAFe event is specifically designed to help the ART inspect and adapt its practices and outcomes at the end of a PI?

Accepted Answer

Inspect and Adapt (I&A) event. The Inspect and Adapt event is the SAFe ceremony specifically for the ART to reflect on the completed PI, review metrics, and identify improvement actions. It includes a solution demo, a retrospective, and a problem-solving workshop. This event enables the ART to learn from outcomes and adapt its practices, which is essential for continuous improvement.

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Scrum of Scrums

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System Demo

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PI Planning

Question 9

What is the primary reason for keeping batch sizes small in product development?

Accepted Answer

To reduce risk, improve feedback, and accelerate value delivery.. Small batches reduce the amount of work in progress, which lowers risk and improves the speed of feedback. Large batches accumulate errors and delay value delivery, whereas small batches allow teams to identify issues early, learn from implementation, and adapt their work. This approach is fundamental to achieving high-quality outcomes and maintaining a steady, predictable flow of value through the development pipeline.

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To ensure that documentation is kept to a minimum.

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To increase the cost of transaction and holding.

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To prevent teams from having to collaborate with one another.

Question 10

When a team encounters a 'blocked' item in their flow, what is the best immediate action according to SAFe flow practices?

Accepted Answer

Swarm on the blocked item as a team to remove the impediment.. Swarming on a blocked item is a key practice to restore flow. By having multiple team members assist in resolving the impediment, the team minimizes the time that the item stays in a 'blocked' status. This aligns with the principle of stopping the line to fix problems, ensuring that issues are resolved quickly rather than allowing them to pile up and delay the entire pipeline.

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Set the item aside and start on a new task to maintain high utilization.

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Wait for the person responsible for the blockage to resolve it on their own.

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Escalate the issue to the PMO and wait for a formal instruction.

Question 11

A Scrum Master notices that a team frequently starts new stories before finishing current ones, leading to many stories in progress and few completed. Which SAFe principle should the Scrum Master emphasize to improve flow?

Accepted Answer

Limit work in process and reduce batch sizes. Limiting work in process and reducing batch sizes is the SAFe flow principle that directly addresses the team's behavior of starting too many stories. By setting WIP limits, the team focuses on completing work before pulling new items, which improves flow, reduces lead time, and increases predictability. This principle is fundamental to achieving flow in product development.

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Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning

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Implement system thinking

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Decentralize decision-making

Question 12

An Agile Team on an Agile Release Train is preparing for its first Program Increment. The team wants to ensure it can deliver a potentially shippable increment every two weeks. Which approach best establishes the team's Definition of Done as a living agreement?

Accepted Answer

The team collaboratively creates and regularly revisits its Definition of Done, incorporating SAFe's built-in quality practices and the ART's system-level Definition of Done.. A Definition of Done is most effective when the team collaboratively owns it and revisits it regularly. Incorporating SAFe's built-in quality practices and aligning with the ART's system-level Definition of Done ensures the team delivers potentially shippable increments that integrate smoothly. This approach fosters shared understanding and continuous improvement, which are core to establishing team and technical agility.

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The Release Train Engineer defines a single Definition of Done for all teams to ensure consistency across the ART.

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The Scrum Master writes a comprehensive Definition of Done and distributes it to the team for compliance.

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The team adopts the Definition of Done from a previous organization without modification to save time.

Question 13

An Agile Team on an Agile Release Train has just finished a two-day workshop where they practiced test-driven development, paired programming, and collective code ownership. Six weeks later, the Release Train Engineer notices the team's automated test coverage has plateaued and integration defects are climbing. What should the team's Scrum Master do first to sustain the new technical practices?

Accepted Answer

Help the team make the new practices part of their Definition of Done and create slack in each Iteration for deliberate practice and refactoring.. Technical agility is sustained when new engineering practices become part of the team's working agreements and Definition of Done, with enough slack to practice them. Making test-driven development, pairing, and collective ownership routine, plus reserving capacity for refactoring, prevents the regression the Release Train Engineer observed. External mandates and large rewrites address symptoms rather than building the team's own capability.

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Escalate to the Release Train Engineer and request that the System Architect assign a technical coach to the team permanently.

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Recommend that the team pause feature development for two Program Increments so they can rewrite the codebase with the new practices.

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Ask the Release Train Engineer to add a quality gate to the Continuous Integration pipeline that blocks merges when coverage drops below the agreed threshold.

Question 14

Why does SAFe advocate for 'Synchronization' among teams on the Agile Release Train?

Accepted Answer

To help manage dependencies and ensure periodic integration.. Synchronization is vital because it aligns the work of multiple teams to a common cadence. When all teams operate on the same rhythm, it becomes significantly easier to identify integration issues, plan for dependencies, and demonstrate the integrated system. This matters because, without synchronization, teams would drift apart, leading to 'integration hell' at the end of the project, where the pieces of the system fail to function together as a unified whole.

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To force all teams to use the exact same development tools.

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To ensure that all teams are working on the same features simultaneously.

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To make it easier for management to measure individual performance.

Question 15

The Portfolio Kanban is used to manage the flow of Portfolio Epics. Which TWO of the following describe the primary purpose of the 'Review' state in the Portfolio Kanban?

Accepted Answer

To validate that the epic is clearly aligned with at least one strategic theme.. The 'Review' state acts as the first filter in the Portfolio Kanban, designed to evaluate the viability and alignment of potential initiatives. By validating that epics are aligned with the portfolio's strategic themes and assessing their initial economic impact, the organization avoids wasting resources on work that does not contribute to the overall enterprise vision. It establishes a necessary checkpoint before committing to detailed analysis.

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To perform a detailed analysis of implementation costs and technical architecture.

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To approve the final design documents for the proposed solution.

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To assign the implementation responsibility to a specific Agile Release Train.