SAFe-Agilist Practice Test 4 — 10 Questions

Question 1

When applying 'Participatory Budgeting' in a Lean Portfolio, who should be involved in the process?

Accepted Answer

A broad group of stakeholders, including Business Owners and ART representatives.. Participatory Budgeting is a collaborative process that engages the people closest to the work. By involving stakeholders, business owners, and representatives from the Agile Release Trains, the organization taps into collective intelligence. This increases transparency, fosters shared ownership of the portfolio outcomes, and ensures that budget decisions reflect a balanced view of both technical needs and market opportunities across the entire enterprise.

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Only the Finance Department and the Portfolio Manager.

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The executive leadership team exclusively, to ensure strategic alignment.

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The Agile Release Train engineers, to ensure technical accuracy.

Question 2

Refer to the exhibit. Which SAFe principle is directly supported by the "decentralized_decision": "enabled" setting in the configuration?

Accepted Answer

Principle 9: Decentralize decision-making.. This configuration directly supports Principle 9: Decentralize decision-making. By enabling this in the workflow, the organization explicitly moves away from centralized control. Decentralization is essential for organizational speed and engagement, as it ensures that decisions are made by those who have the most relevant information and the closest connection to the customer requirements, allowing for quicker responses to changes and more effective problem-solving at the team level.

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Principle 5: Base milestones on objective evaluation.

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Principle 6: Visualize and limit WIP.

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Principle 7: Apply cadence and synchronization.

Question 3

Which THREE factors are critical for calculating WSJF? (Choose three)

Accepted Answer

User-Business Value. WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) is a prioritization model used to optimize economic outcomes. It calculates the value of a job by dividing the Cost of Delay by the job size. The 'Cost of Delay' is further broken down into three components: User-Business Value, Time Criticality, and Risk Reduction or Opportunity Enablement. Understanding these ensures the team prioritizes the highest economic impact work first.

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Team Velocity

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Total number of stakeholders

Question 4

What is the primary purpose of the Iteration Review in SAFe?

Accepted Answer

To inspect the increment and adapt the backlog based on feedback.. The Iteration Review provides a cadence for the team to demonstrate their progress to stakeholders and get feedback. It is a critical event for alignment, ensuring that the team is building the right thing. This event matters because it transforms the team's internal work into transparent progress, allowing for course correction based on real-world feedback rather than assumptions, which is essential for maintaining alignment with business goals.

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To identify process improvements for the next iteration.

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To assign specific tasks to team members for the next iteration.

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To approve the team's velocity for the next Program Increment.

Question 5

An Agile Release Train (ART) is struggling because teams are working in silos and are not integrating their work. Which principle should the Release Train Engineer emphasize to fix this?

Accepted Answer

Principle 2: Apply systems thinking.. Principle 2, Apply systems thinking, is the most relevant. It emphasizes that the efficiency of the whole system is more important than the efficiency of any individual part. In this case, the siloed teams are optimizing for their local work, which leads to integration failure. Systems thinking reminds everyone that the ART is a single system that must work together to deliver value, necessitating cross-team collaboration and integration.

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Principle 3: Assume variability.

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Principle 1: Take an economic view.

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Principle 5: Base milestones on objective evaluation.

Question 6

Refer to the exhibit. Based on these metrics, which strategy should the ART prioritize to optimize Product Development Flow?

Accepted Answer

Implement small batch sizes and reduce handoffs.. The ratio of wait time to processing time is significantly high, indicating that the system suffers from excessive queueing. In product development, work spends most of its time waiting for the next process step, not being actively processed. By focusing on reducing wait times—often caused by handoffs, batch sizes, or resource contention—the ART can drastically improve overall lead time without necessarily needing to increase individual worker effort or speed.

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Increase developer hours to improve processing time.

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Increase the throughput target for the next iteration.

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Focus on automating the testing phase.

Question 7

A Scrum Master observes that a team is struggling to meet their Sprint Goals because they spend significant time resolving technical debt during the sprint. How should the team apply the concept of Built-in Quality to address this?

Accepted Answer

Adopt practices such as Test-Driven Development and Pair Programming to prevent defects.. Built-in Quality requires that quality is not an afterthought but integrated into the development process through practices like Test-Driven Development and pair programming. By incorporating these technical practices, the team reduces rework and prevents defects from accumulating. Addressing technical debt incrementally within the sprint ensures that the team maintains a sustainable velocity, allowing them to deliver high-quality increments that reliably meet the Definition of Done in every iteration.

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Allocate a separate sprint strictly for technical debt resolution every quarter.

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Increase the velocity estimate to account for the time needed for bug fixes.

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Escalate the issue to the Release Train Engineer to request additional team members.

Question 8

An Agile Team struggles with high technical debt because they prioritize new features over refactoring. Which SAFe Core Value should the leadership emphasize to address this?

Accepted Answer

Built-in Quality. The Core Value of 'Built-in Quality' is essential here. It mandates that quality is not an afterthought but is integrated into every step of the development process. By emphasizing this, leadership shifts the culture from 'fast-tracking' features to sustainable velocity. This matters because technical debt, if left unaddressed, exponentially slows down future delivery, erodes team morale, and eventually results in a fragile system that requires complete overhauls, wasting significant organizational resources.

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Alignment

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Transparency

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Program Execution

Question 9

A Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) team is defining the portfolio's approach to funding. They want to ensure that funding decisions are aligned with strategic themes and that value streams have the autonomy to make local decisions. Which TWO of the following are key characteristics of Lean Portfolio Management funding? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Budgets are adjusted frequently based on value delivery and changing strategic priorities.. Lean Portfolio Management funding is characterized by allocating fixed budgets to value streams for a defined period, guided by Lean Budget Guardrails, and adjusting those budgets frequently based on value delivery and strategic priorities. This approach provides autonomy and stability while ensuring alignment with strategy. Central approval of every epic, project-based funding with temporary teams, and approval of user stories are antithetical to Lean principles.

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Funding is tied to individual projects with defined start and end dates, and teams are disbanded after each project.

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The LPM team approves every team's individual user stories to ensure alignment with strategy.

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Funding decisions are made centrally by the LPM team for every epic, regardless of size.

Question 10

When a portfolio is facing significant budget constraints, what is the best strategy for the Portfolio Manager to manage the Portfolio Backlog?

Accepted Answer

Prioritize work by WSJF and pause or stop lower-value initiatives.. During budget constraints, it is critical to prioritize work that offers the highest strategic value and shortest lead time to return on investment. By using objective measures like WSJF, the Portfolio Manager ensures that the remaining budget is applied to the initiatives that will have the greatest positive impact on the business. This disciplined approach prevents spreading resources too thinly, which typically results in stalled work and no value delivered.

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Reduce the scope of every active project equally to save money.

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Ask the Agile Release Trains to work overtime to finish all planned epics.

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Request a budget increase from the enterprise to avoid cutting any work.