SAFe-Agilist Practice Question: Building a Foundation with Mindset, Values and Principles
What is the primary goal of the SAFe principle 'Apply an economic view'?
⚠ Common exam trap
Students often pick options focusing purely on cutting budgets or minimizing immediate expenses, missing that the economic view balances value delivery and sustainable lead times.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
To deliver the maximum business value as quickly as possible.
Applying an economic view ensures that the organization balances the delivery of value, lead time, product costs, and development expenses. It helps decision-makers prioritize work based on financial outcomes rather than just technical preference. This principle is crucial because it aligns development activities with business goals, ensuring that the limited resources of the organization are always focused on delivering the highest impact solutions to the customer, thereby maximizing the overall return on investment.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
To minimize the budget for software development.
Why it's wrong here
The goal is not to minimize the budget, but to optimize the economic return. Sometimes, spending more on quality or infrastructure early on results in lower long-term costs. The economic view focuses on total cost of ownership and value delivery, not just cutting costs in the short term.
- ✓
To deliver the maximum business value as quickly as possible.
Why this is correct
Economic prioritization focuses on the trade-off between value and time. By choosing to work on items that provide the highest value in the shortest timeframe, the organization maximizes its throughput of value. This ensures that the most important features are delivered to the customer when they are needed.
- ✗
To ensure every feature request is fulfilled.
Why it's wrong here
Fulfilling every request is inefficient and often leads to bloated products that are hard to maintain. The economic view dictates that only the most valuable features should be pursued, which often means saying 'no' to lower-value work to maintain the focus on high-impact initiatives that drive business outcomes.
- ✗
To prioritize work based on the seniority of the requestor.
Why it's wrong here
Prioritizing based on job title is a non-economic approach that leads to poor outcomes. Decisions should be based on data, market evidence, and business value. Aligning with high-level stakeholder requests without objective analysis ignores the true economic impact and can lead to the development of features that lack value.
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Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Scaled Agile exam blueprint
This SAFe-Agilist practice question is part of Courseiva's free Scaled Agile certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SAFe-Agilist exam.