DASM Disciplined Agile Scrum Master (DASM) Exam Questions and Answers

Theeight principles of Disciplined Agile (DA)provide a foundation for making sound decisions within an agile framework. The correct principles are:

Delight Customers: Focus on delivering high-quality products and services that meet or exceed customer expectations.

Be Awesome: Encourage team members to be the best they can be and create an environment that enables them to excel.

Pragmatism: Apply practical approaches and techniques that are most suitable for the given context.

Context Counts: Understand that every situation is unique, and practices should be tailored accordingly.

Choice is Good: Promote multiple ways of working and allow teams to choose the most appropriate techniques.

Optimize Flow: Focus on improving the flow of work to maximize efficiency and minimize waste.

Enterprise Awareness: Ensure teams understand and align with the organization’s broader goals and strategies.

Organize around products/services: Structure teams and workflows around delivering value to customers through products or services.

Therefore, the correct answer isB. Delight Customers, Be Awesome, Pragmatism, Context Counts, Choice is Good, Optimize Flow, Enterprise Awareness, Organize around products/services.

Address Changing Stakeholder Needs:This process goal involves actively engaging with stakeholders to understand and respond to their evolving requirements, preferences, and concerns throughout the project's life cycle. This goal is dynamic and requires significant effort because stakeholder needs and priorities can change frequently, requiring continuous adjustment of the Agile strategy. Tailoring your strategy to effectively address these needs involves multiple activities, such as conducting frequentreviews, reprioritizing the backlog, aligning deliverables with stakeholder expectations, and incorporating feedback into the development process.

Why It Requires the Most Effort:

Dynamic Nature of Stakeholder Needs:Stakeholders’ needs are often unpredictable and can change rapidly due to market shifts, regulatory changes, or new business priorities. This requires Agile teams to be highly adaptive and frequently recalibrate their strategies.

Continuous Engagement and Communication:Maintaining an ongoing dialogue with stakeholders, gathering feedback, and negotiating trade-offs consume considerable time and resources.

Alignment and Consensus Building:Repeated effort is needed to ensure that all stakeholders are aligned and that there is a consensus on the direction and scope of the project.

Incorrect Options:

A. Improve Quality:While improving quality is a significant goal in any Agile strategy, it is more focused on refining existing processes, techniques, and tools rather than continuously adapting to external changes. Thus, it may not require as much continuous effort in tailoring the Agile strategy.

C. Align with Enterprise Direction:This goal involves ensuring that the team’s work aligns with the broader organizational objectives. While important, it is generally a less dynamic activity compared to addressing changing stakeholder needs and may not require as frequent adjustments once alignment is initially achieved.

D. Explore Scope:Exploring the scope is an initial activity in an Agile project where the team works to understand the project's boundaries and deliverables. Although this requires effort at the beginning of the project, it is not a continuous effort throughout the project life cycle like addressing changing stakeholder needs.

Therefore,"Address Changing Stakeholder Needs"is the process goal that requires the most effort due to its dynamic nature and the continuous engagement required to adapt the Agile strategy to evolving conditions.

The key attributes of a leader in an agile context include the ability tofocus on goals,inspire trust, andtake risks. Agile leaders guide their teams by keeping a clear vision of the goals, building trust through transparency and integrity, and being willing to take calculated risks to achieve desired outcomes. They do not simply "go with the flow" or assign tasks in a top-down manner; instead, they empower their teams, foster a culture of trust, and support innovation by encouraging risk-taking within safe-to-fail boundaries.

In Disciplined Agile (DA), theTeam Memberrole is primarily responsible for building the product correctly. Team Members are the individuals who directly create the product by writing code, testing, designing, and performing other tasks necessary to deliver a working solution. The Architecture Owner may guide architectural decisions, and the Team Lead may facilitate processes, but it is the Team Members who actively build the product and ensure it meets the required standards and specifications.

Along-standing teamis best suited for a long-term project with the potential for significant budgeting and tracking overhead. In Disciplined Agile (DA), a long-standing team is a stable, cross-functional team that remains intact over time and works on various projects or continuous delivery of value. This type of team reduces overhead associated with forming and disbanding teams and allows for more consistent tracking, budgeting, and management of resources. Additionally, long-standing teams develop stronger team dynamics and improve performance over time due to their stability.

B. A project teamis typically temporary and disbanded once the project ends.

C. A cross-functional teamis a characteristic of many Agile teams but does not specifically address the need for long-term stability.

D. A shared services teamsupports other teams by providing specialized skills but is not focused on long-term projects with budgeting needs.

Disciplined Agile (DA) provides a solid foundation for business agility through multiple mechanisms, including:

B. Defining a framework for agility at scale: DA offers a comprehensive toolkit that supports scaling agile practices across an organization, integrating principles from various agile methodologies to ensure coherence and alignment.

D. Providing guidance to streamline processes in a context-sensitive manner: DA emphasizes tailoring processes to the specific context of the organization, project, or team, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach. This flexibility allows organizations to adapt more effectively to change and improve their agility.

A. Enforcing adherence to organizational standardscontradicts the DA principle of pragmatism and flexibility.

C. Creating awesome teams that foster joyis beneficial but is not specifically cited as foundational for business agility.

E. Describing trade-offsis part of DA's decision-making framework but not directly a way of providing a foundation for business agility.

Thus, the correct answers areB. Defines a framework for agility at scaleandD. Provides guidance to streamline processes in a context-sensitive manner.

InTeam Estimation, also known as relative estimation or silent grouping, the team first estimates the relative sizes of all user stories by comparing them against each other. The stories are arranged in order of size (smallest to largest) without initially assigning specific numbers. After ordering, numerical values (such as story points) are then assigned to each story based on their relative size. This method leverages group consensus and comparative analysis to provide more accurate estimates.

B. Ranking teams in order of importanceis not part of the Team Estimation process.

C. Defining "Definition of Done" criteriais a separate exercise, not related to estimating story size.

D. Estimating necessary rolesis not a part of Team Estimation.

Acomplex adaptive systemis characterized by the idea that understanding the individual components does not necessarily provide a clear understanding of the system's overall behavior. These systems are composed of interacting agents that adapt and learn from their experiences, leading to emergent behavior that cannot be easily predicted from the properties of the individual components. This concept is critical in Agile and Disciplined Agile practices, where teams and organizations are viewed as complex adaptive systems that evolve and adapt over time in response to their environment.

The three phases of Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)'s delivery life cycle are:

Inception: This phase focuses on getting the project off the ground. It includes identifying stakeholders, understanding the vision, defining the initial scope, and planning for the necessary resources and timeline.

Construction: This phase involves building the solution incrementally and iteratively, with continuous delivery of working software and regular stakeholder feedback.

Transition: This phase prepares the solution for release into production or the marketplace. It includes final validation, user training, deployment planning, and release management.

Other options are incorrect:

A. Commencement, Creation, Evolutionare not standard DAD phases.

B. Initiation, Foundation, Conversiondo not match DAD terminology.

C. Introduction, Substance, Alterationare not relevant to DAD.

Therefore, the correct answer isD. Inception, Construction, Transitions.

In Lean and Agile methodologies, the role of management is tocreate awesome team environmentsthat foster collaboration, creativity, and high performance. Lean principles emphasize empowering teams, removing obstacles, and creating a culture of continuous improvement and respect. This means management's role is to support the team, provide the necessary resources, and ensure a safe and conducive environment for delivering high-quality work.

A. Ensure documentation is completedis not the primary role of management in Lean.

B. Provide minimum viable products to the teamis more related to the responsibilities of product owners or teams, not management.

C. Ensure decisions are not made regionallyis not directly related to the core responsibilities of management in Lean.

Therefore,D. Create awesome team environmentscorrectly reflects the Lean management role.

In Agile and Disciplined Agile practices, iterations are plannedat the beginning of each iterationduring an iteration planning meeting. The team, along with the product owner, pulls the highest-priority items from the product backlog that they believe can be completed within the iteration. This ensures that the work is well-defined, understood, and aligned with the current goals and priorities.

A. Retrospective meetingsfocus on reflecting on the past iteration to identify improvements, not planning the next iteration.

B. Using iteration reviewsimproves quality but is not about planning.

D. Iteratively planning by the product owneralone does not ensure team alignment or collaboration, which is essential in Agile.

Therefore, the correct answer isC. At the beginning of each iteration by pulling from the product backlog.

The Disciplined Agile (DA) principle of being pragmatic is characterized by the focus on "being as effective as you can and continuously improving." According to PMI's Disciplined Agile Toolkit, being pragmatic means applying an agile mindset that is not constrained by a rigid set of rules or practices. Instead, it emphasizes being practical and outcome-focused, aiming for the best results in each unique context while continually seeking opportunities for improvement.

Disciplined Agile promotes pragmatic decision-making by suggesting that teams should balance their approach by being both goal-driven and situation-aware. This means that instead of strictly adhering to a single agile framework or methodology, teams should assess their situation, leverage their experience, and apply the most suitable tools and techniques available. Furthermore, continuous improvement (Kaizen) is a fundamental aspect, meaning teams should regularly reflect on their practices and make iterative enhancements to achieve effectiveness.

This principle also aligns with DA's guidance to "Optimize Flow" and "Be Awesome," as it encourages teams to deliver value while recognizing that every situation might require different tools, techniques, and practices. Thus, "D. Being as effective as you can and continuously improving" best captures the essence of DA’s pragmatic approach.