PSK-I Professional Scrum with Kanban (PSK 1) Exam Questions and Answers

Adjusting WIP limits can directly impact Cycle Time and overall flow by reducing bottlenecks and increasing focus. Lowering WIP can enhance the team’s ability to complete work within a Sprint by minimizing task switching and promoting faster delivery of value. References: The Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams​​.

Kanban does not eliminate the need for a Scrum Master when used with Scrum. The Scrum Master remains an essential role to facilitate the Scrum framework, help the team adopt both Scrum and Kanban practices effectively, and ensure the team understands and adheres to Scrum principles.

The role of the Scrum Master includes coaching the team on both Scrum and Kanban practices, removing impediments, and promoting continuous improvement. Therefore, even when Scrum is used with Kanban, the Scrum Master is not optional but a critical role in ensuring that the integration of these practices is successful(

The Definition of Workflow should include policies that dictate how work flows through the system, such as Visualization policies, Pull policies, WIP Limits, Service Level Expectations, Work Item types, and the Definition of Done. These elements help the Scrum Team maintain transparency and consistency in their process, enhancing predictability and facilitating continuous improvement. References: The Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams​​.

During a flow-based Daily Scrum, the team is likely to review metrics such as Work Item Age and Work in Progress (WIP):

•Work Item Age: Helps to identify items that have been in progress for a longer time than expected, signaling possible impediments or the need for swarming to complete those items.

•Work in Progress (WIP): Indicates the number of items currently being worked on, ensuring that the team is not exceeding the agreed WIP limits, which is crucial for maintaining a steady flow

Work in Progress (WIP) and Work Item Aging are considered leading indicator metrics in Scrum with Kanban. Leading indicators are metrics that provide information that can help predict future outcomes or performance.

•Work in Progress (WIP): This metric indicates the number of work items currently being worked on and can provide early signals about potential bottlenecks or issues in the workflow. Managing WIP effectively can help teams optimize their flow and predict how work might proceed in the future.

•Work Item Aging: This metric shows how long work items have been in progress without being completed. It provides an early indication of delays and can help teams identify items that might need attention to maintain a steady flow

Supplementing Scrum with Kanban practices can bring several benefits to a Scrum Team:

•Greater Collaboration (A): By using Kanban practices like visualizing work and managing flow, team members have clearer visibility into each other's tasks, fostering better collaboration.

•Reduced Average Cycle Time (C): Kanban's focus on flow and limiting WIP helps decrease the time it takes for items to move from start to finish.

•Better Transparency (D): Kanban practices enhance visibility into the current state of work, making it easier to identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement.

•Discover Areas of Variability (E): The use of flow metrics such as cycle time and throughput in Kanban can help identify variability in processes, enabling the team to make adjustments for more predictable delivery

Little's Law is a formula used to understand the relationship between system throughput, work-in-progress (WIP), and lead time. While it can be used to analyze and optimize the flow of work, it is not specifically designed for forecasting a Scrum Team's output.

Scrum Teams typically use techniques like story point estimation and historical velocity to forecast their output.

This statement is incorrect. A Scrum Team will not stop using Sprints just by implementing Kanban. Kanban is used to complement Scrum practices, not replace them. The team continues to use Sprints as a cadence and timebox for delivering increments of work while also incorporating Kanban principles like visualizing work, limiting WIP, and managing flow to enhance their process

Kanban for Scrum Teams maximizes value delivered by:

1.Enabling Tighter Empirical Feedback Loops via Faster Cycle Times (Option B):

Kanban practices help Scrum Teams reduce Cycle Times, which is the time it takes for a work item to move from "start" to "finish." Faster Cycle Times mean that feedback on work done is received more quickly, allowing the team to make necessary adjustments sooner. This rapid feedback loop enhances the empirical process control central to Scrum, thus ensuring that the team is always delivering value in line with the needs of stakeholders(

2.Optimizing the Flow of Value (Option C):

Kanban focuses on optimizing the flow of work through the team’s process. This is achieved by limiting Work in Progress (WIP) and actively managing flow metrics such as throughput and cycle time. By optimizing flow, teams can ensure that work items are completed efficiently and effectively, minimizing waste and maximizing the delivery of value to the customer(

The other options are less accurate:

•Option A: Minimizing time spent in meetings/events is not the primary goal of Kanban; rather, it is about optimizing flow and value delivery.

•Option D: Minimizing transaction costs is more related to Lean principles, but it does not directly address the value delivered as effectively as options B and C.

•Option E: Choosing higher-value items to deliver is part of prioritization, which is more related to Product Backlog management than to Kanban's specific practices

Work in Progress (WIP) Limitscan be adjustedat any timeas needed to optimize flow and improve the system's efficiency. The decision to adjust WIP limits is typically informed by the team's observations of flow metrics (e.g., Cycle Time, Throughput, and Work Item Age) or to address bottlenecks or inefficiencies​​.

Supporting Reasons:

Kanban's Flexibility:

Unlike rigid frameworks, Kanban allows for flexibility in changing WIP limits whenever necessary to adapt to evolving conditions​.

Scrum Events:

Adjustments to WIP limits are often discussed during events like theSprint RetrospectiveorDaily Scrum, but these are not the only times changes can be made​​.

Empirical Process Control:

Teams use transparency, inspection, and adaptation to decide when to change WIP limits based on real-time needs​.

Why Not the Other Options?

B. When the Product Owner decides to change it:

Incorrect. WIP limits are a team decision and are not controlled solely by the Product Owner.

C. It never changes:

Incorrect. WIP limits are not static; they are dynamic and evolve based on team and system needs.

D. Only during the Sprint Retrospective:

Incorrect. While the Sprint Retrospective is a common time to discuss adjustments, changes are not restricted to this event.

E. Only during Sprint Planning:

Incorrect. Sprint Planning focuses on selecting work for the Sprint, not exclusively on adjusting WIP limits.

F. Only during the Daily Scrum:

Incorrect. Adjustments can be made during the Daily Scrum but are not limited to this event.

Adjusting WIP limits at any time ensures the team maintains an optimal flow, a core principle ofThe Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams​​.

Limiting Work in Progress (WIP) has several potential benefits for a Scrum Team, including:

1.Shorter feedback cycles (Option A): By limiting the amount of work in progress, the team can focus on completing work faster, which leads to shorter feedback loops and quicker validation of hypotheses or deliverables.

2.More sustainable pace of work (Option B): Limiting WIP helps prevent overburdening the team, promoting a more balanced and sustainable work pace.

3.Faster realization of value (Option C): By completing items more quickly and reducing multitasking, the team delivers value faster to stakeholders.

4.Improved collaboration (Option D): When WIP is limited, team members are more likely to collaborate to finish tasks that are already in progress rather than starting new ones.

Little's Lawestablishes a relationship between three flow metrics:Work in Progress (WIP),Cycle Time, andThroughput. It provides insights into how changes in one metric affect the others in a stable system​​.

Little's Law is used to understand and manage flow within a system but isnot a forecasting tool for output or future performance. It assumes a stable and predictable system where the input and output rates are consistent.

Why Not True?

Forecasting requires variability, historical data, and often different statistical models. While Little's Law supports system predictability and capacity planning, it does not directly project future Scrum Team outputs or delivery dates​.

Thus, Little's Law helps teams analyze and optimize flow but is not used for forecasting.

By limiting WIP, Scrum Teams using Kanban create a more predictable flow, as it prevents the team from overcommitting and encourages them to finish work items before starting new ones. This aligns with Kanban’s principle of optimizing flow and Scrum’s iterative delivery approach. References: The Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams​​.

1.The Kanban Board Provides Transparency (Option A):

A Kanban board visualizes the flow of work, making it easy for the Scrum Team to see the status of work items, identify bottlenecks, and inspect and adapt their processes. This visual transparency is a fundamental aspect of both Scrum and Kanban and supports the empirical process control central to Scrum(

2.Kanban Helps Achieve Faster, Healthier Flow (Option D):

By focusing on optimizing flow (e.g., reducing Cycle Time and managing Work in Progress), Kanban helps Scrum Teams achieve a faster, more predictable flow of work. This improvement in flow brings more rapid transparency, allowing for more effective inspection and adaptation during Scrum events such as the Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective(

Option B (Kanban metrics are used in the Sprint Review to allow the Product Owner to inspect Throughput and adapt the Scrum Team's Cycle Time) is not necessarily accurate, as the Sprint Review focuses on the product increment and stakeholder feedback, not directly on Kanban metrics.

Option C (Kanban helps Scrum Teams deal with simple and complicated work where empiricism is not necessary) is incorrect because both Kanban and Scrum rely on empiricism (transparency, inspection, and adaptation) to deal with work complexity

Scrum Teams using Kanban can start to increase predictability by reducing the amount of work in progress (WIP) through WIP limits. This approach helps to limit the number of items being worked on at any given time, thus reducing multitasking and context switching. It allows the team to focus on completing a few items before starting new ones, which directly impacts the flow of work and helps to predict when items will be completed. By controlling the WIP, teams can achieve a steadyflow of work, improve cycle times, and make more reliable forecasts about future deliveries

Kanban is:

•A strategy for optimizing the flow of value through a process (Option B): Kanban focuses on improving flow and efficiency by using a visual pull system with limited WIP. This strategy helps teams balance demand against throughput and enhance productivity by limiting the number of work items in progress.

Options A (methodology for visualizing workflow) and C (set of practices additive to Scrum) are partially correct but do not fully capture Kanban's purpose. Kanban is not just a visualization tool (A), and while it can be additive to Scrum (C), it is fundamentally a flow-based strategy