DASSM Questions and Answers

The Disciplined Agile principles that best address the need to consider the bigger picture areEnterprise AwarenessandContext Counts.

Enterprise Awarenessensures that teams understand how their work fits within the broader organizational context, including alignment with corporate objectives, policies, and other teams. This principle encourages teams to think beyond their immediate tasks and consider the overall goals and constraints of the organization.

Context Countsemphasizes that the approach to work should be tailored to the specific situation and environment. It promotes the idea that different contexts require different strategies, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Both principles encourage a holistic view that considers the larger organizational and environmental factors influencing team decisions.

Disciplined Agile projects do not aim to maximize work-in-progress (WIP). Instead, they aim to minimize WIP to increase efficiency and reduce waste. By limiting WIP, teams can focus on completing tasks faster and delivering value more frequently. This approach is aligned with lean principles, which discourage multitasking and encourage teams to complete work items before starting new ones. Therefore, the statement that disciplined agile projects try to maximize WIP is false. The goal is to optimize the flow of work, not overload the team with too many concurrent tasks.

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The three categories of process blades in Disciplined Agile (DA) are:

Disciplined DevOps:Focuses on integrating development and operations to streamline workflows, reduce bottlenecks, and ensure continuous delivery and deployment.

Disciplined Agile IT:Encompasses practices that support IT functions, such as Enterprise Architecture, Data Management, IT Governance, and IT Operations.

Disciplined Project Management Office (PMO):Provides strategic alignment, governance, and guidance to ensure that projects and initiatives align with organizational goals and deliver value.

Disciplined Agile Delivery (C) is a process blade itself, not a category, and Disciplined Kanban (D) is not a recognized process blade in DA.

The concept ofLeanwas developed around eliminating three types of deviations or "wastes" (known as Muda, Mura, and Muri) that result in inefficient allocation ofresources. These deviations are:

Muda (Waste):Activities that do not add value to the customer.

Mura (Variability):Irregularities in production that cause delays, excess inventory, and inefficiencies.

Muri (Overburden):Overloading resources, whether human or mechanical, leading to errors, fatigue, and breakdowns.

Lean aims to optimize the use of resources by reducing waste, ensuring consistency, and avoiding overburdening. Options B (Meetings), C (Deadlines), and D (Data) do not align with the Lean philosophy's primary focus on resource efficiency.

References:

"Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation," James P. Womack & Daniel T. Jones.

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

The Kaizen feedback loop, which is an important concept in Lean and Agile practices, can be summarized as "Plan, Do, Study, Act" (PDSA). This cycle is fundamental to continuous improvement (Kaizen) and is used to iteratively improve processes and products. "Plan" involves identifying a goal or a change to implement; "Do" means implementing the change; "Study" refers to analyzing the results and understanding the impact of the change; and "Act" is about making necessary adjustments or standardizing the change if it is successful. Options A, B, and C do not accurately reflect the PDSA cycle as recognized in Disciplined Agile and Lean methodologies.

A disadvantage of having afeature team(as opposed to component teams) is thetemptation to build everything from scratch. Feature teams are cross-functional teams that handle all aspects of delivering a customer-centric feature from end to end. This can sometimes lead to duplication of effort or reinventing existing components instead of reusing them, especially if the team lacks visibility or understanding of existing solutions.

Options A, B, and C are actually advantages of feature teams: they deliver complete features, reduce hand-offs, and require cross-functional skills.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

The first step in deciding the team's way of working (WoW) in Disciplined Agile is toanalyze the context. Understanding the context includes assessing the team's current situation, the organization's culture, available skills, tools, stakeholder expectations, and project goals. This analysis helps determine which practices, tools, and techniques are most appropriate for the team’s unique environment. Based on this understanding, the team can make informed decisions on their WoW.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

Performingsystem integration testingmore frequently helps identify integration issues early, reducing the cost and time associated with fixing problems discovered later in the development cycle. Continuous integration testing is a core practice in Agile and Disciplined Agile that ensures changes are regularly validated, promoting a smoother integration process. Conducting integration tests more often allows the team to catch defects early and maintain a stable and reliable build.

Options B (adding team members) and C (testing only at the end) are not best practices as they do not address the root cause of the problem. Option D (finding a way to do less integration testing) contradicts Agile principles, which emphasize frequent testing.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

It is false to say that Disciplined Agile (DA) roles cover all possible roles in an organization. DA defines a set of primary roles (such as Team Lead, Product Owner, and Architecture Owner) and supporting roles for agile delivery teams. However, it does not prescribe all roles that might exist in an organization, such as executive leadership or specialized departments outside the agile delivery context.

The Control process blade in Disciplined Agile (DA) is responsible for ensuring regulatory compliance. This includes establishing controls, standards, and governance practices to ensure that the organization's activities meet legal, regulatory, and policy requirements. The Control blade works closely with other process blades such as Finance, Procurement, and IT to maintain compliance across all areas of the organization.

In the Disciplined Agile (DA) framework, the transition from the Construction phase to the Transition phase in a project is marked by reaching the milestone of "Sufficient functionality." This milestone indicates that the team has built enough functionality to justify moving into the Transition phase, where the focus shifts from developing the product to deploying it into production. The term "sufficient functionality" aligns with the DA's principles that ensure the solution is viable and meets the stakeholders' needs at a basic level before moving to production deployment and further refinement. Other options like "Production ready" or "Proven architecture" may occur before or after reaching this specific milestone, but "Sufficient functionality" is the key indicator for moving into the Transition phase.

Disciplined Agile (DA) describes four views that provide a comprehensive understanding of how to apply Agile and Lean strategies across an organization. One of these views is theMindset.

TheMindsetview refers to the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that are foundational to successful agile practices within an organization. DA Mindset includes principles, promises, and guidelines that help teams understand how to make agile approaches work effectively in their specificcontext. It encompasses core values such as delighting customers, being pragmatic, and optimizing flow across the entire value stream, as well as fostering a culture of learning and adapting.

By focusing on theMindsetview, DA ensures that everyone in the organization—from team members to senior leaders—aligns with these shared principles and values, which is crucial for achieving sustainable agility and continuous improvement.

The other views in DA are thePeopleview (understanding roles and responsibilities), theFlowview (focusing on end-to-end value delivery), and thePracticesview (choosing appropriate agile practices and processes).

The decision to keep a single Scrum team of 12 members, despite the increase in size, reflects the Disciplined Agile principle ofbeing pragmatic. This principle involves making context-sensitive decisions that balance competing priorities. In this case, although Scrum recommends smaller team sizes (ideally 10 or fewer), the team prioritized cohesiveness and delivery over strict adherence to the guideline. By being pragmatic, they chose an approach that best suits their current context and promotes better collaboration and productivity, even if it meant working with a slightly larger team. This decision also demonstrates a balance between adhering to best practices and adapting to the unique needs and dynamics of the team.

Governance is indeed a critical aspect in Disciplined Agile (DA) projects. While it is true that many DA teams are self-organizing, governance provides oversight, ensures alignment with organizational goals, and helps mitigate risks. Disciplined Agile recognizes the importance of governance to maintain quality and compliance, manage risk, and deliver value. Therefore, "False" is the correct answer because governance remains a critical issue regardless of the self-organizing nature of the teams, ensuring that practices align with organizational policies and objectives.

In the Disciplined Agile (DA) toolkit, "process blades" represent different areas of an organization's processes that need to be addressed for effective agile implementation. The process blades are grouped into three primary categories:

Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD):This category focuses on end-to-end delivery processes that bring a product or solution from idea to implementation, incorporating agile and lean approaches.

Disciplined DevOps:This category deals with practices that facilitate efficient development and operations, ensuring continuous delivery, integration, and deployment of software.

Disciplined Project Management Office (PMO):This process blade relates to the governance and oversight of agile initiatives, aligning them with organizational strategies and goals.

These categories provide a structured way to organize process-related activities and ensure a holistic approach to agile adoption, covering various facets from development to operations and governance.References:

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI, Scott Ambler & Mark Lines.

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

In Disciplined Agile,shared services teamsare not always based on specialization. While shared services teams often consist of specialists (e.g., security experts, database administrators), they can also be cross-functional teams that provide support across different disciplines. The key is that these teams provide services to multiple delivery teams, regardless of whether they are composed entirely of specialists.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

In the context of the construction phase of a project, "Prove Architecture Early" is a relevant process goal. During this phase, it is critical to validate the chosen architecture to ensure that it will support the desired functionality and meet quality requirements. This goal focuses on reducing technical risks by building architectural spikes or prototypes to validate key architectural decisions. This helps the team confirm that the architecture is sound before investing heavily in development. Other options like "Explore Scope," "Develop Test Strategy," and "Form Team" are activities relevant to earlier phases (such as inception).

In Disciplined Agile, the daily huddle or daily stand-up is referred to as a "coordination meeting." The purpose of this meeting is to allow the team members to coordinate their work, identify any impediments, and align their activities to meet the team’s goals. This term emphasizes the focus on coordinating efforts rather than simply following a ritual. Unlike a "daily meeting" (A), "Scrum meeting" (C), or "Sprint review" (D), the coordination meeting is specifically about the daily alignment and coordination, not about reviewing or planning the work in detail.

Transparency is a core practice in Disciplined Agile to ensure that all stakeholders, including team members and customers, have a clear understanding of the project's progress and any challenges faced. The reasons for practicing transparency include ensuring everyone knows what is happening (A), improving team morale (B), and meeting customer expectations (D). Delaying bad news to customers contradicts the principle of transparency. Hence, "C. It delays breaking bad news to customers" is not a reason that Disciplined Agile teams practice transparency.

The coordination meeting (often known as the Daily Stand-up or Scrum meeting in Agile practices) is crucial for keeping the team synchronized. It provides a regular opportunity for team members to share their progress, discuss any obstacles they face, and plan their activities for the day. This meeting ensures that everyone is aligned with the team's goals, helping to maintain momentum and quickly address any issues that might impede progress.

Options A, B, and C do not fully capture the core purpose of a coordination meeting. While A (providing a demo) might occur in a sprint review, it is not the focus of a daily coordination meeting. Option B (stakeholder observation) is not the primary intent, and Option C (reassessing the backlog) is typically part of a planning meeting, not the coordination meeting.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

The best way to eliminate waste in Disciplined Agile is to "eliminate delays in workflow and feedback." Lean principles focus on removing any non-value-added activities (waste) to improve efficiency. By minimizing delays, teams can ensure a smoother flow of work and faster feedback loops, which helps to identify and resolve issues quickly and reduces the time taken to deliver value to customers. While making sure each step is done as quickly as possible (A) or correctly(D) and ensuring people know their job (B) are important, they are not the primary method of eliminating waste according to Lean principles.

The primary risk addressed by thestakeholder vision milestoneisthat your primary stakeholders agree to your strategy. This milestone ensures alignment and consensus among key stakeholders regarding the project's overall vision, goals, and strategic approach. Achieving this agreement is critical to securing buy-in, support, and commitment from stakeholders, which helps to mitigate the risk of misalignment and conflicting expectations as the project progresses. Other risks, like architectural strategy viability, business case viability, or a realistic release plan, are addressed by other specific milestones or checkpoints in the Disciplined Agile framework.

The principle "Choice is good" in Disciplined Agile does not mean that a team must present multiple products to customers and let them choose. Rather, it emphasizes the importance of providing teams with choices regarding the practices and strategies they adopt, tailored to their unique context. This principle allows teams to make informed decisions on their Way of Working(WoW), rather than being restricted to a prescribed set of processes. Thus, the correct answer is "False," as the principle focuses on flexibility and adaptability for the team, not on presenting multiple product options to customers.

Business Agility is the ability of an organization to adapt quickly and effectively to market and environmental changes, responding with innovative solutions and maintaining competitiveness. This concept involves a broader strategic capability beyond just implementing agile processes; it requires an organization-wide mindset of flexibility, responsiveness, and continuous improvement. Options A, B, and D reflect narrower or less comprehensive aspects that do not fully encompass the broader concept of Business Agility.

The Lean life-cycle model is based on a continuous flow of work. In Disciplined Agile, Lean focuses on minimizing waste, delivering value continuously, and optimizing the entire value stream. Unlike other models like Waterfall, which follow a sequential approach, or Agile models, which may focus on iterative increments, Lean emphasizes a smooth, steady flow of value to the customer. Continuous Delivery Agile also involves a continuous flow, but "Lean" specifically is the framework built around this concept. Therefore, "D. Lean" is the correct answer.

For an Agile or Lean project team, the aim of theConstruction phaseis to develop aconsumable solutionin a collaborative and incremental manner. This phase focuses on delivering working increments of the product that can be consumed by end users or stakeholders. The approach is highly iterative and involves continuous feedback, allowing the team to make frequent adjustments to align with customer needs and expectations. Options B, C, and D do not fully capture the essence of delivering a solution that is ready to be consumed and used by customers.

The process goal most likely to offer potential techniques to address concerns that the development team does not understand the overall business process isExplore Scope. In Disciplined Agile, "Explore Scope" focuses on defining and understanding the scope of the project, including the business processes that are relevant to the product being developed. It involves techniques such as creating process maps, using business process modeling, or conducting domain workshops to help the team understand the overall business context and requirements. This ensures that the development team has a comprehensive understanding of the customer requirements and the broader business environment in which the product will be used.

In Disciplined Agile, process goals are not meant to prescribe how to achieve a particular objective but rather to provide guidance and flexibility. They offer a range of potential options and strategies that a team can choose from to achieve their objectives, allowing the team to tailor its approach based on its specific context and needs. Thus, the correct answer is "False," as process goals are intended to guide rather than dictate a specific way of achieving objectives.

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The main role of the team lead (which can be referred to as a Scrum Master, Team Coach, or Team Lead in Disciplined Agile) is to ensure that the team is building the product in the right way. This involves facilitating the team's process, removing impediments, and coaching them to adopt and optimize Agile practices, ensuring quality and efficiency in delivery. The team lead does not dictate what product to build (which is the role of the Product Owner), nor is their primary role to build the product themselves or coordinate building efforts in a command-and-control manner. Instead, they focus on enabling and empowering the team to deliver high-quality work in alignment with Agile principles.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

The primary advantage of working in an Agile team, according to the PMI Disciplined Agile framework, is the ability to quickly adapt to changing customer needs (Option C). Agile teams emphasize flexibility, responsiveness, and continuous improvement, enabling them to respond effectively to feedback and evolving requirements. Options A, B, and D do not reflect the core value proposition of Agile. While agile teams may aim for timely delivery, specialization, andreduced customer intervention, their core strength lies in adaptability and responsiveness to change, ensuring that the product remains aligned with customer needs.

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The process goal "Improve Quality" is most likely to offer potential techniques for addressing technical debt. Disciplined Agile encourages teams to continuously improve the quality of their deliverables, and one of the key aspects of improving quality is to manage and reduce technicaldebt. Techniques under this process goal include refactoring, applying test automation, and implementing continuous integration practices, all of which help address existing technical debt in a structured manner.

The lean life-cycle in Disciplined Agile does not require timeboxed iterations. Instead, it emphasizes continuous flow, where work items are processed individually through the value stream without the strict confines of iteration cycles. This approach allows for a more flexible and responsive process, which aligns with lean principles of minimizing waste and optimizing flow. Thus, the statement is true as it reflects the flexibility inherent in the lean life-cycle approach.

While "Delight customers" is an important goal in agile and Disciplined Agile (DA) practices, it is not listed as one of the key principles to keep in mind when choosing and evolving a team’s Way of Working (WoW). The key principles are "Pragmatism" (A), "Choice is good" (C), and "Context counts" (D). These principles emphasize practical decision-making, recognizing that different situations require different approaches (choice is good), and tailoring the WoW to the specific context.

In Disciplined Agile, teams avoid spending a considerable amount of time at the beginning to lock down the architecture and design of the product. Instead, DA promotes an iterative and incremental approach, where architecture and design evolve as the team gains more understanding of the project requirements and constraints. This adaptive approach reduces the risks associated with upfront design and supports flexibility and responsiveness to change. Therefore, the correct answer is "False" because DA does not advocate for a long, upfront architecture and design phase.

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Yes: In a complex adaptive system, understanding the individual parts does not automatically convey a perfect understanding of the whole system's behavior. Complex adaptive systems, such as those found in Agile development environments, are characterized by intricate interdependencies and dynamic interactions among components. The behavior of the system as a whole emerges from these interactions, and cannot be fully predicted or understood solely by analyzing the individual parts. This is why Disciplined Agile encourages looking at the bigger picture and understanding how different elements influence each other within the larger organizational context.

It istruethat, in the initial stages, a team's way of working (WoW) may be determined more by enterprise guidelines or the recommendations of a coach. This is acceptable in Disciplined Agile, especially when teams are new to agile practices and need direction. Over time, however, teams are expected to evolve and refine their WoW based on their unique context, learning from experience, and continuous improvement.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

The "Program" life-cycle model is the most suitable for running large product development efforts requiring a team-of-teams approach. The Program life cycle in Disciplined Agile (DA) is specifically designed to handle complex projects that require multiple teams working together in a coordinated manner. It focuses on collaboration, synchronization, and scaling across teams to deliver a large-scale solution effectively. Other options like Exploratory (A), Kanban (C), Agile (D), Scrum (E), and Lean (F) do not specifically address the need for coordinating multiple teams on a large product development effort.

In Disciplined Agile, it is the team members who decide how much work is moved from the product backlog to the iteration backlog. This decision is based on the team's capacity, velocity, and understanding of the complexity and size of the work items. While the Product Owner (B) prioritizes the product backlog, it is up to the team to determine how much of that work can be realistically completed within an iteration. Stakeholders (C), the team manager (D), or the project manager (E) do not make this decision.

The final step in the "Choose your WoW" (Way of Working) process isGuided Continuous Improvement. This step emphasizes the need for teams to continually assess and refine their way of working based on outcomes, feedback, and learning. The focus is on applying a structured approach to improvement, where teams iteratively experiment with new practices and techniques and adapt based on what works best in their context.

Options B (Make some choices), C (Connect the dots), and D (Select the best-fit life-cycle) are earlier steps in the process, which involve defining the team's initial way of working.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

An important part of improving the Way of Working (WoW) for a team is to continuously evolve and adapt processes, tools, and practices to better fit the team's needs and context. "Stick to a method once you discover it" contradicts the Disciplined Agile principle of continuous improvement. Instead, teams are encouraged to always try to get better (C), do the best they can (A), and start where they are (D) while continuously exploring new and more effective ways of working. Thus, Option B is not an important part of improving the WoW.

In the context of Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), the three common phases across project life cycles are Inception, Construction, and Transition. "Inception" involves initial planning and setup; "Construction" is where the product or solution is developed iteratively; and "Transition" focuses on deploying the solution to the stakeholders or end users. Options A (Inspiration) and D (Modulation) are not standard phases in the DA or agile frameworks.

The principle of "Delight customers" in the Disciplined Agile framework encourages teams to exceed customer expectations rather than just meet them. This approach aims to provide exceptional value and experiences that surprise and please customers, thereby fostering loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. Simply meeting expectations is not sufficient to truly "delight" customers; therefore, the statement that delighting customers means just about meeting their expectations is false.

The FLOW view in Disciplined Agile does not mean that there are no starts and stops in any DA project. Rather, it emphasizes optimizing the flow of work through the system by minimizing delays, reducing bottlenecks, and removing unnecessary handoffs. However, starts and stops may still exist due to various factors such as dependencies, changing priorities, or external constraints.

The Architecture Owner is a primary role on a Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) team. This role is responsible for guiding the team in making architectural decisions and ensuring the architectural integrity of the solution. The Architecture Owner works closely with the team to balance the need for emergent design and intentional architecture. The other options (Domain Expert, Specialist, and Integrator) are roles that can exist on an agile team but are not primary roles defined within the DAD framework.

The purpose of an iteration retrospective in Disciplined Agile (DA) is to reflect on the recent iteration and identify areas of improvement, successes, and challenges. The retrospective allows the team to transfer knowledge, insights, and process improvements to subsequent iterations, fostering continuous improvement. This helps the team become more effective and efficient over time.

Option B relates to a daily stand-up, Option C involves iteration planning, and Option D pertains to an iteration review or demo, not a retrospective.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

In the Disciplined Agile (DA) framework, the role of "Team Member" is primarily responsible for building the product right. Team members, who possess the necessary skills and expertise, work collaboratively to develop, test, and deliver the solution according to the agreed-upon requirements and standards. While the Team Lead (B) facilitates the process and the Product Owner (C) ensures the right product is being built by prioritizing features and managing the backlog, it is the Team Members who actually perform the development work. The Architecture Owner (D) ensures the architectural integrity of the solution but is not solely responsible for building the product itself.

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In the context of the Disciplined Agile (DA) framework, if a team is about to begin work on a project where releases are expected only every six months or so, and the team does not have an agile mindset or desire to release often, the "Traditional" lifecycle is most appropriate. The Traditional lifecycle, also known as a predictive or waterfall lifecycle, is suitable for teams or projects that require extensive planning and where changes are infrequent or less welcome. This approach matches well with a mindset that is not inclined towards frequent releases or iterative development, allowing for longer, planned intervals between releases, which aligns with the six-month release cadence described in the scenario.

The primary purpose of creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is toestablish the validity of a hypothesisby testing a prototype with real customers. In Disciplined Agile, an MVP is a minimal version of a product designed to test assumptions and learn about market needs with the least amount of effort and resources. By putting a prototype in front of customers, teams can validate or invalidate their hypotheses, gather user feedback, and make informed decisions on future development. This aligns with the lean and agile principle of delivering value quickly and efficiently while minimizing waste. Other options, like committing to continuous improvement or creating a marketable product, are secondary to the core purpose of hypothesis validation through MVPs.

In the PMI Disciplined Agile framework, "Governance" is a process blade that focuses on providing oversight and direction to ensure that the organization aligns with its objectives and complies with relevant policies and standards. A senior management team monitoring work across various areas, providing guidance, and resolving escalated issues is a clear example of governance. The purpose of governance is to ensure that teams are operating effectively and efficiently, aligned with organizational goals, and that risks are managed appropriately. Portfolio management (Option A) deals with investment decisions and balancing the portfolio, while the other options (Business Operations, Finance, Product Management) focus on different aspects of the organization.

The architecture owner in Disciplined Agile has several key responsibilities: working with the product owner to define the technical roadmap (A), mentoring and coaching the team on technical practices (B), working to improve the supportability of the product (C), and evolving the design and architecture for the product (E). However, evaluating team members' performance and administering rewards (D) is not within the scope of the architecture owner’s responsibilities. This task typically falls under the purview of people managers or human resources.

According to the I.N.V.E.S.T. mnemonic, a good user story should be:

Independent:Can be developed and delivered without dependencies on other stories.

Negotiable:Flexible in details and open to discussion.

Valuable:Must deliver value to the customer or end-user.

Estimable:Can be estimated to gauge effort required.

Small:Sized appropriately to be completed within an iteration.

Testable:Should have clear criteria to determine whether the story is complete.

"Valuable" is a key characteristic that ensures the user story contributes to the product's value. Options A (Incremental), C (Tangible), and D (Satisfactory) are not part of the I.N.V.E.S.T. mnemonic.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.

In Disciplined Agile (DA), the "Specialist" is considered a supporting role. Specialists possess expertise in specific areas (e.g., security, database management) and are brought in as needed to support the primary delivery team. The supporting roles are not part of the core team but contribute specialized skills and knowledge when required.

Options A (Stakeholder), B (Team Lead), and D (Architecture Owner) are not supporting roles. Stakeholders represent end-users or business interests, while Team Leads and Architecture Owners are considered primary roles within a DA team.

References:

PMI’s Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) curriculum materials.

"Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW)", PMI.