Scaled Agile SAFe-SASM Exam Questions

Creating a buffer state between two states in a Kanban board can help regulate the flow of work and address the varying completion times.

Buffer State Purpose: Acts as a holding area to balance the flow between different stages of work, smoothing out variances in completion times.

Flow Regulation: Ensures that work can continue smoothly without bottlenecks or idle times.

Work In Progress (WIP) Limits: Helps maintain a steady flow by preventing too much work from accumulating in any one state.

This approach aligns with Lean principles of managing flow and reducing variability in processes.

SAFe Scrum Master Reference:

SAFe Advanced Scrum Master Training Material, Chapter on Kanban Systems.

Identify Impediments:

Purpose: The Scrum of Scrums meeting helps identify and address impediments that affect multiple teams. This ensures that these blockers are resolved quickly, allowing teams to continue their work without disruptions.

Process: Representatives from different teams come together to discuss challenges, share updates, and seek assistance in removing impediments.

Facilitate Cross-Team Collaboration:

Purpose: The meeting fosters collaboration among teams working on the same product or solution, ensuring that their efforts are aligned and integrated.

Process: Teams share their progress, dependencies, and upcoming work, enabling better coordination and synchronization across the Agile Release Train (ART).

SAFe Scrum Master Reference:

SAFe highlights the importance of the Scrum of Scrums meeting for coordinating efforts and solving cross-team issues, ensuring that the ART functions smoothly and efficiently.

An effective Agile Team focuses on delivering value by reliably deploying features that meet customer needs.

Value Delivery: The primary measure of success for an Agile team is the continuous delivery of valuable, working software.

Customer Focus: Teams work collaboratively to understand and deliver what is most valuable to customers.

Incremental Progress: Regularly delivering increments of the product that are potentially shippable ensures continuous feedback and improvement.

This characteristic emphasizes the Agile principle of delivering working software frequently, with a focus on customer value.

SAFe Scrum Master Reference:

SAFe Advanced Scrum Master Training Material, Chapter on Agile Teams.

One way a Scrum Master leads the team's efforts for relentless improvement is by helping teams become better problem solvers. This involves coaching and mentoring the team in effective problem-solving techniques, facilitating problem-solving workshops, and encouraging a mindset of continuous improvement. By empowering teams to identify and address issues autonomously, the Scrum Master supports the development of a high-performing, self-sufficient team.

SAFe Scrum Master Reference

SAFe 5.0 framework: role of the Scrum Master in promoting continuous improvement

SAFe Advanced Scrum Master learning materials: techniques for improving problem-solving skills within teams

Waterfalling the Iteration: The term 'waterfalling' in an Agile context refers to the anti-pattern where teams delay integration, testing, and other critical activities until the end of the iteration, mimicking the Waterfall model of sequential phases.

Agile Practice: In Agile, the goal is to continuously integrate and test stories throughout the iteration. This practice ensures that issues are identified and addressed early, and the product increment is always in a potentially shippable state.

Anti-pattern Explanation: Integrating and testing stories only on the last day of the iteration means the team is not practicing continuous integration. This can lead to hidden defects, reduced quality, and last-minute rushes that jeopardize the team's ability to meet commitments effectively.

SAFe Scrum Master Reference:

SAFe emphasizes continuous integration and regular testing as key practices to maintain quality and agility. Delaying these activities to the end of the iteration undermines these principles and can lead to significant issues.