Scrum SAFe-SASM SAFe Advanced Scrum Master (SASM) Exam Practice Test

Cadence:Refers to a regular, predictable schedule that sets the rhythm for the team or ART (Agile Release Train) activities. It helps in aligning planning, development, and delivery cycles.

Synchronization:Ensures that multiple teams or ARTs work together in harmony, aligning their schedules, dependencies, and delivery efforts.

Benefit Explanation:Having both cadence and synchronization means that all teams within the ART are working in a coordinated manner, iterating together. This alignment ensures that dependencies are managed, integration happens regularly, and the system evolves cohesively.

SAFe Scrum Master References:

SAFe promotes cadence and synchronization to manage complex dependencies and ensure that all parts of the system evolve together, enhancing overall system integrity and quality.

Inspect and Adapt (I&A) events occur at both the Team Level and the Value Stream Level in SAFe. At the Team Level, these events allow individual Agile teams to reflect on their performance, identify areas for improvement, and plan actions for the next iteration. At the Value Stream Level, I&A events involve multiple teams working within a Value Stream to review progress, identify systemic issues, and make improvements that benefit the entire Value Stream. These levels ensure that continuous improvement practices are applied both locally within teams and more broadly across the organization.

SAFe Scrum Master References

SAFe 5.0 framework: levels of Inspect and Adapt events

SAFe Principles: continuous improvement at multiple levels of the organization

Centralized decision-making is appropriate in scenarios where consolidating decisions can lead to significant economies of scale, which involves:

Economies of Scale:These are cost advantages reaped by companies when production becomes efficient. This can happen through increased production, lower costs per unit, bulk purchasing, and centralized processes.

Consistency and Control:Centralized decisions ensure consistency across large-scale operations and can help in maintaining standards and controls, reducing duplication of effort, and leveraging bulk purchasing power.

In contrast, decentralized decision-making is more suitable for decisions requiring specific local context or those that need to be made frequently and swiftly.

SAFe Scrum Master References:

SAFe Advanced Scrum Master Training Material, Chapter on Decision-Making Frameworks​​.

Release Train Engineer (RTE):

Role:The RTE is a servant leader and coach for the Agile Release Train (ART). They facilitate ART events and processes, assist teams in delivering value, and help manage risks and dependencies.

Interaction with Scrum Master:

Scrum Masters frequently collaborate with the RTE to coordinate cross-team activities and dependencies.

They work together during events like PI Planning, Scrum of Scrums, and Inspect & Adapt (I&A) workshops to ensure alignment and continuous improvement.

The RTE provides support and guidance to Scrum Masters, helping them resolve impediments that affect the ART.

Product Owner (PO):

Role:The Product Owner is responsible for defining and prioritizing the team backlog, ensuring that the team is working on the most valuable tasks.

Interaction with Scrum Master:

Scrum Masters work closely with Product Owners to facilitate effective backlog refinement sessions, ensuring that the backlog items are well-understood and ready for iteration planning.

They support the Product Owner in maintaining a clear and prioritized backlog, helping to communicate the vision and goals to the team.

During iteration planning and reviews, Scrum Masters assist Product Owners in engaging with the team and stakeholders, ensuring that feedback is collected and incorporated.

SAFe Scrum Master References:

Release Train Engineer:

SAFe materials outline the critical role of the RTE in coordinating the ART and supporting Scrum Masters in their efforts to remove impediments and ensure smooth execution of plans.

Scrum Open: Discusses the collaborative relationship between Scrum Masters and RTEs in facilitating ART events and managing dependencies​​.

Product Owner:

The SAFe framework emphasizes the importance of the Scrum Master-Product Owner partnership in driving the delivery of value and maintaining a healthy backlog.

Product Owner Open: Provides insights into how Scrum Masters and Product Owners work together to align on priorities and ensure the team is focused on the right tasks​​.

One of the key responsibilities of a Scrum Master is to help the team stay focused on their Iteration goals. This involves removing any obstacles or impediments that may hinder their progress. By eliminating impediments, the Scrum Master ensures that the team can work more efficiently and effectively, thereby maintaining their focus on achieving the goals set for the iteration.

Steps to eliminate impediments include:

Regularly communicating with the team to identify any obstacles they are facing.

Collaborating with stakeholders and other teams to resolve issues quickly.

Ensuring that any identified impediments are documented and tracked until they are resolved.

Facilitating problem-solving sessions and using techniques such as root cause analysis to address underlying issues.

By proactively removing these barriers, the Scrum Master supports the team in maintaining a steady and uninterrupted workflow, which is crucial for meeting iteration goals.

SAFe Scrum Master References

SAFe Scrum Master Role and Responsibilities

The 2020 Scrum Guide:Scrum Guide 2020

Principles of Lean-Agile Leadership in SAFe: focusing on continuous improvement and supporting the team in overcoming obstacles.

Two specific anti-patterns likely present within the team's retrospectives are:

The team identifies improvements but is not allowed to address them (B): This anti-pattern occurs when the team discusses potential improvements but lacks the authority or support to implement them. This leads to frustration and a sense of futility, as the team feels their efforts in retrospectives do not result in meaningful change.

The team does not identify and commit to improvement items for how they do their work (C): Effective retrospectives should result in actionable items that the team commits to addressing in the next iteration. If the team fails to identify and commit to these improvements, the retrospective becomes an empty ritual without real impact on the team's performance or processes.

SAFe Scrum Master References

SAFe Principles: continuous improvement and the importance of retrospectives

SAFe 5.0 framework: best practices for effective retrospectives

Agile Team Composition:According to SAFe, an Agile Team is composed of cross-functional members who work together to deliver value. The team includes:

Scrum Master:Facilitates the team’s processes, helps remove impediments, and supports continuous improvement.

Product Owner:Represents the customer and stakeholders, prioritizes the backlog, and ensures the team is working on the most valuable items.

Developers:The team members who design, build, and test the product.

Key Role:The Product Owner is essential to the Agile Team as they provide the vision, set priorities, and ensure that the team is delivering value that aligns with the customer and business needs.

SAFe Scrum Master References:

The SAFe framework emphasizes the critical role of the Product Owner within the Agile Team, ensuring alignment and effective backlog management.

Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD):A CFD is a visual tool used in Kanban and Scrum to show the progress of work items through different stages of the workflow over time.

Arrival and Departure Curves:These curves represent the work items entering (arrival) and leaving (departure) the system.

Growing Distance:If the distance between the arrival and departure curves on the CFD is growing apart, it indicates that work items are taking longer to move through the system.

Lead Time:This term refers to the total time from when a work item is created until it is completed. An increasing distance between the curves means that work items are spending more time in the system, thus increasing the lead time.

SAFe Scrum Master References:

SAFe materials on flow metrics and Kanban principles highlight the importance of monitoring lead time and using CFDs to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the workflow.

The decision to implement pair programming in future iterations is a team-level improvement action that stems from reflecting on their current processes and identifying areas for enhancement. This is best captured during the team's retrospective:

Retrospective Purpose:The retrospective is a regular meeting where the team reflects on what went well, what didn’t, and what could be improved.

Action Items:Decisions and action items, such as adopting pair programming, are documented in the retrospective notes to ensure they are followed up in future iterations.

Continuous Improvement:Capturing this in the retrospective notes ensures the team is committed to continuous improvement and has a clear record of their decisions and plans for process enhancements.

SAFe Scrum Master References:

SAFe Advanced Scrum Master Training Material, Chapter on Team Retrospectives​​.

Integration points in agile development serve as critical junctures where progress is reviewed, and decisions can be made on whether to continue on the current path or pivot based on new information.

Integration Points:Regular integration points help in verifying progress, ensuring alignment with objectives, and assessing whether the current approach is delivering the desired outcomes.

Pivot or Persevere:These points provide the opportunity to pivot if necessary. Teams can change their course of action based on feedback, new insights, or changing requirements, ensuring that the final product meets the needs effectively.

Risk Mitigation:Regular integration reduces the risk of late discovery of issues and ensures that the product evolves in a way that adds value continuously.

SAFe Scrum Master References:

SAFe Advanced Scrum Master Training Material, Chapter on Iteration Execution​​.

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 References:

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 References:

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

Organizing teams around Features can significantly reduce dependencies between teams. When teams are aligned to deliver specific features, they have more autonomy and can work more independently, without needing to wait for other teams to complete their parts. This alignment minimizes coordination and dependency management overhead, enabling faster and more efficient delivery. It also allows teams to focus on delivering end-to-end functionality, which enhances the quality and coherence of the product.

SAFe Scrum Master References

SAFe 5.0 framework: principles of organizing teams around features to reduce dependencies

SAFe Agile Teams: benefits of feature-based team organization

Continuous Integration (CI) is a practice where code changes are automatically built, tested, and merged into a shared repository multiple times a day. The main purpose of CI is to ensure that the codebase is always in a state that could be potentially deployable. This means that any integration issues are identified and addressed as soon as possible, reducing the chances of bugs slipping into production.

Frequent Integration:Developers frequently integrate their code changes into the main repository, often several times a day.

Automated Builds:Each integration is verified by an automated build to detect integration errors as quickly as possible.

Automated Testing:Along with building, automated tests are run to ensure new changes do not break existing functionality.

Feedback Loop:Quick feedback is provided to the development team, allowing them to fix issues promptly.

By maintaining a potentially deployable codebase, teams can deliver high-quality software more rapidly and with greater confidence.

SAFe Scrum Master References:

SAFe Advanced Scrum Master Training Material, Chapter on Continuous Integration​​.

Refactoring code involves making small, incremental changes to the internal structure of the code without altering its external behavior. The goal of refactoring is to improve code readability, maintainability, and performance while ensuring that the functionality remains unchanged. This practice helps in reducing technical debt, enhancing the quality of the codebase, and making future changes easier and less error-prone.

SAFe Scrum Master References

SAFe Agile Principles: continuous improvement and refactoring

SAFe 5.0 framework: best practices for maintaining high-quality code through refactoring

To transform unpredictable events into predictable events (A): Cadence creates a regular, reliable schedule for events, which helps in managing and mitigating variability. This predictability allows teams to plan and execute their work more effectively, reducing the uncertainty of unforeseen events.

To synchronize planning for multiple teams and ARTs (C): Cadence helps align the planning cycles of multiple teams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs), ensuring that everyone works in a coordinated manner. This synchronization is critical for integrated, cross-team activities and for maintaining a cohesive workflow across the organization.

SAFe Scrum Master References

SAFe Principles: the importance of cadence and synchronization

SAFe 5.0 framework: benefits of applying cadence in Agile teams

Iteration Planning:

Purpose:Iteration Planning is a crucial event where the team collaborates to determine what will be delivered in the upcoming iteration and how the work will be accomplished. The entire team, including the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Developers, come together to plan the iteration's work.

Process:

The Product Owner presents the prioritized backlog items to the team.

The team discusses each item, clarifies any ambiguities, and breaks down the items into tasks.

The team estimates the effort required for each task and commits to what they believe can be achieved in the iteration.

Outcome:A detailed iteration plan that includes the selected backlog items and a clear understanding of the tasks and responsibilities for each team member.

Backlog Refinement:

Purpose:Backlog Refinement (also known as Grooming) is an ongoing process where the team and the Product Owner collaborate to review and update thebacklog. This ensures that the backlog is in good shape for future iteration planning.

Process:

The team reviews the items in the backlog to ensure they are well understood and ready for future iterations.

The Product Owner provides context and clarifications for each backlog item.

The team discusses the requirements, refines the acceptance criteria, and estimates the effort required for each item.

The backlog items are prioritized based on their value and urgency.

Outcome:A well-maintained and prioritized backlog that facilitates effective and efficient iteration planning.

SAFe Scrum Master References:

Iteration Planning:

SAFe Advanced Scrum Master training materials emphasize the importance of Iteration Planning as a key event for team collaboration, ensuring everyone is aligned on the iteration goals and tasks.

2020 Scrum Guide: The Iteration Planning section outlines the collaborative nature of this event and its role in setting the stage for successful iterations​​.

Backlog Refinement:

In the SAFe framework, Backlog Refinement is highlighted as an essential activity to maintain a healthy backlog, allowing the team to prepare for future iterations effectively.

Scrum Open: This document discusses the significance of Backlog Refinement in fostering team collaboration and ensuring the backlog is well-groomed and ready for planning​​.

Large Solution Level in SAFe:This level is designed for enterprises where multiple Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and suppliers collaborate to build and deploy complex solutions that require coordination beyond a single ART.

Purpose:The Large Solution level provides the practices, roles, and artifacts necessary to coordinate the efforts of multiple ARTs:

Solution Train:A structure that manages the delivery of large solutions, aligning the efforts of multiple ARTs.

Solution Management and Solution Architect/Engineer:Roles responsible for defining the solution’s vision, roadmap, and architecture.

Solution Backlog and Solution Kanban:Tools to manage and prioritize work across multiple ARTs.

Coordination:The primary focus is on ensuring that all ARTs are aligned, integrated, and delivering cohesive, high-quality solutions.

SAFe Scrum Master References:

The SAFe framework details the Large Solution level and its role in coordinating the efforts of multiple ARTs to deliver complex, enterprise-level solutions.