Agile & Hybrid Project Methods Flashcards

What is the key difference between 'incremental' and 'iterative' delivery in Agile?

Answer: Incremental adds new pieces; iterative refines existing pieces through repeated cycles

Incremental delivery adds functionality in layers, while iterative delivery repeatedly revisits and refines work based on feedback.

A project sponsor insists on a fixed price contract for an Agile project with undefined scope. What is the BEST advice from the project manager?

Answer: Recommend a fixed-price-per-sprint or capped time-and-materials contract to balance flexibility and cost certainty

Agile's evolving scope makes traditional fixed-price contracts risky; per-sprint pricing or capped T&M preserves Agile flexibility while giving cost boundaries.

In the Lean-Agile mindset, what does 'eliminating waste' (Muda) specifically refer to in a software development context?

Answer: Removing activities that consume resources without adding customer value

Lean's waste elimination targets non-value-adding activities such as unnecessary handoffs, waiting, over-engineering, and unused features.

During Sprint Review, a stakeholder requests a significant new feature not in the current product backlog. What is the correct Scrum response?

Answer: Have the Product Owner add it to the Product Backlog for prioritization

New requests go to the Product Backlog where the Product Owner prioritizes them relative to existing items for future sprints.

Which Agile concept describes a small, cross-functional team that can independently deliver end-to-end value without depending on other teams?

Answer: Feature team

A feature team has all skills needed (design, develop, test) to deliver complete customer-facing features end-to-end without external dependencies.

In a hybrid project, the waterfall phase produces a fixed architecture document before the Agile phase begins. What risk does this create?

Answer: Agile teams may discover technical constraints requiring architecture changes, conflicting with the locked document

Freezing architecture early reduces the adaptability Agile relies on; discoveries during sprints may be blocked by architectural decisions already committed.

What is 'technical debt' in Agile, and how should it be managed?

Answer: Shortcuts or suboptimal code that must be refactored later; managed by allocating backlog capacity to address it

Technical debt is the accumulated cost of expedient coding decisions; teams manage it by dedicating a portion of each sprint to refactoring and cleanup.