Scaled Agile SAFe-Agilist SAFe Agilist - Leading SAFe (SA)(5.1.1) Exam Practice Test

Guiding investments by horizon is the Lean budget guardrail that helps ensure the appropriate allocation of budgets to balance near-term opportunities with long-term strategy and growth. A Lean budget guardrail is a policy or guideline that governs how the portfolio operates within the Lean budgeting system. Guiding investments by horizon means allocating budgets across three time horizons: Horizon 1 (current value streams), Horizon 2 (emerging opportunities), and Horizon 3 (exploration and innovation). This helps the portfolio balance the exploitation of existing markets with the exploration of new ones, and foster a culture of experimentation and learning. References: Lean Portfolio Management, Traditional and Lean Budgeting Approaches

SWOT and TOWS are used to brainstorm potential portfolio future states. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. SWOT analysis is a tool that helps identify the internal and external factors that affect the portfolio’s performance and position in the market. TOWS is an acronym for Threats, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Strengths. TOWS analysis is a tool that helps generate strategic alternatives based on the SWOT factors. SWOT and TOWS help create a portfolio vision that reflects the desired future state of the portfolio. References: SAFe Portfolio, Portfolio Canvas

The business owner is the person who decides the team PI objective business value scoring after negotiation. The business owner is a key stakeholder who has the primary business and technical responsibility for governance, compliance, and return on investment (ROI) for a specific value stream. The business owner participates in the PI planning event and assigns business value points to each team PI objective based on their alignment with the program vision and objectives. The business owner also reviews and approves the final plan and value scores after the team and program risks are resolved. References: PI Planning, Business Owners

The next step for an epic with a completed Lean business case in the analyzing step of the Portfolio Kanban is to move it to the ready state if it receives a ‘go’ decision from Lean Portfolio Management. The analyzing step is where the epic hypothesis statement and the Lean business case are developed and validated. The Lean business case provides the economic justification, assumptions, risks, and potential benefits of the epic. The Lean Portfolio Management is the authority that reviews and approves the Lean business case and decides whether to fund and implement the epic or not. If the epic receives a ‘go’ decision, it moves to the ready state, where it waits for implementation capacity. If the epic receives a ‘no go’ decision, it is either deferred or cancelled. References: Portfolio Kanban, Lean Portfolio Management

Empathy maps are a tool associated with design thinking that help to understand the user’s needs, goals, pain points, and emotions. Empathy maps are visual representations of what the user thinks, feels, sees, hears, says, and does in relation to a problem or a solution. Empathy maps help to create a shared understanding of the user among the team and stakeholders, and to generate insights for designing user-centric solutions. Empathy maps can be created based on user research, interviews, observations, or personas123.

References: 1: Design Thinking - Scaled Agile Framework 2: TEN TOOLS FOR DESIGN THINKING - culturepartnership.eu 3: The Most Complete Design Thinking Tools & Resource Collections - Mockplus

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of Apply SAFe Principles, when basing decisions on economics, lead time, product cost, value, and development expense are used to:

• Evaluate the economic impact of different design alternatives
• Optimize the flow of value delivery by minimizing delays and waste
• Maximize the return on investment by delivering the most valuable features first
• Balance the tradeoffs between speed, quality, and cost

• Product Owner sync (PO sync) is a key event within the Agile Release Train (ART) that aligns Product Owners and other stakeholders to ensure they are working towards a common vision and goals.
• It facilitates collaboration, knowledge sharing, and decision-making, ultimately leading to better outcomes for the ART.

References:

• SAFe® 6.0 Reference Guide: "The Product Owner sync is a regular meeting of all Product Owners and other stakeholders involved in the ART to create alignment and foster collaboration." (Section 4.3.4)
• SAFe® 6.0 Implementation Roadmap: "The Product Owner sync is an essential event for ensuring that all Product Owners are working together effectively and efficiently." (Section 5.3.5)

Deploy, verify, monitor, and respond are all activities of Continuous Deployment. Continuous Deployment is one of the elements of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline, which is a key enabler of Agile Product Delivery. Continuous Deployment means automatically releasing every update to a production environment or a staging environment that is identical to production. Continuous Deployment involves four activities: deploy (releasing the solution to the target environment); verify (ensuring that the solution meets the quality standards and acceptance criteria); monitor (collecting feedback and data on the solution performance and usage); and respond (taking actions to improve or fix the solution based on the feedback and data). References: Agile Product Delivery, Continuous Delivery Pipeline, Continuous Deployment

Features are found on an ART planning board. An ART planning board is a tool that helps teams visualize and manage the work items for an Agile Release Train (ART). An ART is a long-lived team of Agile teams that delivers value in a regular cadence. Features are high-level descriptions of system behaviors that provide business value to a stakeholder. Features are derived from epics and decomposed into user stories or enablers. Features are prioritized by business value using Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) and planned for Program Increments (PIs) by the ART teams. References: Organizing Around Value with ARTs, ART Planning Board

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of Built-in Quality, this practice reduces bottlenecks and ensures consistency by:

• Encouraging teams to share responsibility for the quality of their work products
• Establishing common standards and guidelines for coding, testing, documentation, etc.
• Enabling teams to collaborate and coordinate across domains and dependencies
• Promoting a culture of continuous improvement and learning

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of PI Planning, the confidence vote is a process where:

• Each team conducts a vote using their fingers (fist of five) or a digital tool for remote events
• The teams vote on the confidence level for the objectives as a set, and if confidence is high enough, the aggregate set of objectives becomes the committed ART plan
• The Release Train Engineer summarizes the team objectives into the ART PI objectives in a format suitable for management communication

ROAM is an acronym for Resolved, Owned, Accepted, Mitigated. ROAM is a technique for categorizing and managing PI risks during the final plan review in the PI planning event. PI risks are potential events or conditions that may have a negative impact on the PI objectives or outcomes. ROAM helps teams address their PI risks by assigning them to one of four states: Resolved (the risk has been eliminated or is no longer relevant); Owned (the risk has been assigned to a person or a team who is responsible for managing it); Accepted (the risk has been acknowledged and its impact has been factored into the plan); Mitigated (the risk has been reduced or its likelihood has been lowered). References: PI Planning, Final Plan Review

The primary goal of SAFe is to achieve business agility. Business agility is the ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative solutions. Business agility requires that everyone involved in delivering solutions—business and technology leaders, development, IT operations, legal, marketing, finance, support, compliance, security, and others—use Lean and Agile practices to continually deliver innovative, high-quality products and services faster than the competition. References: Thriving in the Digital Age, Business Agility