SAFe-Agilist Sample Questions Answers

The Agile Manifesto states:

“We have come to value: Customer collaboration over contract negotiation”

This is one of the four core value statements of the Agile Manifesto and is cited verbatim in the SAFe Workbook.

Source:Workbook, Page 2-13

“Precisely specify value by product” is central to Lean thinking. Lean thinking is a philosophy and a set of principles and practices that aim to eliminate waste and optimize value delivery. Value is defined as anything that a customer is willing to pay for or that meets their needs or desires. Value is specified by product, which means that each product or service should have a clear and explicit definition of what value it provides to the customer and how it differs from other products or services. Specifying value by product helps avoid ambiguity, confusion, andinefficiency in the value delivery process. References: Thriving in the Digital Age, SAFe Principle #1

The Continuous Delivery Pipeline represents the workflow, activities, and automation needed to deliver new functionality more frequently. The Continuous Delivery Pipeline is a key enabler of Agile Product Delivery, which is one of the core competencies of business agility in SAFe. The Continuous Delivery Pipeline consists of four elements: Continuous Exploration, Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, and Release on Demand. These elements help teams continuously explore customer needs, develop high-quality solutions, deploy them to various environments, and release them to customers when and where they want. References: Agile Product Delivery, Continuous Delivery Pipeline

The SAFe Workbook outlines Lean-Agile Leadership as having three core dimensions:

Mindset and principles

Leading by example

Leading the change

Each dimension is explained with specific behaviors and leadership strategies.

Decisions that deliver large and broad economic benefits are the type of decisions that should remain centralized even in a decentralized decision-making environment. Decentralized decision-making is a principle and practice that empowers individuals and teams to makedecisions about their work without excessive interference or control from others. Decentralized decision-making fosters autonomy, agility, innovation, and ownership among knowledge workers. However, some decisions are better made centrally by those who have more authority, information, or expertise. These include decisions that affect the whole enterprise or portfolio, such as strategy, vision, budgeting, governance, compliance, etc. References: SAFe Lean-Agile Principles, SAFe Principle #9

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.

The workbook explains that ROAM stands for:

“Resolved – Addressed; no longer a concern

Owned – Someone has taken responsibility

Accepted – Nothing more can be done and if risk occurs, release may be compromised

Mitigated – Team has plan to adjust as necessary.”

Source:Workbook, Page 4-60

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

From the workbook's role definitions:

"Scrum Master/Team Coach Responsibilities: Supporting Iteration Execution, Improving ART Performance, Facilitating PI Planning, Building High-Performing Teams."

This makes "supporting iteration execution" a primary responsibility.

Source:Workbook, Lesson 3.1, Page 3-7

Reducing delays is the focus of Lean thinking. Lean thinking is a philosophy and a set of principles and practices that aim to eliminate waste and optimize value delivery. Waste is anything that does not directly contribute to customer value or that causes delays in delivering value. Delays are the primary cause of waste, as they increase inventory, risk, variability, overhead, and dissatisfaction. Reducing delays means minimizing the time between customer need and value delivery, which improves quality, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. References: Thriving in the Digital Age, SAFe Principle #2

From the workbook section on forming cross-functional Agile Teams:

“Agile Teams are cross-functional self-organizing entities that can define, build, test, and—where applicable—deploy increments of value.”

“Optimized for communication and delivery of value” is also mentioned but for this question, the best indicators of a cross-functional team are thecapabilities of the team membersand their ability to deliver value independently.

The "Relentless Improvement" pillar in the House of Lean supports:

“Let facts guide improvements” and encourages a culture of learning and innovation where “hypotheses are tested and changes are embraced without mercy or guilt.”

The SAFe workbook explicitly describes how ART events form a feedback-driven cycle:

“ART events, such as PI Planning, Iteration Planning, Reviews, and Retrospectives form a plan-do-check-adjust (PDCA) learning cycle.”

This continuous improvement cycle enables adaptation and learning throughout the ART’s execution.

Autonomy is one of the requirements besides purpose and minimum possible constraints for unlocking the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers. Autonomy is the ability of individuals and teams to self-organize, self-manage, and make decisions about their work without excessive interference or control from others. Autonomy fosters creativity, innovation, ownership, and engagement among knowledge workers. Autonomy is one of the aspects of the Lean-Agile mindset and one of the SAFe core values. References: Lean-Agile Mindset, SAFe Core Values, SAFe Principle #8

User business value and time criticality are components of cost of delay. Cost of delay is a way of quantifying the economic impact of delaying the delivery of a product or feature. Cost of delay consists of four factors: user or customer value, time criticality, risk reduction or opportunity enablement value, and job size or duration. Cost of delay is used to prioritize features using Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF), which is a method that maximizes the economic value delivered by a product development flow. References: ART Backlog and WSJF, SAFe Principle #1

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

Strategic Themes are highlighted in the workbook as:

“Differentiating business objectives that… Connect the portfolio to the Enterprise strategy.”

They provide context for budgeting and vision alignment across the organization.

Source:01 Workbook SA (6.0).pdf, Page 5-13

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of Apply SAFe Principles, this principle is the first Lean-Agile Principle and it describes how to make decisions based on economics1. One of the practices essential to achieving optimum economic outcomes is to deliver early and often, which means moving new system features through the development value stream as quickly as possible1. This practice has a direct economic benefit, as it enables faster feedback, higher value, and lower risk1. You can read more about this principle and practice in this article, under the section “Deliver early and often”.

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

SAFe describes Continuous Deployment as:

“An aspect of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline that enables faster delivery of new functionality to customers.”

By automating the pipeline and decoupling deployment from release, enterprises can release value more frequently and responsively.

The SAFe Workbook outlines the elements of enterprise strategy formulation and emphasizes:

“Enterprise Strategy Formulation includes Vision, Mission, Core Values, Business Drivers, Competitive Environment, Financial Goals, and Distinctive Competence.”

Among these,Portfolio Visionis identified as a direct outcome that aligns the portfolio with strategy.

Source:01 Workbook SA (6.0).pdf, Page 5-12

The workbook lists multiple benefits of SAFe and Agile adoption including:

“Faster time-to-market” and “Ability to respond to changing priorities” are consistently shown as primary motivators in SAFe case studies and business agility metrics.

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