PRINCE2 – Agile Foundation Exam – Quiz 10

The Project Board and the project manager are for deciding who is in the best position to represent the business requirements in the PRINCE2 Agile framework. They are also responsible for assigning them as the product owners of the project. The person may still be selected even though the person doesn’t have much hands-on knowledge as the user who was previously selected.

When it comes to project management, PRINCE2 has roles that manage and control teams. This role is a team manager. In Agile, there is no team manager. It is up to the teams to organize themselves. Nonetheless, both PRINCE2 and Agile help in managing people so that they can all effectively work together.

Servant leaders support their teams. In Agile approaches, the term ‘servant leaders’ is used because they don’t like using “manager” or “management”. Servant leaders provide a range of management services. This includes helping run progress meetings, add tools and techniques to improve their team’s efficiency, and might even provide ciplinary service.

Agile teams require autonomy to a high degree to work effectively. The team works better when they are left to work without interruption and they don’t have to wait or refer to higher positions for a decision. Adding the PRINCE2 Principle of management helps create an autonomous team by exception.

Tolerance is known as leeway. They allow the delivery teams to have more autonomy. This is due to the fact that the team doesn’t need to look up to the project manager about a decision. Not having enough time to finish the project and the team decides to move it to a different time is an example of scope tolerance.

They are also known as requirement engineers. You can find these members in a requirements-gathering team or spread across different teams. They are trained to understand business requirements and map out the business process. They use this information and translate it to become product designs.

The product backlog is a list that features new ideas for the upgraded software created by the project team. Each feature will have its time and cost predicted. It forecasts the measurable pros of each of the features. It is often called product backlog particularly in Scrum agile environment. This is list might serve as Scrum’s environment version of the business case.

Sprints are short periods of timed-box. They usually last about a month. Once the first sprint is done, the second can start. The first step in starting the next sprint is to plan what features to include. Before the continue this planning process, they might need to update the product backlog of the new changes or feedback that the release has gotten.

There are two things that should be done in starting up a project process. These two things are creating a high-level vision and creating a product map. These are both created by the project manager. This would play the same role as the project product description. This gives the overall purpose of the products that are delivered.

These are included in the format:
(a) The name of the role
(b) The description of the function
(c) The description of the benefits

In addition to this, the product descriptions must meet all the other requirements of the PRINCE2. A good example would be having a product description contain a list of quality criteria or acceptance criteria.

An epic is a group of requirements that are ill-defined and need to be broken down. It can be thought of as super-user stories. In PRINCE2, this is equivalent to a project product description. The agile term value is equivalent to benefit in PRINCE2, not epics.

Agile approaches it to respond to and embrace change. PRINCE2 talks more about controlling the change. Even though their philosophies are different when it comes to change, the agile approach can work effectively in a PRINCE2 project.

Quality criteria can be specified precisely in some situations but other than that, it is important that having quality criteria be specified precisely should be avoided. Specifying precise quality criteria can decrease the number of requests for change. Specifying precise quality criteria allows for a more flexible approach to requested changes. Quality criteria should encapsulate the product’s purpose. This is done by the project management team.

These are the triple constraints of project management:
(a) Scope
(b) Cost
(c) Time

These all have to do with the delivery of the product. This is also called the iron triangle. All project managers face this triangle, not just those operating in an agile environment. In the non-agile approach, the scope would be inflexible meaning there is no scope tolerance.

Project managers have to focus more on how much scope has been delivered. It should be more prioritized than the amount of time and cost overruns. Measuring the scope is a key part of the iron-triangle. The scope can be measured in features, user stories, requirements, or how many products have been completed.

PRINCE2 Agile establishes baseline requirements for projects. It allows the organization the flexibility to determine two things. It determines their roles and what artifacts are needed. Because of this PRINCE2 Agile is “Agile agnostic”. It supports the agile methods that suit your organization and projects best.

These are included in the project initiation documentation:
(a) Project product descriptions
(b) Supporting documents
(c) Business case
(d) Project brief

These are all passed on to the Project Board. The Project Board provides project oversight.

Business-value justification of the initial project funding and resources must be approved in the project brief. This is then expanded by the PID by providing an achievable approach for delivering this business value. If these two documents are provided as well as other supporting documents, the project will not be approved.

The confirmation of the business-value delivery at each project stage is required by the Project Board before they grant the approval for the next stage. The primary driver in determining which capabilities for the project are at the top of the backlog is business value in Agile methods. Business value is informally documented at the closure of the project. It is documented as one of the key metrics of the success of the project.

These people are involved in defining and confirming the delivered outputs:
(a) The Executive
(b) The Senior users
(c) The Product owners
(d) The customer subject matter experts
(e) Business ambassadors
(f) Business analyst
(g) Requirements engineer

This a key difference in PRINCE2 Agile. It involves several people to do this task. In larger products, there may be a need to have multiple people serve as the CSMEs and the product owners.

In Agile methods, the single source of identification of business requirements, prioritization, and confirmation for complex solutions is the product owner. In PRINCE2 Agile, there is more involved in the organization. This includes confirmation and support from executive management.

The original Project Management Triangle included Scope, Time, and Cost. When Quality was added, the time or cost has been reduced. In some instances, the scope will be increased. This can be compensated by reducing the amount of effort by the project team on confirming its usability. Quality should never be sacrificed.

These are included managing the value of the outputs in PRINCE2 Agile:
(a) Getting updates the team has delivered which are high-value capabilities
(b) How much business value is being generated by the capabilities
(c) How well these capabilities meet the expectations of the business

When fixing the cost variable, the focus has to be on the fixed cost of the project delivery team. There is a possibility of other unexpected costs throughout each of the project processes.

Full scope requirements are done by the product owner. This includes low-, medium-, and high-priority capabilities. The product owners are expected to organize the requirements in top-down priority. The purpose of this is to keep the most valuable capabilities as the primary focus of the project delivery team.

These are the reports included:
(a) Highlight reports
(b) Checkpoint reports
(c) Stage reports
(d) Exception reports
(e) Configuration item records

Issue registers and risk registers are also provided to the Project Board. IN PRINCE2 Agile, these tools can supplement the standard reporting tools.

When the team can’t resolve the issues within the iteration, they must escalate them to the Project manager. This is one of the approaches the team can make. The other approach is to have the project delivery team to record the issues in a centralized location. It will then be given to the Scrummaster or team manager.

These are important requirements:
(a) There is an appropriate channel where people can raise issues and risks.
(b) This channel is in an accessible location.
(c) The input from the Project Board is needed.

These requirements should be delivered by the project team no matter what approach they use to resolve an issue or risk.

These would make it challenging:
(a) Discourages open communication
(b) No staff consultation
(c) Distrustful of staff/ heavy management

Having this in the organization does not mean you can not implement the PRINCE2 Agile framework. There will most likely be a lot more significant overheads.

These are the correct reasons:
(a) It will help in determining the degree to which the framework is incorporated.
(b) It will help determine the most appropriate approach.
(c) It will help determine the areas where additional team education is required.

Understanding motivation will help you in these fields. This will result to a successful more to PRINCE2 Agile.

These are examples of incremental delivery of functionality:
(a) Fixed enterprise platforms
(b) Legacy systems
(c) Mainframes

If the technology platform you choose to use doesn’t support these, then the team will be able to work on the highest-priority capabilities using time-boxed intervals. The benefits may be restricted to the end of the project.