ISTQB STQB-Agile-Public Practice Test - Questions Answers, Page 4

Planning poker, a consensus-based estimation technique used in Agile planning sessions, involves team members making estimates by playing numbered cards face-down to the table, avoiding the influence of other participants. This process promotes a collective understanding and agreement on effort estimations. Statements i, ii, and iii accurately reflect the principles of Planning Poker. It's a consensus-based technique (i), and if the estimates are too high (iii) or too low (ii), it often indicates that the user story is not well understood or is too complex, suggesting it should be broken down into smaller, more manageable pieces. This approach aligns with Agile's preference for small, incremental changes that can be easily managed and adapted, fostering collaboration and collective decision-making within the team.

Agile retrospectives focus on the process, practices, and tools, rather than personal critiques. The effectiveness of a retrospective lies in its ability to foster a positive, constructive environment where the team can discuss what worked well, what didn't, and how to improve going forward. Focusing on an individual's perceived shortcomings, such as being 'disruptive and lazy' (Option C), does not align with the Agile principle of building projects around motivated individuals and trusting them to get the job done. It could lead to a negative atmosphere, reducing the team's willingness to openly share and collaborate on solutions. Instead, retrospectives should concentrate on actionable items that can lead to process improvements, such as addressing frequent automation test failures, discrepancies in effort estimations, and delays in the build process, as mentioned in options A, B, and D respectively.

Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) allows developers to define accurate unit tests focused on business needs by bridging the communication gap between technical and non-technical team members. BDD uses scenarios in plain language that describe the behavior of the application from the end-user's perspective, ensuring that the development focus remains on delivering features that provide real value to the business.

In agile projects, the high risk of regression is primarily due to the code churn that occurs as business needs change over the course of several sprints. This is inherent in the agile process, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaborative effort. The iterative nature of agile projects means that as new features are added or existing features are modified to meet evolving business needs, previously tested and stable parts of the software might be affected, leading to potential regression issues. This phenomenon is well-recognized in agile methodologies and necessitates rigorous regression testing practices to ensure that new changes do not adversely affect existing functionalities.

The whole-team approach in agile methodologies is beneficial because it leverages the diverse skill sets within the team for the project's benefit. In this collaborative environment, team members, including developers, testers, and business analysts, work closely together from the project's outset. This close collaboration ensures a better understanding of the project goals, more innovative solutions to problems, and a higher quality product. The whole-team approach encourages knowledge sharing and collective problem-solving, leading to more efficient and effective project outcomes. This approach contrasts with traditional methodologies, where roles are more siloed, and collaboration between different roles occurs less frequently.

A testable acceptance criterion must be specific, measurable, and verifiable, which makes option C the correct choice. Stating that 'the response time to confirm a customer submission must not exceed 5 seconds' provides a clear, quantifiable measure that can be tested to determine whether the criterion has been met. This contrasts with more subjective criteria, such as the system being 'easy to use,' which cannot be easily quantified or measured in a straightforward manner. The specificity of the response time allows for the creation of test cases that can confirm whether the system meets this particular requirement, thus making it a testable acceptance criterion.

Cross-functional teamwork is a cornerstone of Agile methodologies, emphasizing the collaboration of team members with diverse expertise to enhance project outcomes. In Agile frameworks like Scrum, teams are encouraged to be self-organizing and multidisciplinary, with each member contributing to all project areas, including testing, regardless of their primary role. This approach promotes a shared responsibility for the project's success, fosters a deeper understanding of the project from multiple perspectives, and enhances the team's ability to respond to changes effectively. It aligns with Agile principles that advocate for the best architectures, requirements, and designs emerging from self-organizing teams, underscoring the value of collective ownership and collaboration in achieving project goals.

Exploratory Testing is aligned with Quadrant 3 of the Testing Quadrants, which emphasizes business-facing tests that critique the product. This quadrant focuses on testing aspects that cannot be fully planned in advance and require a more ad-hoc, investigative approach to uncover issues from a business or user perspective. Exploratory Testing involves simultaneous learning, test design, and test execution, making it suitable for assessing the usability, relevance, and overall value of the product to the business, aligning with the goals of Quadrant 3.

Equivalence partitioning is a black box test design technique suitable for verifying the accuracy of user stories like the one described. It involves dividing input data of a software unit into partitions of equivalent data from which test cases can be derived. For a user story involving tax percentage calculation based on income, Equivalence Partitioning allows the creation of test cases for different income ranges (low, medium, high) to ensure that the system accurately calculates tax percentages for each partition, thus covering various scenarios within the application's functionality.