PMI-ACP Exam Prep

Overview of Domain IV: Team

Performance
• Valuing People Over Processes
• Defining the Delivery Team
• Identifying the Product Owner
• Responsibility of the Team Leader
• Recognizing the Project Sponsor
• Forming the Agile Project Team
• Developing the Project Team
• Leading the Project Team
• Coaching Team Members
• Building a Collaborative Team Space
• Working with collocated Teams
• Defining the Project Team Space
• Identifying Osmotic Communications
• Building Burn Charts

Team Performance Overview

• 16 percent of the PMI-ACP exam
• 19 exam questions
• Building high-performing teams

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Team Performance Tasks

• Develop team rules and processes to foster buy in
• Help grow team interpersonal and technical skills
• Use generalizing specialist
• Empower and encourage emergent leadership
• Learn team motivators and demotivators

Team Performance Tasks

• Encourage communication via collocation in collaboration tools
• Shield team from distractions
• Align team by sharing project vision
• Anchor team to measure velocity for capacity and forecast

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Develop and
Support Self-
organizing Teams
• Self-organizing
• Self-empowered
• The project team
are stakeholders
• Team leaders
• Scrum masters
• Coaches

• Product owner
• Customer
• Proxy customer
• Value
management team

Business
Representatives

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Defining the Delivery Team

• People building the product
• Incremental delivery team
• Self-organized and self-directed
• Share information with one another freely

Delivery Team
Responsibilities
• Daily standup meetings
• Write acceptance tests
• Test and revise
increments
• Product demonstrations
• Participate in
retrospectives

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Business Representatives
• Product owner
• Customer
• Proxy customer
• Value management team

Business Representatives
• Prioritize product features
• Manages the product backlog
• Ensures a shared understanding
• Provides the acceptance criteria
• Makes change request

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Business Representatives
• May change the product features and priorities
• Facilitate engagement of external project stakeholders
• Provides due date for the project
• Attends planning meetings reviews and retrospectives

• Coach or team
leader
• Servant leader
• Helps the delivery
team self-govern
and self organize
• Facilitator and
communicator
• Coach and mentor
to the delivery
ScrumMaster team

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ScrumMaster
• Guides agile processes
• Helps the product owner manage the product backlog
• Helps the product owner communicate
• Facilitates meetings
• Follows up on issues

Project Sponsor

• The main advocate for the

project
• Provides direction to the
product owner
• Determines value on time and
on budget
• May attend iteration review
meetings
• Authorizes the project

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EXERCISE
Here’s a chance to check your understanding of the responsibilities of the various agile team
roles. Read the task in the first column and record the role responsible for that task in the
second column. (If you want to practice all the terms that might appear on the exam, also try to
include all the terms for each role listed above.)
Task Responsibilities

Provides the due dates for the project

and/or its releases.

Facilitates meetings (planning, reviews, and

retrospectives).

Manages the product backlog, making sure

that it is accurate, up to date, and prioritized
by business value.

Helps the delivery team self-govern and self

organize, instead of governing and
organizing them.

Writes acceptance tests for the product

increments.

Demonstrates the completed product

increment to the customer in the iteration
review meeting.

Focuses on the big picture of whether the

project will deliver the expected value on
time and on budget.

Determines whether each completed

product increment is working as intended,
and either Accept sit or requests changes in
the iteration review meeting.
Acts as a servant leader to the delivery
team, helping them improve and removing
barriers to their process.
ANSWER
Task Responsibilities
Provides the due dates for the project Product owner/Customer/Proxy customer/
and/or its releases. Value management team/Business
representative

Facilitates meetings (planning, reviews, and Scrum Master/Coach/Team leader

retrospectives).

Manages the product backlog, making sure Product owner/Customer/Proxy customer/

that it is accurate, up to date, and prioritized Value management team/Business
by business value. representative

Helps the delivery team self-govern and self Scrum Master/Coach/Team leader
organize, instead of governing and
organizing them.

Writes acceptance tests for the product Development team/Delivery team

increments.

Demonstrates the completed product Development team/Delivery team

increment to the customer in the iteration
review meeting.

Focuses on the big picture of whether the Project sponsor

project will deliver the expected value on
time and on budget.

Determines whether each completed Product owner/Customer/Proxy customer/

product increment is working as intended, Value management team/Business
and either Accept sit or requests changes in representative
the iteration review meeting.
Acts as a servant leader to the delivery Scrum Master/Coach/Team leader
team, helping them improve and removing
barriers to their process.
PMI-ACP Exam Prep

Agile Team Characteristics

• 12 or fewer members
• Team members have complementary skills
• Team members are generalizing specialists
• Team members are committed to a common purpose
• Team members hold themselves mutually accountable
• Team members have shared ownership for the project outcome

Agile Team Goals

• Technical excellence
• Team swarming – multiple people work on one item at a time to
finish (crashing)
• Allows everyone to work together, towards a solution
• Participates as a team, not individuals

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Defining Generalizing
Specialist

• Team members can serve

in multiple roles
• Team members can easily
switch between rules
• Helps to resolve
bottlenecks

Generalizing Specialist Attributes

• One or more technical specialties
• At least general knowledge of software development
• At least a general knowledge of the business domain
• Seeks to gain skills in existing specialties and other areas

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Characteristics of High-performing Teams

• Create a shared vision for the project team
• Set realistic goals
• Limit team size to 12 or fewer people
• Build a sense of team identity
• Provide strong leadership

Self-organizing
Empowered
Eight Believe they can solve any problem
Characteristics Committed to team success
of
Owns its decisions and commitments
High-
Performance Motivated by trust
Teams Consensus driven
Participate in constructive disagreement

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Self-organizing
Teams
• Not command and
control
• Can use their own
knowledge to
organize work
• Structure that work
based on iteration
goals
• Responsibility
delegated to the team

Self-directing Teams
• Empowered to work collectively
• Make local decisions
• Estimate and decide the project work
• Make mistakes and learn from mistakes

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Exam Tip
• Self-organizing and self-
directing teams are goals of
agile projects
• Teams usually do not to start
as self-organized and self-
directed

Defining Emergent
Leadership
• Different people lead different initiatives
• High-performing teams allow multiple leaders
• No power struggle with leaders change roles
• Leaders are self-selected not assigned

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Adaptive Leadership
• Directing – happens during team
forming
• Team members may have low
competence but high commitment
• Leaders hi directive and low supportive
behavior
• Coaching – happens during storming
• Team members have some competence
and low commitment
• Leaders high directive and high
supportive behavior

Adaptive Leadership Continued

• Supporting – happens during norming
• Team members have moderate to high
competent and variable commitment
• Leaders offer low directive and high
supportive behavior
• Delegating – happens during team
performing
• Team members have high competence
and high commitment
• Leaders offer low directive and low
supportive behavior

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Experimenting and
Failing Safely
• The team should experiment and try
new approaches
• It’s okay to fail
• Learn from failure and move forward
• An engagement culture rewards
people for problem solving
collaboration and sharing ideas

Tuckman Model Of Team Formation And

Development
• Forming – the team comes together and learns about each
other
• Also known as a working group
• Storming – conflict and struggle for the approach and
leadership
• Also known as a pseudo team
• Norming – the team works with each other and conflict has
settled
• Also known as a potential team
• Performing – the team hits their stride
• Also known as a real team and becoming a high-performing team

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Herzberg’s Theory Of Motivation

High Promote
Motivating Agents: performance
Opportunity
Responsibility
Level of performance

Appreciation
Recognition
Education

Expected Hygiene Agents:

Job security
Paycheck Must
Acceptable working conditions exist first

Relationships
Low

Training Coaching And Mentoring

• Training is teaching a skill or
knowledge through practice and
instruction.
• Coaching is a facilitated process to
help individuals develop and improve
performance
• Mentoring is a professional
relationship more free flowing. The
mentor offers advice

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Dreyfus Model Of Adult Skill Acquisition

• Novice follow the rules they’ve been given and make analytical
decisions
• Advanced beginner still following the rules but based on
experience better understand the context of the rules
• Competent determining which rules are best for each situation
• Proficient actively choosing the best strategy rather than
simply relying on the rules
• Expert decision-making becomes intuitive

Shu-ha-ri Model Of Skill Mastery

• Shu – start by following the rules
• Ha – once the team has mastered the
guidelines they can move away from
them and work intuitively
• Ri – the team reaches full mastery
and can transcend the rules

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Guidelines for One-on-one Coaching

• Meet them a half a step ahead
• Guarantee safety
• Partner with managers
• Create positive regard

Encourage
Constructive
Disagreement

• Debate and conflict is natural and

healthy
• Constructive conflict leads to
better decisions and buy-in
• Divergence means the team will
argue and debate
• Convergence means the team will
agree on the best solution

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Five Dysfunctions Of A Team

• Absence of trust
• Fear of conflict
• Lack of commitment
• Avoidance of accountability
• Inattention to results

Building a Collaborative Team Space

• Open floor plan
• Out of confined offices
• Two or more people over single offices
• Caves and commons
• Caves – private areas for alone time, thinking
• Common – open areas for collaboration

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Experimenting and Failing Safely

• The team should experiment and try new approaches
• It’s okay to fail
• Learn from failure and move forward
• An engagement culture rewards people for problem solving
collaboration and sharing ideas

• All the team works in

one location
• Ideally with in 33 feet
or ten meters of each
other
• No physical barriers
like walls or doorways
• Distributive teams use
collaborative software
Collocated Teams are
Preferred

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Working with Collocated Teams

• Skype, Google Hangout, Video
Conferencing
• Online KanBan
• Asana.com
• Virtual teams create
communication challenges

Creating a Team
Space
• Location for team members
in the same space
• Also known as the war room
• Visible information radiators
for project metrics
• Lots of white boards and
task boards

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Caves and Commons

• Caves are private spaces for phone
calls or one-on-one conversations
• Commons are the primary work area

Tacit Knowledge
• The unwritten information collectively known by the group
• How to restart a server
• How to turn on the lights
• Larger groups have more difficulty with tacit knowledge

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Osmotic Communication
• Learning by
overhearing each
other’s conversation
• Benefit of a
collocated team

Factors of Osmotic Communications

• Physical proximity – pair programming
• Absorbing information – even wrong information – from what’s
around you:
• Behavior of other groups
• Lack of focus
• Rumors

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Managing Team Diversity

• Consider culture of team members
• Respect one another and belief systems
• Understand work ethics and culture

• Time zones
• Communication
preferences
• Cultural characteristics
• Language

Team Diversity Attributes

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Managing Virtual Teams

• Consider different time zones
• Consider different cultures
• Different communication styles
• Different native languages

Managing Distributed Teams

• Distributed teams are virtual teams
• Short iterations help collaboration in coordination
• Distributed teams is not the same as outsourcing
• Distributed teams face more of a challenge in storming and
norming
• The project manager may need to introduce controversial or
difficulties of the work early in the project
• A face-to-face kickoff is often needed

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Exam tip
• Use frequent communication
• Intensified facilitation
• Use best practices for conference calls
• Keep on track
• Keep on time
• Keep track of who is on the call
• Keep the answers coming
• Keep it fair
• Keep it documented

Digital Tools For Distributed Teams

• Video conferencing
• Interactive whiteboard
• Instant messaging
• Presence-based application
• Electronic task for storyboards
• Web-based meeting facilitators
• Virtual card wall
• Wiki site

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Measurements in Agile Projects

Transitioning to agile means using different measurements.
Agile projects deliver finished work on a regular basis. Project teams
can use such data for improved forecasts and decision making.

Agile Teams Measure Results

• Agile measures what the team
delivers, not what the team predicts it
will deliver.
• Agile teams limit their estimation to
the next few weeks at the most. There
is evidence that the smaller the chunk
of work, the more likely people are to
deliver.

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Visual Display of Progress

• Teams may use either burndown or burnup charts to see what
has been completed as the iteration progresses. This allows the
product owner along with the team to replan for the next
iteration.

Work
completed

150 points Team velocity

Work remaining
Work
remaining
10 points

10 points

10 points

10 points
10 points
10 points

10 points

10 points

10 points

10 points

10 points

Done!

Current

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Burnup Chart
This is the same data presented in a different way. Teams should
choose how to see their data.

Source: TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TIME

PMBOK ® GUIDE – Sixth Edition + Agile Practice Guide, Page 63

Product Backlog Burnup Chart

The team can show completed value with
a product backlog burnup chart

Source: TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TIME

PMBOK ® GUIDE – Sixth Edition + Agile Practice Guide, Page 68

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Understanding Team Velocity

• Velocity is the measure of a team’s capacity for work per
iteration
• Measured in the same unit that the team estimates the work
• Velocity very early and then stabilizes
• Velocity tends to plateau

Velocity
Velocity the measure of a team’s capacity for work per iteration
Predict how much work can be done in future iterations

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Work
completed

150 points Team velocity

Work remaining
Work
remaining
10 points

10 points

10 points

10 points
10 points
10 points

10 points

10 points

10 points

10 points

10 points
Done!

Current

Calculating Completion Time

• The team’s velocity has been 20 story points per iteration
• There are 200 story points left
• Each iteration is two weeks
• 200 divided by 20 is 10
• 10 times 2 is 20
• There are 20 weeks left in the project

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Learning
Ga me
Section Summary
• Valuing People Over Processes
• Defining the Delivery Team
• Identifying the Product Owner
• Responsibility of the Team
Leader
• Recognizing the Project
Sponsor
• Forming the Agile Project Team
• Developing the Project Team
• Leading the Project Team
• Coaching Team Members
• Building a Collaborative Team
Space
• Working with Collocated Teams
• Defining the Project Team
Space
• Identifying Osmotic
Communications
• Building Burn Charts
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Question 01

All of the following are good methods

to keep stakeholders engaged in
your project except for which one?
 A weekly status report on the
project risks and issues is not
Correct Answer! a preferred method to keep
stakeholders engaged in an
agile project.
Question 02

Agile team needs to incorporate

community values. One such value is
courage which is shown by the agile team
through what action?
 Pair Programming
Correct Answer! is an example of
showing courage.
Question 03

This document is a listing of all

the project stakeholders.
 The stakeholder
Correct Answer! register is a listing
of all stakeholders.
Question 04

Who writes the agile charter?

 The Project
Correct Answer! Charter is written
by the project
sponsor.
Question 05

This document helps to define

how users will actually interact
with the software you are
creating.
 The use case diagram
helps to define how users
Correct Answer! will actually interact with
the software you are
creating.
Question 06

When it comes to agile modeling these

quick mock-ups of a product ensure that
everyone has the same understanding of
the project.
Correct Answer!
Question 01
Correct Answer!
Question 01
Correct Answer!
Question 01
Correct Answer!
Question 01
Correct Answer!
Question 01
Correct Answer!
Question 01
Correct Answer!
Question 01
Correct Answer!
Question 01
Correct Answer!
Question 01
Correct Answer!