PMI-ACP Practice Questions #108
You are leading the development of a mobile banking app that needs to be highly responsive to user needs and quickly adapt to market demands. At the same time, the central bank has strict compliance requirements that must be met. Failure to comply could result in heavy fines and regulatory penalties.
Your challenge is to balance Agile flexibility for rapid user-driven improvements while ensuring that compliance-related tasks follow a structured, predictive approach to meet regulatory standards.
How should you structure the hybrid Agile-Predictive approach to ensure both adaptability and compliance?
A. Define a governance framework that integrates Agile development with compliance checkpoints, ensuring regulatory tasks are reviewed without slowing down innovation.
B. Maintain separate workflows—let Agile teams focus on user-driven features while a dedicated compliance team handles all regulatory requirements in a predictive manner.
C. Convert all compliance tasks into Agile user stories and track them in sprints to ensure they are completed iteratively.
D. Follow a fully predictive (waterfall) approach to guarantee compliance first, then introduce Agile later for enhancements.
Analysis
This scenario presents a hybrid Agile-Predictive challenge. You are developing a mobile banking app that must be responsive to user needs and market changes while also adhering to strict regulatory compliance. The central issue is finding the right balance between Agile flexibility for rapid improvements and a structured, predictive approach for meeting compliance standards.
The best approach should ensure that compliance requirements are met without slowing down innovation. A good hybrid strategy would include integrating governance mechanisms that allow Agile teams to work efficiently while ensuring compliance is systematically reviewed and approved.
Analysis of Options
A: Define a governance framework that integrates Agile development with compliance checkpoints, ensuring regulatory tasks are reviewed without slowing down innovation.
This is the best option because it provides a structured approach to balance Agile flexibility and regulatory compliance. It does not impose rigid execution details but suggests creating a governance mechanism that allows regulatory tasks to be checked at key points without hindering Agile innovation. The flexibility of this approach allows for different implementations—compliance tasks can be handled as user stories, work breakdown structures, or any other suitable format. It addresses the core issue while keeping adaptability intact.
B: Maintain separate workflows—let Agile teams focus on user-driven features while a dedicated compliance team handles all regulatory requirements in a predictive manner.
This approach might seem reasonable but creates silos between Agile and compliance teams. Separating compliance into a fully dedicated team could lead to misalignment, missed checkpoints, and inefficient collaboration. The question does not indicate that the team size or complexity of compliance work justifies splitting teams. A hybrid approach should integrate compliance within the Agile process rather than treating it as a separate, predictive function.
C: Convert all compliance tasks into Agile user stories and track them in sprints to ensure they are completed iteratively.
This option assumes that all compliance requirements can be converted into user stories, which may not always be feasible. Compliance requirements often exist as legal mandates or documentation-heavy processes that do not naturally fit into user stories or sprints. While iterative compliance tracking is useful, treating all compliance work like Agile features may oversimplify the complexity of regulatory processes. This makes the approach too rigid to be universally effective.
D: Follow a fully predictive (waterfall) approach to guarantee compliance first, then introduce Agile later for enhancements.
This option contradicts Agile principles and is not suitable in a hybrid environment. Delaying Agile development until after compliance is fully established eliminates flexibility and responsiveness to user needs. Compliance should be integrated into Agile workflows rather than treated as a separate, sequential phase. This does not align with the problem statement, which requires balancing both adaptability and compliance.
Conclusion
The best approach is Option A: Define a governance framework that integrates Agile development with compliance checkpoints, ensuring regulatory tasks are reviewed without slowing down innovation.
This solution provides the necessary structure to manage compliance while preserving Agile flexibility. It allows teams to create a framework that adapts to the project’s specific needs, rather than enforcing rigid separations or oversimplified execution models.
PMI – ACP Exam Content Outline Mapping
| Domain | Task |
| Leadership | Promote Shared Vision and Purpose |
Topics Covered:
- Creating a shared governance framework that allows both innovation (Agile flexibility) and regulatory compliance (predictive checkpoints).
- Balancing customer responsiveness with business and legal constraints, which is a critical leadership responsibility in regulated environments.
- Promoting cross-functional collaboration by integrating compliance within Agile processes rather than creating silos.
- Aligning teams under a common vision, where both rapid delivery and compliance are non-negotiable success criteria.
- Ensuring team buy-in and shared understanding that compliance can coexist with Agile delivery when supported by thoughtful planning and integration mechanisms.
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