PMI-ACP Practice Questions #120
You are responsible for tracking performance across multiple Agile teams in your organization. However, each team measures success differently based on their unique workflows.
Examples of Team-Specific Metrics:
- The Mobile Development Team measures stakeholder satisfaction using Net Promoter Score (NPS) and user retention.
- The Data Warehouse Team measures stakeholder satisfaction using the number of reports run and data accuracy.
- The Enterprise Software Team measures delivery efficiency using cycle time and schedule variance.
Since teams are using different metrics, rolling up performance data at the portfolio level is difficult.
How should leadership aggregate and standardize metrics for organization-wide decision-making?
A. Enforce a single set of metrics for all teams.
B. Group metrics into common categories for portfolio-level reporting.
C. Track only financial metrics like budget variance and revenue.
D. Ignore team-specific metrics and rely on executive reporting.
Analysis
This question addresses the challenge of aggregating team-specific Agile performance metrics at an organizational level for effective decision-making. Each team has its own unique workflow and success criteria, making it difficult to standardize reporting.
From the data provided:
- The Mobile Development Team measures success based on Net Promoter Score (NPS) and user retention.
- The Data Warehouse Team uses the number of reports run and data accuracy as key metrics.
- The Enterprise Software Team focuses on cycle time and schedule variance.
The key challenge here is how leadership can standardize and roll up these diverse metrics without compromising team autonomy or losing critical insights.
Analysis of Options
A: Enforce a single set of metrics for all teams.
This is not a good approach in Agile environments. Different teams have different success criteria, and enforcing one-size-fits-all metrics would reduce the relevance of measurement and discourage teams from tracking what truly matters to them. Agile encourages team autonomy, and metrics should be context-specific to be useful.
B: Group metrics into common categories for portfolio-level reporting.
This is the correct approach. Instead of enforcing the same metrics for all teams, leadership should categorize metrics into common themes (e.g., customer satisfaction, delivery efficiency, quality) while allowing each team to track relevant indicators within those categories. This ensures standardized reporting at the portfolio level while preserving team-level flexibility.
For example:
- Customer Satisfaction Metrics: NPS (Mobile Team), Data Accuracy (Data Warehouse Team).
- Delivery Efficiency Metrics: Cycle Time (Enterprise Software Team), Number of Reports Run (Data Warehouse Team).
This method allows leadership to aggregate performance insights without forcing teams to use the same KPIs.
C: Track only financial metrics like budget variance and revenue.
This oversimplifies performance measurement. While financial metrics are important, Agile success is measured by more than just revenue and cost. Agile encourages a broader perspective, including customer satisfaction, delivery efficiency, and product quality, making this option too narrow to be effective.
D: Ignore team-specific metrics and rely on executive reporting.
This is not a viable solution. Executive reporting should be based on data coming from teams, not independent summaries that ignore ground-level insights. Ignoring team-specific metrics would result in leadership making uninformed decisions based on incomplete or generalized data.
Conclusion
The best answer is Option B: Group metrics into common categories for portfolio-level reporting. This approach ensures consistent organizational insights while allowing teams to track what matters most to them. It aligns with Agile principles of team autonomy while ensuring portfolio-level visibility for leadership.
PMI – ACP Exam Content Outline Mapping
| Domain | Task |
| Delivery | Manage Agile Metrics |
Topics Covered:
- Aggregating Agile metrics across multiple teams
- Balancing standardization with team autonomy
- Creating portfolio-level visibility using metric categories
- Differentiating between team-specific and organization-level metrics
- Promoting consistent reporting without enforcing uniform KPIs
- Aligning measurement practices with Agile principles and organizational goals
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