PMI-ACP Practice Questions #84
Your Agile team is developing a new feature for an e-commerce platform that allows users to track their orders in real-time. The Product Owner has added the following user story to the backlog:
“As a customer, I want to track my order status from purchase to delivery, so that I know where my package is at all times.”
During backlog refinement, the team realizes that this story is too large to complete within a single sprint. The team asks the Product Owner to slice it into smaller, more manageable user stories.
Which of the following slicing approaches is the best?
A. Track order status via the app, send order status updates via SMS, and send order notifications via email.
B. Develop the tracking user interface, build the API for notifications, and implement integrated testing.
C. Customers can track their own orders, admins can view tracking history for support, and the logistics team can update order tracking information.
D. User enters order information, request is processed, and order status is shared via web, email, and SMS.
Analysis
The team is developing a real-time order tracking feature for an e-commerce platform. The initial user story is too large to complete within a single sprint, so it needs to be sliced into smaller, more manageable user stories. The best slicing approach should follow Agile best practices, ensuring that each smaller story remains independent, valuable, and testable (INVEST criteria) while preserving user functionality. The ideal breakdown should allow incremental development and deliverable value in each iteration.
Analysis of Options:
A: Track order status via the app, send order status updates via SMS, and send order notifications via email.
This is the best slicing approach because it divides the feature based on different delivery channels while keeping each slice independent and testable. Each of these stories can be developed, tested, and released separately, adding value incrementally. Customers benefit from each individual update method, ensuring continuous delivery of functionality rather than waiting for the entire feature to be completed.
B: Develop the tracking user interface, build the API for notifications, and implement integrated testing.
This is not a good slicing approach because it is technical-task-oriented rather than user-value-oriented. Agile user stories should be functional and deliver business value, not just break down the implementation process. The UI, API, and testing are components of the same feature and cannot be delivered independently to provide incremental value.
C: Customers can track their own orders, admins can view tracking history for support, and the logistics team can update order tracking information.
This option expands the scope of the original story beyond the customer. The initial user story is only about the customer’s experience, so including admin and logistics functionality is not appropriate slicing for this specific feature. While these may be valid future stories, they are not relevant subdivisions of the current user story.
D: User enters order information, request is processed, and order status is shared via web, email, and SMS.
This option breaks the story into process steps rather than independent features. The dependencies between these steps make them less independent and testable. If an Agile team works on only “request processing” in a sprint without delivering a trackable status, no customer value is realized until all steps are completed. The slicing should allow smaller, independently testable increments of value.
Conclusion
The best choice is Option A (Track order status via the app, send order status updates via SMS, and send order notifications via email) because it ensures that each user story remains independent, testable, and delivers value to the end user. Option B is too technical, Option C expands beyond the scope of the original story, and Option D creates interdependencies that hinder incremental delivery.
PMI – ACP Exam Content Outline Mapping
| Domain | Task |
| Product | Refine Product Backlog |
Topics Covered:
- Slice user stories based on independent, testable, and valuable increments of functionality.
- Ensure each slice provides user-facing value and can be delivered independently in a sprint.
- Avoid slicing by technical components (e.g., UI, API, testing) as it does not produce user-visible value.
- Prioritize functional slicing such as different delivery channels (e.g., app, SMS, email) to allow incremental releases.
- Prevent breaking stories into sequential process steps that introduce dependencies and delay value delivery.
- Keep slicing aligned with the original user story scope rather than expanding to unrelated roles or functions.
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