PMI-ACP Practice Questions #85
Your Agile team is developing a personal finance management app that enables users to track expenses, set budgets, and monitor savings goals. The Product Owner has created the following user stories:
1️. “As a working professional, I want to add expenses to different categories, so that I can track where I spend my money.”
2️. “As a working professional, I want the app to generate monthly financial reports with advanced data visualization and AI-powered insights to predict my spending habits.”
3️. “As a working professional, I want to receive notifications when I exceed my budget, so that I can adjust my spending.”
During backlog refinement, the team evaluates these stories to determine their readiness for the upcoming sprint.
Which of the following options correctly identifies the best approach for sprint planning?
A. Story 1 and Story 3 are well-structured and ready for development, but Story 2 is too broad and needs to be split into smaller, manageable stories.
B. Story 2 provides the most business value and should be set as the Sprint Goal, prioritizing its completion over the others.
C. Story 2 and Story 3 are more valuable as they provide direct benefits to users through reporting and alerts.
D. Story 1 is too small and should be merged with Story 3 to make it more substantial and valuable.
Analysis
The Agile team is refining the backlog for an upcoming sprint and needs to determine which user stories are ready for development and which ones require further refinement. The primary concern is story sizing and readiness, as Story 2 appears too broad, making it likely an epic rather than a sprint-sized user story. A good sprint-ready story should be independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small, and testable (INVEST criteria). The correct approach will ensure that the team can efficiently plan and execute their sprint without taking on overly large or unclear work items.
Analysis of Options:
A: Story 1 and Story 3 are well-structured and ready for development, but Story 2 is too broad and needs to be split into smaller, manageable stories.
This is the best choice because it correctly identifies that Story 2 is too large and needs to be broken down before it can be developed in a sprint. Story 1 (expense tracking) and Story 3 (budget alerts) appear to be smaller, independent features that can be delivered in a single sprint, making them suitable for planning. This aligns with Agile best practices, ensuring that stories are small, actionable, and ready for immediate development.
B: Story 2 provides the most business value and should be set as the Sprint Goal, prioritizing its completion over the others.
This is incorrect because Story 2 is too large and vague to be completed in a single sprint. It includes advanced data visualization and AI-powered insights, which indicate that multiple functionalities are involved. Setting such a broad story as a sprint goal is impractical and risky, as the team may not complete it in one sprint. Additionally, business value alone does not determine sprint priority—stories must be sized appropriately for incremental delivery.
C: Story 2 and Story 3 are more valuable as they provide direct benefits to users through reporting and alerts.
While reporting and alerts are valuable features, this option incorrectly prioritizes features based solely on perceived user benefit rather than considering story readiness and feasibility for sprint development. Additionally, Story 1 (categorizing expenses) provides necessary input data for reporting and alerts. Without properly categorized expenses, reports and alerts would lack meaningful data, making this an incorrect assumption.
D: Story 1 is too small and should be merged with Story 3 to make it more substantial and valuable.
This is not a good approach because Agile encourages breaking down stories, not merging them. A smaller, well-defined user story is preferable to a larger, more complex one. Story 1 (categorizing expenses) and Story 3 (budget alerts) are separate functionalities, meaning they should be developed independently rather than merged into a larger, harder-to-manage story.
Conclusion
The best choice is Option A (Story 1 and Story 3 are well-structured and ready for development, while Story 2 needs to be broken down into smaller, manageable stories). This approach follows Agile principles of incremental delivery, ensures sprint-ready stories, and prevents oversized work items from disrupting sprint execution. Options B, C, and D either ignore the importance of story sizing or make incorrect assumptions about feature dependencies and value delivery.
PMI – ACP Exam Content Outline Mapping
| Domain | Task |
| Product | Refine Product Backlog |
Topics Covered:
- Ensure user stories are small, actionable, and meet the INVEST criteria (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable).
- Identify and refine large or vague stories (like Story 2) into smaller, manageable stories before including them in sprint planning.
- Avoid merging unrelated user stories (e.g., Story 1 and Story 3), as each should deliver value independently.
- Prioritize sprint-ready stories over high-value but oversized stories that cannot be completed in a single sprint.
- Recognize that business value alone does not determine sprint priority—stories must also be feasible for development within the sprint.
- Promote progressive elaboration, ensuring that complex features (e.g., AI-powered insights) are broken down into incremental, testable units.
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