PMP Exam Flashcards: Agile, Scrum, Hybrid Approaches, Servant Leadership

Agile project management is an iterative, incremental approach that delivers work in short cycles called iterations or sprints, typically two to four weeks. Requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams and stakeholders. Predictive, or waterfall, project management follows a sequential approach where each phase must be completed before the next begins and the full scope is defined upfront. Agile embraces change and delivers value incrementally, while predictive minimizes change and delivers value at the end.

Scrum defines three roles. The Product Owner represents the customer and stakeholders, owns and prioritizes the product backlog, defines acceptance criteria, and makes decisions about what to build and in what order. The Scrum Master serves the team as a servant leader, removes impediments, coaches the team on Scrum practices, and protects the team from external interruptions. The Development Team is a self-organizing, cross-functional group of professionals who do the work of delivering increments. There is no project manager role in Scrum.

A sprint is a fixed-length iteration, typically two to four weeks, during which the Scrum team creates a potentially shippable product increment. Each sprint begins with sprint planning where the team selects items from the product backlog and creates the sprint backlog. Daily standups, or daily scrums, provide brief synchronization. At the end, the sprint review demonstrates completed work to stakeholders for feedback, and the sprint retrospective examines the team's process for improvement. Sprints are timeboxed, meaning they do not extend if work is unfinished.

The product backlog is an ordered, prioritized list of everything that might be needed in the product, owned and maintained by the Product Owner. Items are described as user stories with varying levels of detail and are continuously refined. The sprint backlog is the subset of product backlog items selected for the current sprint plus the plan for delivering them, owned by the Development Team. The product backlog is dynamic and evolves throughout the project as requirements emerge, while the sprint backlog is relatively stable during the sprint.

A user story is a short, informal description of a desired feature written from the end user's perspective, following the format: "As a [type of user], I want [goal] so that [benefit]." For example, "As a customer, I want to save my shopping cart so that I can complete my purchase later." User stories are intentionally brief to encourage conversation between the team and the Product Owner about the details. Acceptance criteria define when the story is complete. The INVEST acronym describes good user stories: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable.

Velocity is the amount of work a team completes in a sprint, measured in story points or other relative estimation units. It is calculated by summing the story points of all completed user stories at the end of each sprint. After several sprints, the team's average velocity becomes a reliable predictor of how much work they can accomplish in future sprints. Velocity is used for release planning by dividing the total remaining story points by average velocity to estimate how many sprints the project will need.

Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy where the leader's primary role is to serve the team by removing obstacles, providing resources, coaching, and creating an environment where team members can perform their best work. Rather than directing and controlling, the servant leader empowers, facilitates, and supports. The PMP exam emphasizes servant leadership because PMI's current approach values adaptive leadership styles over command-and-control.

A hybrid approach combines elements of predictive and agile methodologies within the same project, tailoring the approach to fit the work. For example, a construction project might use predictive planning for the building structure with a fixed scope and sequential phases, while using agile for the software systems installation where requirements evolve. Hybrid approaches recognize that few real-world projects are purely predictive or purely agile.

Scrum defines five events. Sprint Planning determines what will be delivered in the sprint and how the work will be accomplished. The Daily Scrum is a fifteen-minute standup where team members share progress, plans, and impediments. The Sprint is the container event, a timebox of two to four weeks during which work is completed. The Sprint Review inspects the increment with stakeholders and adapts the product backlog based on feedback. The Sprint Retrospective examines the team's process and identifies improvements for the next sprint.

A Kanban board is a visual management tool that displays work items as cards moving through columns representing workflow stages, typically "To Do," "In Progress," and "Done." Unlike Scrum, Kanban does not use fixed-length sprints or prescribed roles. Work flows continuously with a focus on limiting work in progress, or WIP limits, in each column to prevent bottlenecks. Scrum delivers in timeboxed iterations with defined ceremonies, while Kanban emphasizes continuous flow and throughput. ---