10 free PMI ACP practice questions with the correct answer and a full explanation for each, taken from the CertStash pack of 497 questions. Work through them, then open each answer to check your reasoning.
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Question 1
A newly formed development team experienced difficulty with accurately estimating product backlog items. As a result, the team failed to deliver all of the features in the sprint backlog for the past two iterations.
What should the team do to improve the accuracy of their estimates?
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B. Discuss estimating techniques in the daily scrum meeting
Estimation is a team skill, so the fix is for the team to talk about how they estimate and adjust their technique together. Of the choices offered, only a team conversation about estimating techniques attacks the actual cause of the misses, and the daily scrum gives the team a frequent checkpoint to surface where the work is diverging from the estimate so they can re-plan the sprint. Deeper analysis and agreements on estimating practice then carry into refinement and the retrospective.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Shrinking the timebox tightens the constraint without teaching the team anything about why their estimates were off.
- C. Adding people does not make estimates more accurate and typically slows a new team down further.
- D. Feeding estimates into performance evaluation pushes the team toward padding and defensive estimating instead of honest forecasts.
Question 2
Midway through a sprint, the scrum master identifies that reassigning a certain task could help the team meet its sprint's goals.
What should the scrum master do next?
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: D. Ask the team to decide if the task should be reassigned
When a scrum master identifies a potential improvement midway through a sprint, the scrum master's role is to facilitate team decision-making, not to make unilateral changes. The scrum master should ask the team to decide whether the task reassignment aligns with their sprint goals and capacity. This respects the team's self-organization and commitment to the sprint while leveraging the scrum master's observation of potential impediments.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Prematurely declaring sprint goals at risk is alarmist and removes the team's agency in solving the problem.
- B. While obtaining team buy-in is important, the scrum master should first present the observation as a suggestion for the team to evaluate.
- C. Proceeding as planned ignores a valuable insight that could help the team succeed and demonstrates ineffective facilitation.
Question 3
During the iteration planning of a newly on boarded agile team, the product owner adds a set of high priority user stories into the iteration backlog.
What should the team do first to define the tasks need to implement the user stories?
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A. Self-organize
Agile teams are self-organizing units responsible for determining how to accomplish their work. During iteration planning, after the product owner presents the user stories, the team should first self-organize to break down those stories into tasks and define the implementation approach. This is a core agile principle that leverages the team's collective expertise and ownership.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Assigning tasks before the team has discussed and understood the work violates self-organization and may result in misaligned effort.
- C. Meeting with the customer at this stage is typically the product owner's responsibility; the team should work with clarified requirements from the product owner.
- D. Identifying the scrum master is irrelevant to defining tasks; the scrum master facilitates but doesn't drive task definition.
Question 4
A project's first iteration contains item A, and its second iteration contains item B. The first iteration is behind schedule, which will impact the second iteration.
Since items A and B are similar, a team member suggests beginning the design of item B.
What should the agile practitioner do?
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A. Defer starting the design of item B until the second iteration is being planned
Work is pulled into an iteration through iteration planning, not started ahead of time because a delay makes it look convenient. Designing item B now is unplanned work that competes with the commitment the team already made for the current iteration, and the design would be based on information that may change once item A is finished. The practitioner should hold item B until the second iteration is planned, when priorities, capacity and what was learned from item A can all be considered.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Starting future iteration work breaks the current iteration focus and can produce design that has to be reworked once item A is actually completed.
- C. The customer sets priorities for the backlog, but deciding when the team pulls in planned work is the team's responsibility at iteration planning.
- D. Agile teams do maintain risk logs, however routing an ordinary sequencing decision through a change control board adds a heavyweight approval gate that does not belong here.
Question 5
An Agile team is under pressure to deliver an application. The product owner anticipates many change requests from customers once the product is released.
What should the agile team do?
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B. Continuously work with the product owner to do backlog refinement and product reviews
When facing anticipated change requests, agile teams should embrace continuous collaboration between the product owner and the team through regular backlog refinement and product reviews. This ongoing engagement ensures that emerging customer needs are understood early, prioritized appropriately, and incorporated into upcoming iterations. This proactive approach reduces waste from rework and keeps the product aligned with customer expectations.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Demanding frequent reviews without a structured refinement process is reactive and doesn't address the root cause of anticipated changes.
- C. Detailed requirement specifications are contrary to agile principles and won't prevent change requests; customers often discover needs as they see working software.
- D. Ensuring commitment to fixed specifications ignores the reality of changing customer needs and conflicts with agile's embrace of change.
Question 6
During iteration planning, it was determined that an epic should be decomposed.
What was the determining factor?
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A. Size and priority
Epics are decomposed into smaller user stories based on size and priority. An epic that is too large to fit within a sprint or that has mixed priorities needs to be broken down so that high-priority, right-sized stories can be pulled into iterations. Size ensures stories are estimable and completable; priority ensures the team works on the most valuable items first.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Minimum marketable features relate to release planning but aren't the determining factor for decomposing an epic during iteration planning.
- C. A release plan provides context but isn't the determining factor; epics are decomposed based on their intrinsic size and priority.
- D. Sprint mapping isn't a standard agile term and doesn't explain why an epic would be decomposed.
Question 7
What should a scrum master do when one team member falls behind in their tasks?
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B. Ask the team for suggestions
When a team member falls behind, the scrum master should facilitate a team discussion to identify solutions collaboratively. This respects the team's self-organization, leverages collective problem-solving, and often uncovers impediments or blockers that the scrum master alone wouldn't see. The team may suggest task reassignment, pair programming, or removal of obstacles, solutions that come from the team's perspective.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Unilaterally moving tasks removes the struggling team member from the proble-olving process and may not address underlying impediments.
- C. Private encouragement, while supportive, doesn't address systemic issues or blockers and may feel dismissive if there are actual obstacles.
- D. Notifying the product owner escalates prematurely and suggests a performance issue rather than facilitating team support and problem-solving.
Question 8
A newly formed scrum team wants to foster an environment for transparency and experimentation. The team decides to use a Kanban board to record and track encountered impediments. Emphasis is placed on how issues are resolved and the strategies for preventing them in the future.
Over time, what will be the result of this approach?
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A. Kaizen
Kaizen is the Japanese philosophy of continuous, incremental improvement through small, ongoing changes. By systematically recording impediments, analyzing how they were resolved, and identifying prevention strategies, the team embodies kaizen principles. Over time, this disciplined approach to learning from obstacles drives sustained process improvement and operational excellence.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. SMART goals are useful for defining specific objectives but don't capture the continuous improvement philosophy the team is cultivating.
- C. KPIs are metrics for measuring performance but don't describe the cultural approach of learning from impediments and preventing recurrence.
- D. Muda refers to waste elimination in lean thinking but doesn't capture the team's emphasis on learning and improvement through impediment tracking.
Question 9
A mature agile team welcomes a new member. Due to poor experiences with a previous team, the new member is reluctant to communicate.
What should be the agile project leader do?
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B. Assure the new member that inputs on impediments are valued, and demonstrate this at the next meeting
The agile project leader should assure the new member that their input on impediments is valued and then demonstrate this commitment by actively inviting and acknowledging their contributions at the next meeting. This builds psychological safety and trust gradually, addressing the root cause of reluctance. The leader validates the member's concerns while creating a safe environment for participation.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Bringing up the impediment publicly without prior one-on-one reassurance may embarrass the new member and reinforce their reluctance to speak.
- C. Assigning a senior leader creates a dependency that prevents the new member from integrating with their actual team and building direct relationships.
- D. Addressing only privately without demonstrating change at team meetings fails to show the new member that their input is actually valued in the group setting.
Question 10
During a sprint, the team encounters a technical problem that becomes an impediment to completing two stories.
What should the scrum master do?
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: D. Create a collaborative team environment so that the team can explore a solution together
The scrum master's role is to remove impediments by facilitating the team's ability to solve problems collaboratively. Creating a collaborative environment where the team explores solutions together builds capability, ownership, and knowledge sharing. This approach strengthens the team's problem-solving capacity rather than creating dependencies on external experts.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Relying solely on the lead developer centralizes problem-solving and misses the opportunity for team learning and distributed ownership.
- B. Escalating to management creates external dependencies and removes agency from the team to solve their own technical challenges.
- C. Deferring the problem to the next sprint delays resolution and extends the current sprint's impediment unnecessarily.
That was 10 of 497.
The full PMI ACP pack has all 497 questions, each with the answer, the explanation and why the other options are wrong, plus a questions-only copy for timed runs. US$39, paid once, with free monthly updates and a pass-or-your-money-back guarantee.