Most Recent Scaled Agile SAFe-DevOps Exam Questions & Answers

According to the SAFe DevOps Practitioner 6.0 study guide1, Lean UX is used in Continuous Exploration to create a platform to continuously explore. Continuous Exploration is the process of creating alignment on what needs to be built, synthesizing Solution ideas into ART Backlog Features, and utilizing WSJF to prioritize a DevOps backlog. Lean UX is a team-based approach to building better products by focusing less on the theoretically ideal design and more on iterative learning, overall user experience, and customer outcomes. Lean UX design extends the traditional UX role beyond merely executing design elements and anticipating how users might interact with a system. Instead, it encourages a far more comprehensive view of why a Feature exists, the functionality required to implement it, and the benefits it delivers. By getting immediate feedback to understand if the system will meet the fundamental business objectives, Lean UX provides a closed-loop method for defining and measuring value. Therefore, Lean UX is used in Continuous Exploration to create a platform that enables teams to experiment with different hypotheses, validate their assumptions, and learn from their failures.

Two security skills that are part of the Continuous Integration aspect are application security and penetration testing. Application security is the practice of protecting the software applications from malicious attacks, unauthorized access, data breaches, and other threats. It involves applying security principles and techniques throughout the software development lifecycle, such as secure coding, code analysis, code review, security testing, and security monitoring.Application security helps to ensure that the software meets the security requirements and standards, and that it does not introduce any vulnerabilities or risks to the system or the users910

Penetration testing is the practice of simulating real-world attacks on the software applications to identify and exploit any security weaknesses or flaws. It involves using various tools and methods to probe, scan, attack, and bypass the security defenses of the software, such as firewalls, encryption, authentication, and authorization. Penetration testing helps to evaluate the security posture and resilience of the software, and to provide recommendations for improvement or remediation.Penetration testing is usually performed by external or independent experts, who have the permission and authorization to conduct the tests

After conducting current-state mapping in the context of Value Stream Mapping, a team should be able to identify and describe the biggest bottlenecks in the delivery pipeline. Current-state mapping is a process of visualizing the entire flow of a product or service from start to finish, highlighting each step and identifying where delays or inefficiencies occur. By understanding where these bottlenecks are, teams can then work on strategies to improve the overall flow, reduce lead times, and enhance efficiency. This step is crucial for identifying areas for improvement and setting the stage for future actions to optimize the Value Stream.

Gated commits are a key technical practice that enables trunk-based development. Gated commits are a mechanism that ensures that only code that passes certain quality checks and tests can be committed to the main trunk of the shared codebase. Gated commits prevent broken changes from affecting other developers or the Continuous Delivery Pipeline. Gated commits typically involve the following steps:

A developer writes code and runs local tests on their own machine or branch.

The developer pushes the code to a remote repository, where a pre-commit hook triggers a build and test process on a separate server.

The build and test process verifies that the code meets the quality standards and does not introduce any errors or conflicts with the existing code on the trunk.

If the build and test process succeeds, the code is automatically merged into the trunk and becomes available for other developers and downstream activities.

If the build and test process fails, the code is rejected and the developer is notified of the issues that need to be fixed before retrying the commit.

Gated commits support trunk-based development by ensuring that the trunk is always in a releasable state, which means that at least once a day, developers must integrate their changes to the trunk. This is accomplished through short-lived feature branches related to project tasks.Gated commits reduce the complexity and conflicts of merging long-lived branches, improve the quality and consistency of the code by enforcing frequent testing and validation, accelerate the delivery and deployment of new functionality by minimizing the transaction cost and risk, and foster a culture of collaboration and transparency among developers

The primary goal of the Stabilize activity is to avoid unplanned outages and security breaches. The Stabilize activity is part of the Release on Demand aspect of the CDP in SAFe DevOps, which ensures the solution is working well from a functional and nonfunctional requirements (NFR) perspective. The Stabilize activity involves practices such as monitoring, logging, alerting, incident response, and disaster recovery.These practices help to detect and resolve issues quickly, minimize the impact of failures, and restore normal operations as soon as possible