Exam 70-498 Delivering Continuous Value with Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management

Published: June 8, 2014
Languages: English, Chinese (Simplified), French, German, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil)
Audiences: IT professionals
Technology: Visual Studio 2015
Credit toward certification: MCP, MCSD

Skills measured
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Define an effective end-to-end Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) (15-20%)
Understand the value of an end-to-end view of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools and practices
Understand that an observable problem may be indicative of a more general process issue; explain the difference between optimizing a piece of the ALM process, such as manual testing, and optimizing the entire ALM process
Explain the benefits of fast feedback
Explain the importance of fast feedback related to communicating requirements, explain the benefits of end customer feedback to early software iterations
Implement strategies to reduce end-to-end cycle time
Identify bottlenecks in the delivery process, identify metrics that highlight bottlenecks, create potential solutions whose effectiveness can be validated, understand the relationship between work in process (WIP) and cycle time
Implement strategies to improve software quality
Identify process steps that introduce defects, understand the end-to-end quality process, bring quality efforts early in the development cycle
Implement strategies to reduce waste
Identify wasteful activities, create strategies to eliminate waste, measure the effectiveness of waste removal activities
Create a process improvement plan
Create strategies for implementing organizational change, identify key metrics to be tracked during the improvement effort, create consensus for the change

Preparation resources
Agile software development with Microsoft Visual Studio ALM
Applying ALM with Visual Studio 2012: (02) Define an effective end-to-end software development lifecycle
Adopting Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server for Application Lifecycle Management

Define the ALM process (15-20%)
Role of different ALM processes
Understand the cost and benefits of the key ALM processes, including agile, scrum, waterfall, and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)
Implement a scrum/agile process
Establish self-organizing teams; holding a scrum/agile planning meeting, hold daily scrums/stand-up meetings, hold retrospective meetings, hold scrum review meetings
Define a scrum/agile process for a team
Establish criteria on when to cancel a sprint/iteration, establish tooling and process for scrum/agile artifacts, establish the scrum definition of “done,” determine sprint/iteration length, determine how to handle backlog items/user stories not completed in a sprint/iteration, determine how to monitor sprint/iteration progress, use collaborative tools
Implement Microsoft Solution Framework (MSF) for CMMI process improvement
Establish project drivers (scope-driven, date-driven), assign product requirements to iterations, manage changes, manage issues

Preparation resources
Applying ALM with Visual Studio 2012: (03) Define the ALM process
MSF for Agile Software Development v5.0

Define a software iteration (15-20%)
Plan a release
Identify a flexibility matrix, identify releases based on priority items in flexibility matrix and release criteria, resource planning (scrum team is responsible for allocating team members), identify techniques to optimize a team that is geographically distributed, select a project methodology, risk management
Define a project-tracking process
Plan and manage a portfolio of multiple projects, identify a project tracking tool and an associated process (triage process, bug management), define how to manage effort, determine team forecast management, define a prioritization scheme, determine how to validate project health
Scope a project
Scope the effort for a release, define an architecture design process, define scope boundaries (is/is not list), determine the definition of “done,” define a process when effort estimates are significantly inaccurate

Preparation resources
Applying ALM with Visual Studio 2012: (04) Define a software iteration
Planning an iteration (CMMI)
Reports (SQL Server Reporting Services)

Define end value for the software iteration (15-20%)
Elicit requirements
Define project requirements, review and clarify requirements, define acceptance criteria, define UI platform requirements (web, mobile), assign a business value
Estimate requirements
Manage and assign effort estimates (assign story points); resize user requirements into smaller, manageable pieces; execute task breakdown; estimate the requirements baseline
Document requirements
Define acceptance criteria, list requirements, add requirement details, design UI storyboards
Prioritize requirements
Identify requirements that are critical path, identify must-have requirements, enable the entire team (including customers) to participate in requirements prioritization, identify dependencies

Preparation resources
Managing requirements and user expectations in agile projects
Applying ALM with Visual Studio 2012: (05) Define end value for the software iteration
Develop requirements

Develop customer value with high quality (15-20%)
Define code quality indicators
Perform code review, including security and performance analysis; analyze code for common defects; calculate code coverage; perform architecture validation
Incorporate unit testing
Establish unit test standards, develop a strategy for adding unit tests to existing applications, select the unit test type, establish the code coverage target, use shims and stubs to isolate your application
Develop code
Develop maintainable code; define coding standards; define application architecture; define configuration management process and tooling, including source control tree, branching strategy, solution structure, source control/check-in policy; manage multiple repositories using Git; use architecture, model, and design tools; use quality and diagnostic tools
Validate quality
Organize test artifacts, such as test cases, suites, plans, and requirements; define test strategy; manage test execution; perform cloud-based load testing; identify test types and associated tools; identify and configure environments; analyze test runs
Customize a team project
Customize a work item, customize work item queries, customize Team Portal, identify areas and iterations, manage roles and associated permissions

Preparation resources
Applying ALM with Visual Studio 2012: (06) Develop customer value with high quality
Verifying code by using unit tests
Customize team projects and processes

Integrate development and operations (15-20%)
Implement an automated deployment process
Architect an automated build and deploy workflow, integrate automated tests, automate deployment into both test and production environments, review diagnostic logs for builds, manage releases including Release Management
Implement pre-production environments
Automate the creation of virtual test lab environments, automate deployment into virtual test environments
Manage feedback between development and operations
Implement tools to simplify communication; identify, measure, and report key analytics and performance indicators, such as cycle time and mean time to repair (MTTR); create appropriate shared artifacts and process to facilitate communication; standardize required artifacts for defect reports; create strategies for test case reuse (both automated and manual) in production; monitor an application in production to optimize usage and performance
Troubleshoot production issues
Gather defect data from bugs in a production setting, provide actionable data to the development team, monitor applications running in production for potential issues, manage incident response times collaboratively between development and operations, use Application Insights appropriately

Preparation resources
Applying ALM with Visual Studio 2012: (07) Integrate development and operations
Setting up test machines to run tests or collect data
DevOps: Integrating development and operations for the last mile velocity

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QUESTION 1
You are utilizing the Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 2.0 process template.
Your development team uses the storyboard feature in Visual Studio 2012.
You need to ensure that there is consistency of user interface between different features of the product.
What should you do?

A. Create a design guide document with images of sample standard layouts. Provide a copy of this document to all team members.
B. Create custom storyboard shapes by using Microsoft PowerPoint that match your corporate standard user interface (UI) controls. Export these and make them available to the team as an import for use in all storyboards.
C. Create custom storyboard shapes in PowerPoint that match your corporate standard UI controls. Save the results as a PowerPoint template in the SharePoint site associated with the Team project collection. Instruct team members to import the shapes.
D. Create images of your UI controls as GIF/JPEG files that match your corporate standard UI controls. Export these and make them available to the team as an import for use in all storyboards.

Answer: B

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QUESTION 2
You manage a software development project that includes multiple feature teams. The teams integrate their code into a shared code repository as frequently as possible.
You plan to configure a build definition by using the default build process template (DefaultTemplate.xaml).
You need to know when a check-in from a feature team has broken the build or caused a test to fail, without impacting the feature team.
What should you do?

A. Set the Analyze Test Impact parameter to True in the build process template.
B. Set the build trigger to Continuous Integration and enable automated testing.
C. Add the Builds check-in policy to your team project.
D. Create a shelveset command for pending changes. Queue a build using the latest source with the shelveset parameter.

Answer: B

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QUESTION 3
You are a scrum master.
You need to lead the daily scrum meeting.
Which three questions should you ask? (Each correct answer presents part of the solution. Choose three.)

A. What will be done before the next meeting?
B. What went well?
C. What has been accomplished since the last meeting?
D. Are there any potential improvements?
E. What obstacles are in the way?
F. Is the burndown up to date?

Answer: A,C,E

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QUESTION 4
You manage a project that has three teams working in parallel on a single codebase using a Scrum process methodology.
You need to ensure that each team can manage work separately while editing a shared code base.
What should you do?

A. Within a single team project, create separate iteration paths for each team. Assign each team member to their respective iteration path.
B. Create a team project for each team, assigning different team members to each team project.
C. Within a single team project, create three teams. Assign each team member to their respective teams.
D. Create a team project for each team, assigning all team members to each team project.

Answer: C

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QUESTION 5
Your development team is using the Microsoft Solution Framework (MSF) for Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Process Improvement 6.0 process template.
The team has identified all of the acceptance criteria for a new application. This data currently resides in a series of spreadsheets.
You need to enter the criteria into TFS for team traceability and tracking.
Which two actions should you perform? (Each correct answer presents part of the solution. Choose two.)

A. Create test case work items for each criterion in the spreadsheet. Link the test case work items with the work item(s) for the appropriate requirements.
B. Create Requirement work items.
C. Create a new task work item for each criterion in the spreadsheet. Set the Triage attribute for each task work item to Information Received.
D. Create a new quality of service test case work item for each criterion in the spreadsheet. Link the quality of service test case work items with the work item(s) for the appropriate requirements.

Answer: A,B

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