Which of the following MOST accurately describes DevOps?
D
Explanation:
DevOps is not simply a team, methodology, or standard. The PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6
materials define DevOps as a “cultural and professional movement” that stresses communication,
collaboration, integration, and automation to improve workflow between software developers and IT
operations professionals. The cultural transformation is fundamental, emphasizing shared
responsibilities, breaking down silos, and fostering continuous improvement.
Reference: DevOps Foundation v3.6 syllabus section 1.1; State of DevOps Report; "The Phoenix
Project".
Why is it important for IT to understand and support the business' "why"?
A
Explanation:
One of the core DevOps values is aligning IT efforts with business objectives—understanding the
business “why.” The Foundation syllabus highlights the need for IT to understand the organization's
purpose, cause, and belief. Without this, IT can’t effectively support value delivery or drive digital
transformation. Understanding the organizational “why” connects daily activities to strategic
objectives, a key DevOps mindset.
Reference: DevOps Foundation v3.6 syllabus section 1.2; "Start with Why" by Simon Sinek.
Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of DevOps?
C
Explanation:
A fast flow of unplanned work into production is not a characteristic of DevOps. In fact, DevOps
practices strive to minimize unplanned work (like emergency changes or outages) through
automation, testing, collaboration, and rigorous change control. The other options—ensuring
organizational success, working toward a common goal, and world-class stability/reliability—are all
key DevOps characteristics.
Reference: DevOps Foundation v3.6 syllabus section 1.4; State of DevOps Report.
According to the State of DevOps Reports, LOW performing organizations have:
D
Explanation:
The State of DevOps Reports show that LOW performing organizations have higher change failure
rates, meaning a larger percentage of changes lead to incidents, outages, or degraded service. In
contrast, high performers have more frequent deployments, faster lead times, and quicker recovery
from incidents.
Reference: DevOps Foundation v3.6 syllabus section 2.2; Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software
and DevOps.
A healthcare organization's software developers have been practicing agile development techniques
and have been able to make new features available at the end of every two-week sprint cycle. But
the set-up of the production processes and infrastructure means that they have to deploy to live
every quarter.
Why would DevOps be a solution to their problems?
A
Explanation:
When developers practice agile but operations is slow to deploy, it means IT Operations have not
kept pace—classic “left behind” scenario. DevOps aims to align development and operations,
breaking down barriers and enabling faster, safer, and more frequent deployments. DevOps is not
only about development (B is incorrect), does not break cadence but instead aligns it (C is incorrect),
and is not the same as agile but complements it (D is incorrect).
Reference: DevOps Foundation v3.6 syllabus section 1.5; The Phoenix Project; Accelerate.
Which of The Three Ways increases the flow of work from left to right?
A
Explanation:
The “Three Ways” are foundational principles in DevOps:
The First Way focuses on increasing the flow of work from left (development) to right (operations). It
is about optimizing the entire system for fast delivery, limiting bottlenecks, and enabling a rapid flow
of features and fixes to customers.
The Second Way is about amplifying feedback loops so corrections can be made early.
The Third Way emphasizes continual learning and experimentation.
Extract-style reference:
“The First Way emphasizes the performance of the entire system, as opposed to the performance of
a specific silo of work or department. The goal is to maximize the flow of work (value) from
Development to Operations to the customer.”
— Gene Kim, The Phoenix Project / DevOps Handbook
PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6 highlights this in the section on "Principles and Practices,"
emphasizing The First Way as critical to accelerating flow.
What is the BEST description of the Theory of Constraints?
A
Explanation:
Theory of Constraints is a methodology that seeks to identify the single, most important limiting
factor (constraint) in a process and systematically improve it until it’s no longer the limiting factor.
Extract-style reference:
“The Theory of Constraints provides a powerful framework for identifying bottlenecks (constraints)
that limit system performance and focusing improvement efforts on these areas to maximize
throughput.”
— Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints
DevOps Foundation syllabus discusses this as a foundational Lean concept, directly applicable to
software delivery pipelines, where delays or resource shortages can restrict overall throughput.
Which of the following is NOT a typical IT constraint?
B
Explanation:
Loosely coupled architectures are not typical IT constraints; in fact, they are often a solution to
constraints.
Typical IT constraints include:
Security assessments (slow approvals)
Bureaucratic processes (excessive paperwork or approvals)
Development delays (resource or tool bottlenecks)
Extract-style reference:
“Loosely coupled architectures enable teams to work independently, reducing constraints imposed
by tightly integrated systems.”
— Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps
DevOps Foundation v3.6 lists constraints as blockers to fast flow and highlights architectural
decoupling as a DevOps enabler.
An organization is finding that defects found in production had frequently already been identified
and recorded in testing and staging and sometimes, although they optimized performance locally,
they caused global degradation. Upon further inspection, it was found that this was happening
because the testing phase was often delayed due to constraints around resource availability,
impacting the flow of work from left to right.
Which of The Three Ways should they took to for direction on how to resolve the situation?
A
Explanation:
When work is delayed due to resource availability or local optimizations causing global degradation,
the issue relates to The First Way—maximizing flow from left to right.
Organizations should analyze and remove bottlenecks in the delivery pipeline (e.g., in testing).
Extract-style reference:
“Optimizing the flow of work requires eliminating bottlenecks, delays, and handoffs that slow the
movement of changes from development to operations.”
— The Phoenix Project
DevOps Foundation courseware discusses value stream mapping and the First Way as critical tools for
diagnosing and correcting such issues.
An organization has identified they have a culture of blame where people are fearful of failure and
lack the courage to try new things.
What can they do to encourage more courageous and experimentational behaviors?
C
Explanation:
A blame culture is toxic and inhibits innovation. DevOps encourages a culture where risk-taking and
experimentation are rewarded, not punished.
Organizations should "build rituals that reward risk taking"—examples include celebrating “fast
failures” and running blameless post-mortems.
Extract-style reference:
“Encourage a culture where failure is seen as a learning opportunity, not a cause for punishment.
Rituals that reward risk-taking foster innovation and create psychological safety.”
— DevOps Handbook
DevOps Foundation v3.6 (Cultural Principles section) advocates psychological safety, learning from
failure, and reward systems that incentivize experimentation.
Which statement is NOT TRUE?
D
Explanation:
Let’s clarify what these terms mean in DevOps:
Continuous Integration (CI): Developers integrate code into a shared repository frequently (ideally
daily), with each integration automatically verified by tests.
Continuous Delivery (CD): Ensures software is always in a releasable state. Every change can be
deployed to production, but the deployment itself may be a manual decision.
Continuous Deployment: Every change that passes automated tests is automatically deployed to
production, without manual intervention.
Why is D (“Continuous Deployment requires a manual push button”) NOT TRUE?
Because Continuous Deployment is about no manual intervention—once code passes all tests, it’s
automatically pushed live. Manual deployment is a feature of Continuous Delivery, not Continuous
Deployment.
Extract-style reference:
“Continuous Deployment means that every change goes through the pipeline and is automatically
put into production, resulting in many production deployments every day.”
— Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps, Jez Humble & Nicole Forsgren
DevOps Foundation v3.6 distinguishes between Continuous Delivery (manual trigger) and
Continuous Deployment (fully automated).
Which of the following is an example of a "shift left" testing strategy?
C
Explanation:
Shift Left Testing means moving testing earlier in the development process, so defects are found
sooner and fixes are cheaper.
Unit testing as part of CI is the classic “shift left” strategy: automated unit tests run with every code
change, catching errors before code moves further down the pipeline.
Testing in production (A) is “shift right.”
Manual testing (B) is typically late-stage and not automated.
Biannual vulnerability assessments (D) are after-the-fact and far from “shift left.”
Extract-style reference:
“Shift left means performing testing activities earlier, for example by including unit tests in the CI
process, reducing costly late-stage defects.”
— DevOps Handbook
PeopleCert Foundation: “Shift left” is a key DevOps testing principle—find issues fast, fix fast, deploy
safely.
What is one of the PRIMARY benefits of Continuous Delivery?
C
Explanation:
Continuous Delivery’s primary benefit is that it reduces the cost, time, and risk of delivering
incremental changes. By keeping software deployable at all times, teams can ship small, low-risk
releases as needed.
A: Prioritizing features over deployability increases risk.
B: Not all releases are deployed immediately; CD keeps them ready.
D: CD doesn’t automate everything—some manual steps may remain, especially in Continuous
Delivery (vs. Continuous Deployment).
Extract-style reference:
“Continuous Delivery reduces deployment pain by ensuring that code is always in a deployable state,
decreasing the cost, time, and risk associated with releases.”
— Continuous Delivery, Jez Humble & David Farley
PeopleCert Syllabus: Highlights CD as a strategy for safer, more efficient business change.
Which of the following DevOps practices encourages conversation driven development, delivery and
support?
B
Explanation:
ChatOps is the DevOps practice of using chat platforms (like Slack, Teams, Mattermost) as the central
interface for communication, collaboration, and even automated deployment or support tasks.
It encourages “conversation-driven development, delivery, and support,” making processes
transparent and collaborative.
Second Way (A) is about feedback loops, but not specifically conversational platforms.
Communication Platforms (C) is a generic term.
VisOps (D) is not a standard DevOps term.
Extract-style reference:
“ChatOps is a collaboration model that connects people, tools, process, and automation into a
transparent workflow. Teams communicate and execute commands from a central chat client.”
— DevOps Handbook
PeopleCert Foundation v3.6: ChatOps promotes rapid feedback and a culture of sharing.
A team has recently introduced their first Kanban board and are saying that they are finding it hard to
focus and are feeling exhausted from context switching. Additionally, the business is complaining
that nothing is being finished and they are yet to receive any of what they asked for.
What do the team need to do?
C
Explanation:
When Kanban teams feel overwhelmed and nothing is getting finished, it’s a sign that too much work
is in progress (WIP).
Work in Progress (WIP) limits are a key Kanban and Lean practice: they restrict how many tasks can
be active at one time, forcing teams to focus, finish, and deliver before starting new work.
Pushing more work (A) or adding more resources (B) worsens the problem.
Unblocking work (D) is helpful, but the core issue is overload.
Extract-style reference:
“WIP limits encourage teams to finish work before starting new tasks, reducing context switching and
enabling better flow and faster delivery.”
— Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business, David J. Anderson
PeopleCert DevOps Foundation: Limiting WIP is essential for effective flow and sustainable pace.