Overview

Language(s):	English, Japanese
Audiences(s):	IT Professionals
Technology:	Microsoft Visual Studio 2012
Type:	Proctored Exam

Exam Topics Covered

The following books include topic areas covered on this exam:

Professional Scrum Development with Microsoft Visual Studio 2012
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012: Adopting Agile Software Practices: From Backlog to Continuous Feedback (3rd Edition)
Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2012

Audience Profile

Candidates for this exam typically use Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 to keep their teams focused on customer value and to structure their organizations to deliver quality software frequently and reliably. These candidates inspect and help streamline activities across all roles and throughout the entire development life cycle.

The qualified candidate has:

a strong understanding of current process improvement practices.
a strong understanding of popular software development life cycle (SDLC) methodologies, including Scrum, Kanban, and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), as well as umbrella practices such as Agile and Lean.
high-level technical experience with Microsoft tools used to improve software development effectiveness.

Credit Toward Certification

Exam 70-498: Delivering Continuous Value with Visual Studio 2012 Application Lifecycle Management: counts as credit toward the following certification(s):

MCSD: Application Lifecycle Management

Note This preparation guide is subject to change at any time without prior notice and at the sole discretion of Microsoft. Microsoft exams might include adaptive testing technology and simulation items. Microsoft does not identify the format in which exams are presented. Please use this preparation guide to prepare for the exam, regardless of its format.

Skills Measured

Define an Effective End-to-End Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) (17%)

Understand the value of an end-to-end view of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools and practices.

This objective may include but is not limited to: understanding that an observable problem may be indicative of a more general process issue; explaining 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.

This objective may include but is not limited to: explaining the importance of fast feedback related to communicating requirements; explaining the benefits of end customer feedback to early software iterations
Implement strategies to reduce end-to-end cycle time.

This objective may include but is not limited to: identifying bottlenecks in the delivery process; identifying metrics that highlight bottlenecks; creating potential solutions whose effectiveness can be validated; understanding the relationship between work in process (WIP) and cycle time
Implement strategies to improve software quality.

This objective may include but is not limited to: identifying process steps that introduce defects; understanding the end-to-end quality process; bringing quality efforts early in the development cycle
Implement strategies to reduce waste.

This objective may include but is not limited to: identifying wasteful activities; creating strategies to eliminate waste; measuring the effectiveness of waste removal activities
Create a process improvement plan.

This objective may include but is not limited to: creating strategies for implementing organizational change; identifying key metrics to be tracked during the improvement effort; creating consensus for the change

Define the ALM Process (16%)

Role of different ALM processes.

This objective may include but is not limited to: understanding the cost and benefits of the key ALM processes including Agile, Scrum, waterfall, and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)
Implement a Scrum/Agile process.

This objective may include but is not limited to: establishing self-organizing teams; holding a Scrum/Agile planning meeting; holding daily Scrums/stand-up meetings; holding retrospective meetings; holding Scrum review meetings
Define a Scrum/Agile process for a team.

This objective may include but is not limited to: establishing criteria on when to cancel a sprint/iteration; establishing tooling and process for Scrum/Agile artifacts; establishing the Scrum definition of “done”; determining sprint/iteration length; determining how to handle backlog items/user stories not completed in a sprint/iteration; determining how to monitor sprint/iteration progress
Implement Microsoft Solution Framework (MSF) for CMMI Process Improvement.

This objective may include but is not limited to: establishing project drivers (scope-driven, date-driven); assigning product requirements to iterations; managing changes; managing issues

Define a Software Iteration (16%)

Plan a release.

This objective may include but is not limited to: identifying a flexibility matrix; identifying releases based on priority items in flexibility matrix and release criteria; resource planning (Scrum team is responsible for allocating team members); identifying techniques to optimize a team that is geographically distributed; selecting a project methodology; risk management
Define a project-tracking process.

This objective may include but is not limited to: identifying a project tracking tool and an associated process (triage process, bug management); defining how to manage effort; determining team forecast management; defining a prioritization scheme; determining how to validate project health
Scope a project.

This objective may include but is not limited to: scoping the effort for a release; defining an architecture design process; defining scope boundaries (is/is not list); determining the definition of “done”; defining a process when effort estimates are significantly inaccurate

Define End Value for the Software Iteration (17%)

Elicit requirements.

This objective may include but is not limited to: defining project requirements; reviewing and clarifying requirements; defining acceptance criteria; defining UI platform requirements (Web, mobile); assigning a business value
Estimate requirements.

This objective may include but is not limited to: managing and assigning effort estimates (assigning story points); resizing user requirements into smaller, manageable pieces; executing task breakdown; estimating the requirements baseline
Document requirements.

This objective may include but is not limited to: defining acceptance criteria; listing requirements; adding requirement details; designing UI storyboards
Prioritize requirements.

This objective may include but is not limited to: identifying requirements that are critical path; identifying must-have requirements; enabling the entire team (including customers) to participate in requirements prioritization; identifying dependencies

Develop Customer Value with High Quality (17%)

Define code quality indicators.

This objective may include but is not limited to: performing code review, including security and performance analysis; analyzing code for common defects; calculating code coverage; performing architecture validation
Incorporate unit testing.

This objective may include but is not limited to: establishing unit test standards; developing a strategy for adding unit tests to existing applications; selecting the unit test type; establishing the code coverage target
Develop code.

This objective may include but is not limited to: developing maintainable code; defining coding standards; defining application architecture; defining configuration management process and tooling (source control tree, branching strategy, solution structure, source control/check-in policy)
Validate quality.

This objective may include but is not limited to: organizing test artifacts such as test cases, suites, plans, and requirements; defining test strategy; managing test execution; identifying test types and associated tools; identifying and configuring environments; analyzing test runs
Customize a team project.

This objective may include but is not limited to: customizing a Work Item; customizing Work Item Queries; customizing Team Portal; identifying areas and iterations; managing roles and associated permissions

Integrate Development and Operations (17%)

Implement an automated deployment process.

This objective may include but is not limited to: architecting an automated build and deploy workflow; integrating automated tests; automating deployment into both test and production environments
Implement pre-production environments.

This objective may include but is not limited to: automating the creation of virtual test lab environments; automating deployment into virtual test environments
Manage feedback between development and operations.

This objective may include but is not limited to: implementing tools to simplify communication; identifying, measuring, and reporting key analytics and performance indicators such as cycle time and mean time to repair (MTTR); creating appropriate shared artifacts and process to facilitate communication; standardizing required artifacts for defect reports; creating strategies for test case reuse (both automated and manual) in production
Troubleshoot production issues.

This objective may include but is not limited to: gathering defect data from bugs in a production setting; providing actionable data to the development team; monitoring applications running in production for potential issues; managing incident response times collaboratively between development and operations