Pass the PeopleCert DevOps DevOps-Foundation Questions and answers with ExamsMirror

Forcing all development teams toimmediately migrateto a standard set of tools dictated by IT Operations isnota recommended DevOps strategy.

DevOps promotescollaboration, flexibility, and evolutionof toolchains, allowing teams to choose what fits their needs while moving toward sensible defaults and integration over time.

Abrupt, top-down mandates undermine trust and autonomy, often leading to resistance and lower adoption.

Why are the other options better?

IT Ops or infra squads managing toolchain as a service(A),sensible defaults(C), andself-service(D) are all recognized best practices to support DevOps evolution and developer enablement.

Extract-style reference:

“Mandating a single toolset without considering team needs reduces engagement. Toolchains should be managed as self-service platforms with sensible defaults, supporting but not constraining teams.”

—State of DevOps Report;DevOps Handbook

PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6:Encourages enabling choice, not enforcing uniformity without context.

The scenario describes entrenched silos and resistance to change—managers are protective of their domains and don’t see the value of DevOps.

This is a textbook example ofcultural debt: the gap between the organization’s current culture and the adaptive, collaborative culture needed for DevOps success.

Cultural debt, like technical debt, accumulates over time and “must be paid back” for transformation to succeed. It creates friction, slows delivery, and blocks cross-team collaboration.

Why not the others?

Organizational changeis what’s needed, not what they’re suffering from.

Change fatiguearises when people are burned out bytoo muchchange, not resistance.

Low trustis a symptom, but the core problem here is ingrained culture.

Reference/Extract:

“Cultural debt is accrued when organizations fail to evolve their culture to match new ways of working, like DevOps. It manifests in resistance to collaboration, entrenched silos, and leadership unwilling to change.”

—DevOps Handbook, Ch. 2, and PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6 Syllabus Section 3.4

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.

The two best measures to showshared successacross technology teams arethroughputandstability:

Throughput(deployment frequency, lead time): Measures how fast teams deliver value.

Stability(change failure rate, MTTR): Measures how reliably systems operate.

Why these two?

Focusing onbothensures teams deliver quicklyandsafely. High throughput without stability causes outages; stability without throughput slows business.

Other options:

Deployment frequency + change lead/cycle time: Both are throughput measures, missing stability.

MTTR + change failure rate: Both are stability, missing throughput.

Employee retention and NPS: People measures, not delivery.

Extract-style reference:

“High performers in DevOps exhibit both high throughput (deployments per day) and high stability (low failure rates, fast recovery), proving it’s possible to achieve both.”

—Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps, Ch. 2

PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6:Shared success is about flowandreliability, not just one or the other.

TheThird Wayof DevOps emphasizescontinuous learning and experimentationto drive improvement. Scrum supports this principle throughSprint Retrospectives, which are dedicated sessions at the end of each sprint where the team reflects on what went well, what could be improved, and how to adapt processes or behaviors.

Retrospectives create a structured space for honest discussion, experimentation, and the application of lessons learned. This aligns directly with the Third Way’s focus on learning from successes and failures, promoting innovation, and building a culture of continual improvement.

Bfocuses on throughput, which aligns more with the First Way (flow).Ccould improve collaboration but is not a core mechanism of the Third Way.D(shorter feedback loops) is more related to the Second Way.

Thus,Ais correct because Sprint Retrospectives directly embody the Third Way’s goal of learning and adaptation.

Shift Left Testingmeans moving testing earlier in the development process, so defects are found sooner and fixes are cheaper.

Unit testing as part of CIis 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.

Reducing delays in launching projects requires eliminating manual, time-consuming tasks in the delivery process:

A: Continuous Integration (CI) with automated builds speeds up integration and reduces defects.

B: Test-Driven Development (TDD) ensures quality from the start, reducing rework and post-development bug fixing.

C: Infrastructure as Code (IaC) enables rapid, repeatable provisioning of environments, avoiding manual setup delays.

All three practices contribute to faster, more reliable project starts. As PeopleCert notes, combining these practices creates a strong automation foundation, enabling organizations to move from idea to delivery quickly.

Therefore,D—All of the above—is correct.

In DevOps, success depends on collaboration betweenall key stakeholdersacross the software delivery value stream. This includes:

Software Engineers & Operations Teams: Responsible for designing, building, deploying, and maintaining applications and services.

Business Representatives: Define requirements, prioritize work, and ensure alignment with organizational goals.

Security and QA Testers: Ensure that quality, compliance, and security are built into the delivery pipeline from the start (shift-left approach).

PeopleCert emphasizes the idea of “BizDevOps” and “DevSecOps,” highlighting the need for business, development, operations, and security to work as an integrated team. The removal of silos and the inclusion of all perspectives ensure that value is delivered faster and more reliably, while maintaining quality and compliance.

Choosing only one group would miss the cross-functional nature of DevOps. Hence, the correct answer isD – All of the Above.

Coercive communication(using force or threat) isnota transformational leadership dimension.

Transformational leaders:

Inspire vision

Recognize contributions

Stimulate new ideas (intellectual stimulation)

Foster intrinsic motivation

Extract-style reference:

“Transformational leadership builds trust, motivates by vision, provides intellectual stimulation, and recognizes individuals—not by coercion, but by inspiration.”

—Transformational Leadership(James Burns), PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6

TheThird Wayin DevOps emphasizescontinual learning and experimentation. One of the most effective resilience-building practices in this category ischaos engineeringor deliberate fault injection. This involves introducing controlled failures into systems—such as shutting down services, simulating network latency, or exhausting resources—totest the organization’s recovery capabilityin realistic scenarios.

By practicing recovery under controlled conditions, teams identify weaknesses in monitoring, automation, documentation, and communication before a real incident occurs. This improvesMean Time to Recovery (MTTR)and overall system resilience.

OptionA(constraint analysis) relates to theFirst Way(flow optimization). OptionCfocuses on feedback loops (Second Way). OptionD(adding redundancy) is a possible improvement but does not inherently practice and improve operational recovery skills in the same way as deliberate fault injection.

Therefore,Bis the most appropriate Third Way principle for improving resilience in this scenario.