DevOps-Foundation PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6 Exam Free Practice Exam Questions (2025 Updated)

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

Agile Service Management (Agile SM)applies Agile principles to the design and improvement of IT Service Management (ITSM) processes. Its goal is to create processes that arelightweight, adaptable, and customer-focused, ensuring they provide just enough control to meet objectives without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.

This framework helps align ITSM practices with the speed and flexibility required in a DevOps environment, ensuring that services can be delivered in a timely, efficient, and outcome-focused manner.

A(ITIL) provides a comprehensive ITSM framework but is not inherently Agile.B(COBIT) focuses on governance rather than process agility.D(DevOps) is a cultural and technical movement, not specifically a framework for ITSM process design.

Thus,Cis correct.

Both B and C (Application of agile and lean methods + Management commitment to culture change)are critical success factors when launching DevOps in a traditional IT organization.

Agile/Lean methods: Accelerate delivery, reduce waste, create feedback.

Management commitment to culture change: Essential for breaking silos, changing behaviors, and making DevOps sustainable.

Forming a pilot team (A)helps, but isn’t sufficient without these foundations.

Extract-style reference:

“DevOps success starts with leadership commitment to cultural change and adopting Agile and Lean principles throughout the organization.”

—DevOps Handbook,State of DevOps Report

PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6:Lists cultural commitment and Lean/Agile as prerequisites for DevOps transformation.

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.

ChatOpsis the practice of conducting operational work directly through chat platforms (e.g., Slack, Microsoft Teams) integrated with automation and tooling. In this case:

Teams from multiple locations are collaborating in real-time via Slack.

They are running commands and queries directly from the chat to the delivery and monitoring systems.

This allows shared visibility, immediate context, and rapid action during incident resolution.

WhileA(Swarming) describes a collaborative incident response, it does not specifically imply integration with chat-based tools.C(Incident Management) is the overall process, andD(IT Support) is a function, but neither capture the specific ChatOps approach.

Thus,B – ChatOpsis the most accurate answer here.

Deployment success ratemeasures the proportion of deployments that meet their objectives without causing incidents, rollbacks, or degraded service. PeopleCert notes this metric is not limited to production—it can be applied to any environment where deployments occur (staging, testing, pre-prod).

Ais incorrect because focusing only on production misses valuable insights from earlier environments.Cis partially correct—success rate can inform reliability—but reliability is more broadly measured with other metrics like availability and MTTR.Dis incorrect becausechange success ratetypically includes all changes, not just deployments.

Therefore,Bis the accurate statement.

TheImprovement Katais a structured, scientific approach to continuous improvement. It uses small, iterative steps to move from the current state toward a target condition, testing hypotheses along the way.

In the DevOps context, the Improvement Kata helps teams experiment with process changes, measure outcomes, and adapt quickly—reducing risk while fostering a learning culture. It is especially useful for improving ITSM processes incrementally.

AandBare valuable techniques but serve different purposes—Agile Service Management adapts ITSM to Agile principles, and Value Stream Mapping visualizes and analyzes workflow. While they can complement Improvement Kata,Cis the direct experimental framework for small, incremental improvement.

Thus, the correct answer isC.

According to PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6, theSecond Wayof DevOps focuses on creating and amplifyingfeedback loops. The primary purpose of shortening these loops is toaccelerate the flow of work and informationbetween all stages of the delivery pipeline, especially between Development and Operations.

When feedback loops are short, defects, performance issues, and risks can be identified and resolved earlier in the process, preventing costly delays and large-scale rework. This supportsfaster, safer releasesand improves the organization’s responsiveness to customer needs.

WhileA(learning) andD(knowledge sharing) are important benefits of feedback loops, they aresecondaryoutcomes. The main, direct effect is improvingflow efficiency—ensuring that handoffs between Dev and Ops happen smoothly, quickly, and with higher quality.

OptionC(value stream mapping) is a useful Lean practice to identify delays and bottlenecks, but it is adiagnostic tool, not the primary improvement gained from shortening feedback loops.

Thus, the correct answer isB—shortened feedback loops primarily improve IT performance by ensuringfaster flowbetween Development and Operations.

Kanban boards are visual management tools used to track work and manage flow. They provide transparency, limit work in progress (WIP), and help teams focus on delivering value quickly.

A: Reducing WIP is a key Kanban principle that improves flow and delivery speed.

C: Visibility fosters collaboration and shared ownership.

D: By identifying bottlenecks and waste, Kanban helps reduce idle time.

B—defining policies and procedures—is not an inherent benefit of Kanban. While teams may display existing policies on a Kanban board, the board itself does not define them. Its role is to visualize work and flow, not to establish governance rules.

Thus,Bis the correct “NOT” benefit.

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.

Deployment frequencyis not aculture metric.

It’s aprocessmetric, indicating how often code is released.

Culture metricsfocus on engagement, morale, retention, psychological safety, and NPS.

Why not the others?

Employee NPS:Measures employee satisfaction and willingness to recommend.

Engagement/morale:Direct indicators of cultural health.

Retention:How well an org keeps talented people, reflecting culture.

Extract-style reference:

“Measuring DevOps culture relies on employee engagement, morale, and retention, not on delivery metrics like deployment frequency.”

—State of DevOps Report

PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6:Culture metrics focus on people, not just process.

Continuous Delivery’s primary benefit is that itreduces 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 themready.

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.

Continuous fundingreplaces rigid, annual budgeting with a more adaptive model. This approach aligns funding to value streams or long-lived products rather than fixed projects. Funds can be adjusted incrementally based on changing priorities, business feedback, and delivery performance.

This method supports DevOps by allowing teams to pivot quickly, experiment, and scale initiatives without waiting for lengthy budget approvals. It aligns financial governance with the iterative and adaptive nature of DevOps delivery.

A(project-based funding) locks budgets to specific outcomes and timelines, limiting flexibility.C(quarterly rolling waves) is more flexible than annual cycles but less responsive than continuous funding.Dis not a recognized funding approach in DevOps.

Therefore,Bis the correct choice.

Wait Timeis the time work spends waiting between process steps—wasted, non-value-added time.

Mathematically,Wait Time = Lead Time – Cycle Time

Lead Time:Time from work request to delivery.

Cycle Time:Time spent actively working on the item.

Why is this important in DevOps?

Identifying and reducing wait time (waste) is central to Lean/DevOps, directly improving flow and reducing delays.

Extract-style reference:

“Wait time is calculated as the difference between lead time and cycle time—highlighting bottlenecks in the value stream.”

—DevOps Handbook

PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6:Wait time is a core Lean concept for optimizing flow.

Learning through immersionis powerful in DevOps because:

People learn by doing (A)

People learn from subject matter experts (B)

People learn from failures in a safe environment (C)

All of the above (D) are true

DevOps encourages hands-on, real-world, collaborative, and safe-to-fail learning environments.

Extract-style reference:

“Immersive learning, including hands-on labs, peer interactions, and blameless retrospectives, is vital to building DevOps capabilities.”

—DevOps Handbook,Accelerate

PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6:Calls for learning culture, blamelessness, and experimentation.

Continuous Integration (CI) is the practice of frequently merging small code changes into a shared repository, followed by automated builds and tests. Theprimary benefitisearly detection and resolution of integration issues. When commits are tested together continuously, defects are caught soon after introduction, reducing the cost and complexity of fixing them.

WhileB(more developers can work together) is a side effect, it is not the primary goal.C(pushing changes quickly) is more related to Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment.D(version control) is a prerequisite for CI, not the main benefit.

Therefore,Acorrectly captures the primary benefit—finding and fixing issues early before they reach production.

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.

Kanbanis a Lean visual management method that helps teams control and improve workflow. The board displays tasks in columns representing process stages, enabling:

Visualization of work items and bottlenecks

Limiting work in progress (WIP) to improve flow and reduce multitasking

Tracking throughput and cycle time for continuous improvement

B(Value Stream Mapping) is a Lean analysis tool, not a visual board for ongoing work.C(Improvement Kata) is a structured improvement method, andD(Continuous Delivery) is a software delivery practice, not a visual workflow tool.

Therefore,A—Kanban—is correct.

ADevOps cultureis built on principles like being data-driven, reflective (willing to learn from experience), and accountable (taking ownership, not blaming others).

Command and controlcultures are the opposite: hierarchical, rigid, discouraging initiative and learning. DevOps strives for empowerment, experimentation, and psychological safety.

Why not the others?

Data-driven:Decisions are based on measurement and feedback, core to DevOps.

Reflective:Regular retrospectives and post-incident reviews are essential DevOps rituals.

Accountability:Teams are responsible for the software they build and operate.

Reference/Extract:

“DevOps culture values collaboration, continuous learning, and a data-driven, accountable approach to improvement. Command and control structures stifle innovation and slow down feedback.”

—State of DevOps Report(2019), PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6 Section 3.2