SAFe-DevOps Scaled Agile SAFe DevOps Practitioner Exam SDP (6.0) Free Practice Exam Questions (2025 Updated)

Two security skills that are part of the Continuous Integration aspect are application security and penetration testing. Application security is the practice of protecting the software applications from malicious attacks, unauthorized access, data breaches, and other threats. It involves applying security principles and techniques throughout the software development lifecycle, such as secure coding, code analysis, code review, security testing, and security monitoring. Application security helps to ensure that the software meets the security requirements and standards, and that it does not introduce any vulnerabilities or risks to the system or the users910

Penetration testing is the practice of simulating real-world attacks on the software applications to identify and exploit any security weaknesses or flaws. It involves using various tools and methods to probe, scan, attack, and bypass the security defenses of the software, such as firewalls, encryption, authentication, and authorization. Penetration testing helps to evaluate the security posture and resilience of the software, and to provide recommendations for improvement or remediation. Penetration testing is usually performed by external or independent experts, who have the permission and authorization to conduct the tests

The DevOps Health Radar aligns the four aspects of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline to four stakeholder concerns: alignment, quality, time-to-market, and business value. The DevOps Health Radar is a tool that helps Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and Solution Trains assess their ability to Release on Demand, which is the process of delivering value to customers whenever there is a business need. The DevOps Health Radar consists of four dimensions that correspond to the four aspects of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline: Continuous Exploration (CE), Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD), and Release on Demand. Each dimension has four sub-dimensions that reflect the key practices and capabilities that enable the flow of value. The DevOps Health Radar helps the ARTs and Solution Trains to measure their maturity in each sub-dimension, using a scale of Sit, Crawl, Walk, Run, or Fly. The DevOps Health Radar also helps the ARTs and Solution Trains to identify the gaps and improvement opportunities in their DevOps practices, and to prioritize the next steps toward achieving higher levels of maturity. The DevOps Health Radar aligns the four aspects of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline to four stakeholder concerns, as shown in Figure 1:

Alignment – Alignment is the concern of ensuring that the solution is aligned with the customer needs, market opportunities, and strategic goals of the enterprise. Alignment is achieved by applying the CE aspect, which involves exploring the market and customer problems, defining a vision, roadmap, and set of features for the solution, and validating the assumptions and hypotheses with customer feedback and data.

Quality – Quality is the concern of ensuring that the solution meets the functional and nonfunctional requirements and standards, and that it does not introduce any defects or vulnerabilities. Quality is achieved by applying the CI aspect, which involves developing, testing, integrating, and validating new functionality in preparation for deployment and release.

Time-to-market – Time-to-market is the concern of ensuring that the solution can be delivered and deployed to the production environment as fast and as frequently as possible, without compromising quality or security. Time-to-market is achieved by applying the CD aspect, which involves automating and streamlining the deployment process, and ensuring the stability and reliability of the production environment.

Business value – Business value is the concern of ensuring that the solution delivers the expected outcomes and benefits to the customer and the enterprise, and that it can be adapted and improved based on the changing needs and feedback. Business value is achieved by applying the Release on Demand aspect, which involves releasing new functionality to the customer incrementally or immediately, based on the market demand, and measuring and learning from the results12

1: https://scaledagileframework.com/blog/assess-your-devops-health-with-the-safe-devops-radar/ 2: https://support.scaledagile.com/s/article/Exam-Study-Guide-SDP-6-0-SAFe-for-DevOps

According to the SAFe DevOps Practitioner 6.0 study guide and handbook, when development and operations do not collaborate early in the pipeline, surprises are found in deployment that lead to significant rework and delay. This means that the teams may not have a shared understanding of the quality, performance, and security requirements of the Solution, and may encounter issues that were not anticipated or tested. The handbook states that "When development and operations do not collaborate early in the pipeline, surprises are found in deployment that lead to significant rework and delay."1 Therefore, it is important for teams to work together throughout the value stream to ensure continuous delivery.

According to the SAFe DevOps Practitioner 6.0 study guide1, a canary release is a type of release on demand that involves making a Solution available to any subset of users, such as a specific team, product, or region. A canary release allows the DevOps teams to test the Solution in a controlled environment and monitor its performance and feedback before rolling it out to the entire customer base. A canary release can help reduce the risk of introducing errors or failures into production and improve the quality and reliability of the Solution.

The correct order of activities in the Continuous Integration aspect is: Develop, Build, Test end-to-end, Stage. Continuous Integration (CI) is an aspect of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline that automates the development, testing, integration, and validation of new functionality in preparation for deployment and release. CI is the second aspect in the four-part Continuous Delivery Pipeline of Continuous Exploration (CE), Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD), and Release on Demand. CI consists of four activities, as shown in Figure 1:

Develop – This activity involves implementing stories by refining features from the ART Backlog, coding, testing, and committing the work product into the source control system. Testing in this activity tends to focus on unit and story-level testing and often requires test doubles to replicate other components or subsystems that are not readily available or easily tested.

Build – This activity involves creating deployable binaries and merging development branches into the trunk. Building in this activity includes compiling, linking, packaging, and verifying the code and components. Building also involves applying code quality and security checks, such as static code analysis, code coverage, and code review.

Test end-to-end – This activity involves validating the solution end-to-end, including the functional and nonfunctional aspects, such as performance, usability, reliability, and security. Testing in this activity requires integrating the code and components with other subsystems and services, and using test environments that resemble the production environment as much as possible. Testing also involves applying automated testing tools and frameworks, such as regression testing, integration testing, system testing, and acceptance testing.

Stage – This activity involves hosting and validating solutions in a staging environment before production. Staging in this activity includes deploying the solution to a pre-production environment that mimics the production environment in terms of hardware, software, configuration, and data. Staging also involves applying final checks and verifications, such as smoke testing, exploratory testing, and user acceptance testing910

1: https://www.lean.org/the-lean-post/articles/understanding-the-fundamentals-of-value-stream-mapping/  2: https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/value-stream-mapping/adapting-value-stream-mapping-for-office-and-service-environments/what-is-the-c-a-percentage-complete-accurate-metric  3: https://scaledagileframework.com/guidance-applied-innovation-accounting-in-safe/  4: https://support.scaledagile.com/s/article/Exam-Study-Guide-SDP-6-0-SAFe-for-DevOps  5: https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/devops/what-is-blue-green-deployment  6: https://docs.cloudfoundry.org/devguide/deploy-apps/blue-green.html  7: https://scaledagileframework.com/guidance-applied-innovation-accounting-in-safe/  8: https://support.scaledagile.com/s/article/Exam-Study-Guide-SDP-6-0-SAFe-for-DevOps  9: https://scaledagileframework.com/continuous-integration/  10: https://support.scaledagile.com/s/article/Exam-Study-Guide-SDP-6-0-SAFe-for-DevOps

One of the measurable benefits of adopting DevOps practices and principles is that it results in faster lead time and more frequent deployments. Lead time is the time it takes from the moment a change is requested until it is delivered to the customer. Frequent deployments are the number of times a change is deployed to production. Both of these metrics indicate the speed and efficiency of the DevOps process, as well as the ability to respond to customer needs and feedback. According to the State of DevOps Report 2020, high-performing DevOps teams have 208 times faster lead times and 106 times more frequent deployments than low-performing teams

 According to the SAFe DevOps Practitioner 6.0 study guide and handbook, Continuous Deployment is a practice that helps developers deploy their code into production. This means that Continuous Deployment involves moving changes from the staging environment to the production environment, without requiring manual intervention or approval. The handbook states that "Continuous Deployment is the practice of moving changes from the staging environment to the production environment, without requiring manual intervention or approval."1 Therefore, Continuous Deployment enables teams to deliver value to customers faster and more reliably.

According to the SAFe DevOps Practitioner 6.0 study guide and handbook, value flows through Continuous Integration in the Continuous Delivery Pipeline. This aspect involves merging code changes from multiple developers into a shared repository and running automated tests to ensure quality and functionality. The handbook states that "Continuous Integration is the process of merging code changes from multiple developers into a shared repository and running automated tests to ensure quality and functionality."1 Therefore, Continuous Integration enables teams to deliver value faster and more reliably by reducing integration errors and conflicts.

According to the SAFe DevOps Practitioner 6.0 study guide and handbook, the Release activity is triggered by a business decision to go live. This means that the Solution is ready to be delivered to end users and customers, based on the validation and testing done in the previous activities. The handbook states that "The Release activity is triggered by a business decision to go live."1 Therefore, this activity involves releasing value to customers on demand, while also measuring and learning from the feedback.

The people responsible for the next step should be consulted first when calculating the % Complete and Accurate (%C&A) metric. The %C&A metric is a measure of the quality of the work output from a process step. It indicates the percentage of time that the downstream customers receive work that is acceptable as is, without any rework or errors. To calculate the %C&A metric, the people responsible for the next step need to inspect the work output from the previous step and determine whether it meets the quality standards and expectations. They also need to provide feedback to the previous step on the defects or issues they find and how they affect the value stream. By consulting the people responsible for the next step, the %C&A metric can reflect the actual customer satisfaction and the potential waste in the process1

Refactoring is the activity of improving the internal structure or operation of a code or component without changing its external behavior. The goal of software development is the continuous delivery of business value to users and stakeholders. Constantly changing technology and evolving business objectives make maintaining and continuously increasing business value difficult. Refactoring enables an emergent design, ensuring the system continues to meet future business needs. Refactors are a particular type of Enabler story in SAFe, and, like any other Story, they must be estimable, verifiable, and valuable, as well as accepted by the Product Owner. SAFe emphasizes the importance of keeping all work visible, including refactoring. Like user value work, refactoring must be planned for, estimated, and prioritized. Therefore, developers should create and estimate refactoring Stories in the Team Backlog, and work on them according to their WSJF1

According to the SAFe DevOps Practitioner 6.0 study guide and handbook, Value Stream Mapping helps reveal bottlenecks to the flow of value in the Continuous Delivery Pipeline. This means that Value Stream Mapping helps teams identify and eliminate any activities or processes that slow down or stop the delivery of value to customers. The handbook states that "Value Stream Mapping helps reveal bottlenecks to the flow of value in the Continuous Delivery Pipeline."1 Therefore, Value Stream Mapping helps teams optimize their value stream and improve their delivery performance.

Gated commits are a key technical practice that enables trunk-based development. Gated commits are a mechanism that ensures that only code that passes certain quality checks and tests can be committed to the main trunk of the shared codebase. Gated commits prevent broken changes from affecting other developers or the Continuous Delivery Pipeline. Gated commits typically involve the following steps:

A developer writes code and runs local tests on their own machine or branch.

The developer pushes the code to a remote repository, where a pre-commit hook triggers a build and test process on a separate server.

The build and test process verifies that the code meets the quality standards and does not introduce any errors or conflicts with the existing code on the trunk.

If the build and test process succeeds, the code is automatically merged into the trunk and becomes available for other developers and downstream activities.

If the build and test process fails, the code is rejected and the developer is notified of the issues that need to be fixed before retrying the commit.

Gated commits support trunk-based development by ensuring that the trunk is always in a releasable state, which means that at least once a day, developers must integrate their changes to the trunk. This is accomplished through short-lived feature branches related to project tasks. Gated commits reduce the complexity and conflicts of merging long-lived branches, improve the quality and consistency of the code by enforcing frequent testing and validation, accelerate the delivery and deployment of new functionality by minimizing the transaction cost and risk, and foster a culture of collaboration and transparency among developers

According to the SAFe DevOps Practitioner 6.0 study guide and handbook, one potential outcome of the Verify activity of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline is to analyze regression testing results. This means that the Verify activity involves checking the functionality and performance of the Solution after a deployment, and comparing it with the expected results. The handbook states that "Verify is the activity of checking the functionality and performance of the Solution after a deployment, and comparing it with the expected results."1 Therefore, one of the possible outcomes of this activity is to analyze how well the Solution meets the quality standards and customer requirements.

Canary releases are used to allow incremental release of new functionality to customers. A canary release is a change management strategy for software releases that reduces the downtime and risk of deploying new versions of software. A canary release involves having two identical but separate environments: one is the active environment that serves the user traffic, and the other is the inactive environment that hosts the new version of the software. The release process consists of switching a small portion of the user traffic from the active environment to the inactive environment, after verifying that the new version is working properly. The portion of users who receive the new version are called canaries, as they serve as early indicators of the quality and performance of the new version. The canary release has several benefits, such as:

It allows for fast and reliable rollback, in case of any issues or errors in the new version, by simply switching back to the active environment.

It eliminates the need for complex and error-prone migration scripts, as the inactive environment can be prepared and tested in advance, without affecting the active environment.

It enables testing and experimentation of the new version with a subset of users, by directing some user traffic to the inactive environment, before switching completely.

It facilitates continuous delivery and deployment, by automating the switching process and reducing the transaction cost and risk of moving changes to production

The output of the Release activity is a Feature made available to end users. The Release activity is the final aspect of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP) in SAFe DevOps, which enables the delivery of value to the end user as fast as possible, based on market demand. The Release activity involves the practices needed to deliver the solution to end users, all at once or incrementally. The Release activity is a business decision that requires careful consideration of the customer needs, market rhythms, and economic outcomes. The Release activity is decoupled from the Continuous Deployment activity, which automates the migration of new functionality from a staging environment to production, where it is made available for release

According to the SAFe DevOps Practitioner 6.0 study guide1, one of the top advantages of mapping the current state of the delivery pipeline is to achieve a collective understanding and consensus around problems. Mapping the current state of the delivery pipeline is a technique that helps teams visualize and analyze their current processes, practices, and performance. Mapping the current state of the delivery pipeline enables teams to identify pain points, inefficiencies, and opportunities for improvement. Mapping the current state of the delivery pipeline also fosters collaboration, communication, and alignment among team members and stakeholders. By mapping the current state of the delivery pipeline, teams can gain a shared vision of their current situation, challenges, and goals. This can help them to reach a collective understanding and consensus around problems that need to be solved or opportunities that need to be pursued. Therefore, mapping the current state of the delivery pipeline is an advantage that can improve team cohesion and decision making.

According to the SAFe DevOps Practitioner 6.0 study guide1, when responding to production issues, the DevOps teams should coordinate with each other and with the SRE teams and System teams. The DevOps teams are responsible for developing, building, integrating, testing, deploying, and monitoring the Solution, while the SRE teams and System teams are responsible for ensuring the reliability, availability, security, and performance of the Solution in production. The Ops teams are responsible for managing the infrastructure and services that support the Solution in production. Therefore, all three groups of teams should work together to resolve production issues effectively.