A team has identified through root cause analysis that defects are often caused by unclear user stories. The team wants to integrate this finding into their continuous improvement process, but the product owner is not available to clarify stories during the sprint. Which action is most effective?

Have the team make assumptions and document them for later review.

Implement a practice of having the team clarify stories with the product owner before the sprint starts.

Increase the number of testers to catch defects caused by unclear stories.

Ask the product owner to provide written clarifications via email during the sprint.

A team's root cause analysis identifies that test environments are not representative of production, leading to environment-specific defects. The team wants to integrate this finding into their continuous improvement process. Which action is most effective?

Ask the operations team to monitor the production environment more closely.

Increase the frequency of regression testing to catch environment issues earlier.

Document the finding in the test summary report and share it with stakeholders.

Add an improvement item to the team's backlog to review and update the test environment configuration.

After a root cause analysis identifies that unclear acceptance criteria caused a defect, what is the best way to integrate this finding into continuous improvement?

Document the finding and add an action item to improve acceptance criteria templates

Ignore the finding because the defect is already fixed

Only share the finding with the test team

Create a new defect for the acceptance criteria issue

A team's root cause analysis reveals that a defect was caused by a developer not following the coding standards. The team wants to prevent this from happening again. Which action is most effective?

Add a coding standards checklist to the definition of done.

Provide training on coding standards to the team.

Ask the developer to fix the defect and move on.

Conduct more code reviews to catch violations.

An agile team notices that the same defect type keeps appearing in each sprint. They decide to use root cause analysis. What is the first step they should take?

Implement a corrective action immediately

Assign blame to the developer who wrote the code

Define the problem clearly and gather data

Skip analysis and add more test cases

Certified Tester Agile Test Leadership at Scale

Domain 3Objective 4

Root Causes CT-ATLAS Practice Questions (Page 2)

Part of the Continuous Improvement of Quality and Testing domain, which makes up ~17% of our current practice bank. ISTQB does not publish an official question count, but from its 120-minute exam (~50–80 total, ~9–14 in this domain), expect 2–3 from this objective — we provide 18 practice questions to prepare you well beyond it. (estimate)

18questions here

4free pages

3concepts

Questions 6–10

6expert · hard
A team has identified through root cause analysis that defects are often caused by unclear user stories. The team wants to integrate this finding into their continuous improvement process, but the product owner is not available to clarify stories during the sprint. Which action is most effective?
Select an answer first
7application · medium
A team's root cause analysis identifies that test environments are not representative of production, leading to environment-specific defects. The team wants to integrate this finding into their continuous improvement process. Which action is most effective?
Select an answer first
8foundation · easy
After a root cause analysis identifies that unclear acceptance criteria caused a defect, what is the best way to integrate this finding into continuous improvement?
Select an answer first
9expert · hard
A team's root cause analysis reveals that a defect was caused by a developer not following the coding standards. The team wants to prevent this from happening again. Which action is most effective?
Select an answer first
10foundation · easy
An agile team notices that the same defect type keeps appearing in each sprint. They decide to use root cause analysis. What is the first step they should take?
Select an answer first

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