Identify Environment
Figure out how many and what kinds of environments (such as development, test, and staging) are needed so multiple Scrum Teams on the same Sprint schedule can build, integrate, and validate their work without clashing.
Key Points
- Determine environment types and quantities to support teams whose Sprints start and end on the same day.
- Plan capacity and scheduling to prevent conflicts during integration, testing, and Sprint Reviews.
- Keep configurations and test data consistent across environments to ensure reliable results.
- Define ownership, access controls, and automation for provisioning, resets, and teardown.
Example
A program has four Scrum Teams that finish Sprints every two weeks on the same day. The Release Train Engineer works with DevOps to provision two shared integration environments, three parallel QA test environments, and one staging environment. A booking calendar prevents double-booking on Sprint end days, and automated reset scripts restore clean data between team test cycles.
PMP Example Question
Several Scrum Teams in a program share the same Sprint cadence and will complete work on the same day. What activity best represents "Identify Environment"?
- Estimating user stories to balance velocity across teams
- Deciding the number and types of dev, test, and staging instances needed to support concurrent Sprints
- Creating a stakeholder register for the program
- Drafting the team charter and working agreements
Correct Answer: B — Decide the environment types and counts for concurrent teams
Explanation: Identify Environment focuses on determining how many and what kinds of environments are required so multiple teams on the same Sprint schedule can work, integrate, and test without conflicts.
