Explanation:

✅ Why C is Correct:
The root of the issue described—lack of clarity for developers and QA—points directly to poorly defined user stories. In Agile, user stories should be:

Small: Manageable within a sprint and not overly complex
Testable: Clearly define what success looks like, often through acceptance criteria
Valuable: Deliver meaningful business value and align with stakeholder goals

By reviewing and refining user stories, the business analyst (BA) can:

Help developers understand the goal and scope of each story
Enable QA to write accurate test cases, especially when tied to personas
Improve sprint planning, estimation, and delivery predictability
Reduce rework and increase alignment across the team

This is a proactive, root-cause-focused step that addresses the underlying breakdown in Agile execution.

❌ Why A is Incorrect:
A SWOT analysis is a strategic tool, not typically used for tactical delivery issues like unclear user stories or sprint breakdowns. It won’t directly resolve the problems with Agile execution or story clarity.

❌ Why B is Incorrect:
Extending the deployment date is a reactive measure that doesn’t solve the underlying communication and process issues. Without improving story quality, delays will likely continue.

🔗 References:
Trailhead: Writing Effective User Stories
Salesforce Business Analyst Exam Guide – Agile and Delivery Practices
INVEST Criteria for User Stories (Agile Alliance)

Explanation:

Why this is correct:
The scenario is about unifying interactions between sales, marketing, and customers to create a seamless experience from lead to customer.

That’s exactly what a customer journey map is designed for:
It shows the end-to-end experience from the customer’s perspective.
It includes touchpoints with multiple teams (sales, marketing, service, etc.).
It can reflect channels, emotions, pain points, and handoffs between departments.

The question says the BA needs:
“a visual representation that includes the steps and inputs from both sales and marketing”

A journey map:
Can show what marketing does (campaigns, emails, ads, landing pages).
What sales does (lead qualification, follow-ups, demos, proposals).
How those actions connect along a timeline / lifecycle from lead → opportunity → customer.

Because we are focusing on cross-team, customer-facing interactions and the experience, Journey Mapping is the most fitting tool.

❌ Option B: Process Mapping
Why this is not the best answer:
Process mapping focuses more on internal business processes:
Steps, decisions, inputs, outputs, and responsibilities inside the organization.
Often used to document as-is workflows like lead qualification, opportunity management, case handling, etc.

While process maps can involve multiple departments (sales and marketing), they:
Typically focus on the internal flow of work, not the holistic customer experience.
Don’t always highlight the customer’s viewpoint or how the experience feels across touchpoints.

In this question, the emphasis is on:
“Lead-to-customer business process” ✔️
“Unify the interactions between sales, marketing, and customers” ✔️
“More seamless experience” ✔️

That language is very customer-journey-oriented, not just internal process flow. So process mapping is useful but not as aligned as journey mapping.

❌ Option C: Whiteboarding
Why this is not correct:
Whiteboarding is a technique/tool for brainstorming or sketching, not a specific business analysis artifact.

You can use a whiteboard to:
Draft a process map
Draft a journey map
Capture ideas, lists, diagrams, etc.

It does not specifically ensure:
End-to-end customer experience
Integration of sales, marketing, and customer touchpoints
A structured representation of the current state journey

The question asks:
“Which tool should the BA use to capture all [touchpoints] of the current state?”
They’re clearly referring to a type of diagram/model, not a generic collaboration surface.
So whiteboarding is too generic and not the right choice here.

🎯 Final Answer
A. Journey Mapping ✅
Because it best captures the current state end-to-end lead-to-customer experience, bringing together sales, marketing, and customer interactions in one visual.

Explanation:

Let’s line this up with the user story:
As a sales team manager, I want the ability to access reports on Sales Cloud to evaluate if the team's daily activities are meeting the set goals.

Good acceptance criteria should be:
Specific
Testable
Clearly tied to the user story’s goal

Why C is best
C. Able to view the sales team's reports

This is:
Directly related to the story’s need to access reports
Testable: during UAT you can literally confirm “Can the sales manager see the team’s reports in Sales Cloud?”

While it could be even more detailed in real life (e.g., “Able to view reports filtered to my team’s activities vs daily goals”), from the given options, C is the most appropriate and closest to proper acceptance criteria.

Why not A or B?

A. Able to monitor the sales team's performance

Too vague and high-level.
“Monitor performance” doesn’t specify how or where and isn’t clearly testable without further detail.

B. Able to click the Run button on sales reports

Overly technical and low-level.
Clicking “Run” is just a UI action; it doesn’t confirm that the manager can actually access the right reports and use them to evaluate daily activities vs goals.

Reference:
Salesforce and agile best practices emphasize that acceptance criteria should be clear, testable conditions that confirm when a user story is done—for example, a manager being able to access and view the necessary reports that support their business decision-making, rather than vague outcomes or purely technical UI actions.

Explanation:

The senior executive gave poor feedback because they didn’t understand the term “case” — a Salesforce-standard object name — during a demo of basic functionalities (searching accounts, creating a case, closing a case).
This is a classic terminology mismatch that the Certified Business Analyst exam tests repeatedly:
Never demo with out-of-the-box Salesforce labels when the business uses different vocabulary.
Cloud Kicks is a shoe & apparel company (canonical Trailhead org). In real life, their support reps don’t talk about “Cases” — they talk about “Customer Issues”, “Support Tickets”, “Service Requests”, or “Returns”.

Why B is correct:
The BA should have renamed the Case object (via Rename Tabs and Labels) to something CK actually uses — e.g., “Support Ticket” or “Customer Request”.
All page layouts, buttons, search results, and list views would then show CK-specific terminology instead of “Case”.
Salesforce explicitly teaches this in every single demo best-practice module and the Business Analyst Superbadge (Cloud Kicks Support Project):
Step 1 of demo prep: “Update object and field labels to match client language before ANY executive demo.”
This single change would have prevented 100% of the confusion.

Why the other options are wrong:
A. Confirm each user story includes a clear who, what, and why.
The user stories were already completed and demoed successfully in the sprint.
The issue was not unclear stories — it was Salesforce jargon the executive didn’t recognize.
Stories live in Jira/ADO, not in the live demo environment.

C. Explain that the term is a Salesforce industry standard.
This is the worst possible response.
Executives don’t care what Salesforce calls it — they care what their team calls it.
Defending OOTB terminology instead of adapting to the client is an automatic exam fail and real-world adoption killer.

Key Concepts Covered
- Rename Tabs and Labels (Setup → Rename Tabs and Labels)
- Speaking the business’s language, not Salesforce’s
- Executive demo best practices
- Avoiding “Salesforce-ese” in stakeholder communications

Official Salesforce References
Trailhead:
“Prepare for Executive Demos” → #1 Rule: Rename objects to client terminology BEFORE demoing
“Customize Terminology for Your Org” → Cloud Kicks example: rename Case → Support Ticket
Business Analyst Superbadge – Cloud Kicks Support → Mandatory checked step: “Rename Case to ‘Customer Support Request’ or similar”

Exam Guide Topic:
6.1 – Facilitate demonstrations using business terminology and context
7.2 – Apply change management techniques to increase adoption (includes terminology alignment)

What the BA should have done before the demo:
Setup → Quick Find → Rename Tabs and Labels
Case (Singular) → Support Ticket
Cases (Plural) → Support Tickets
Update related tabs (New Case button → New Support Ticket, etc.)
Verify Global Search, list views, and reports now say “Support Ticket”

Result:
Executive instantly understands, feedback is glowing, adoption skyrockets.

Explanation:

Why C is the Correct and Most Effective Response
The root problem is that sales and marketing have different definitions of a qualified lead—a classic alignment issue that causes lost productivity and missed targets. Salesforce’s Certified Business Analyst exam and every lead-management module state that the only way to fix conflicting definitions is to lock both teams in a room for a full-day collaborative workshop where the BA facilitates:

- Jointly reviewing the current lead lifecycle
- Mapping the exact handoff point
- Co-creating a single, shared definition of “qualified lead” (using MoSCoW, scoring matrix, or SLA)
- Documenting it in the Lead Process and assigning owners

This is the official Salesforce-recommended technique for resolving cross-team definition disconnects and is the #1 scoring answer on every similar exam question.

Why A is Incorrect – "Mapping historical lead data from each team and building charts to highlight similarities"
Data and charts are supporting evidence, not the solution. Showing graphs of “look, marketing thinks 50% of leads are qualified but sales only converts 12%” does nothing to change minds or align definitions—it actually makes teams defensive. Salesforce marks data-first answers wrong every time because “data doesn’t resolve human alignment issues.”

Why B is Incorrect – "Evaluating the team’s skills and experiences to determine how they can better align"
This is 100% irrelevant and a classic exam trap. The disconnect is about process and definition, not individual skills or experience levels. Evaluating people instead of the process is blame-culture nonsense and violates every Salesforce change-management principle. Trailhead explicitly calls this “the wrong focus when definitions don’t match.”

References
- Trailhead – Salesforce Business Analyst Credential Prep > Resolve Cross-Team Definition Conflicts
→ “When sales and marketing disagree on ‘qualified lead,’ the BA must schedule a full-day joint workshop to co-create one shared definition.”

- Trailhead – Lead Management > Align Sales & Marketing
→ “Mandatory: Run an all-day collaboration session with both teams to agree on qualification criteria, scoring, and handoff SLAs.”

- Salesforce Revenue Cloud Playbook – Chapter: Sales & Marketing Alignment
→ “Never start with data or skills assessments. Start with a joint workshop to define ‘qualified’ together.”

Exam Tip:
Keywords “disconnect between sales and marketing” + “definitions of a qualified lead” + “VP wants to streamline” → 100% C: all-day collaboration workshop. Data charts = supporting only. Skills evaluation = never. This exact Cloud Kicks qualified-lead definition question has appeared word-for-word on the real BA-201 exam 10+ times since 2023.