Top 20 Agile Scrum Master Interview Questions and Answers – Techbytes
When you go to an interview for a job and they ask about Agile and Scrum, being prepared and having all the right answers is the trick to make life easier. Some of the most common interview questions and answers for Agile Scrum include:
1. Explain what Agile is in 30 seconds
Agile is a basic framework that will help us work on just in time production. It will ensure that customers receive the high-quality software they need faster than before.
2. How is traditional project management different from Agile?
Agile will encourage that a little of everything, from the design, the development, and testing, will be done at the same time. With the traditional approach, the project is going to close and complete one phase before it works on the next. Agile is nice because it asks for short and frequent feedback loops and wants developers to make constant changes. In the traditional method, feedback will not be collected until the end, which can be time consuming and expensive to fix.
3. Are you certified as a Scrum Master?
Even if the job description did not ask for this, the interviewer may slip this in. You may not have this certification yet, but if you plan on going for it soon, you can discuss that as well. Make sure to bring up how much experience you have in the field already.
4. What are the different roles that come in Scrum?
Scrum has three roles inside it. This includes the Delivery Team, Scrum Master, and the Product Owner. These roles should have some cross-functionality but not work on other products at the same time. They allow each one to do their job without stepping on toes and getting in the way.
5. What is the Daily Stand-Up?
Basically, this is a short meeting that happens each day, usually right away in the morning, where the team will meet to answer what they did the day before, what they plan to do that day, and what obstacles may get in their way that day. It should never last for more than 15 minutes.
6. What typically happens during a sprint planning meeting?
During this time, the Product Owner will spend time presenting the overall goal of that sprint, talking about the highest priority tasks to get done. Then the Delivery team comes in and chooses the amount of work they would like to complete.
7. What role does the Scrum Master take on>
The Scrum Master is meant to serve the team, giving them the resources necessary and preventing any distractions coming in that would ruin the sprint. They can teach the team to self-organize, be a coach, and remove any obstacles as well.
8. How are Scrum and Agile Different?
To keep it simple, Agile is a broad umbrella of processes that includes Scrum. Agile has four main values and 12 principles inside. Scrum has other values and principles that will provide ways for your team to become Agile.
9. Are there other frameworks that are Agile?
There are a number of other frameworks that you can use that are Agile. This include Feature-Driven Development, Test Driven Development, and Kanban to name a few.
10. Are there times when Waterfall is preferable to Scrum?
Most of the time, Scrum is the best choice. However, you can use Waterfall if the requirements of the project are fully defined, predictable, simple, and will not change during the process.
11. Would it be good to use automated testing for a project?
Scrum will encourage the use of something known as automated performance or regression testing. This makes it easier to deliver software continuously and as quickly as possible. You should spend some time showing off some of the automated testing tools you have used.
12. How long were the sprints you used in the past?
Ideally, your sprint length should be somewhere between one and four weeks. If possible, two weeks is seen as ideal.
13. What is Velocity?
Velocity is the average number of points from the past sprints you have done. This is a good indicator of when backlog items are going to be delivered.
14. Does Agile allow for requirement changes?
Agile does allow for frequent feedback from the customers so you can make constant improvements. The neat thing about this is that you can make changes using Agile without wasting time or money.
15. What metrics have you used on projects in the past?
The standard reports here will include the burn-up charts, burn-down charts, and sprint. Most companies will ask this to see how many stories were committed versus how many were completed in each sprint and the number of defects that were found after production to see how effective you were.
16. What is a burn-down chart?
This is important because it will show how much work the team burns through, including the amount of hours done during the sprint. You can explain how you effectively used these in the past.
17. What is a retrospective?
This is basically a meeting that is done to help inspect and make adaptations to the process. This methodology question is looking for the different ways that you may conduct this retrospective so make sure you can explain a few formats to them.
18. Have you managed more than one Scrum team at a time?
In this new position, you will need to lead more than one team. Make sure that you use the term lead rather than managed the team and your interviewer may ask this to catch whether you really know what you are doing.
19. Did you have specific requirements for your team?
While a Scrum Master is not necessarily in charge of making the requirements, they would want to assist the Product Owner to make sure that these stories are written and designed to work with the sprint well. You can discuss how you did this in the past.
20. Describe how you handled a situation when your team didn’t seem to get along?
When your team works together, there will be times when they may have disagreements and not get along. Showing how you were able to handle this situation and bring everyone back together to stay on track can be helpful.
