Scrum Master Interview Questions

7. Who is a Scrum Master? And what does he/she do?

Ans: A Scrum Master is someone who promotes and supports the usage of Scrum within the team.

• He/She Understanding the theory, practices, rules, and values of Scrum.
• He/She Ensuring that the team follows the values, principles, and practices of Scrum.
• They Removing any distractions and impediments that hamper the progress of the project.
• They Ensuring that the team delivers value during the sprint.

8. What happens in Daily Stand-up sessions?

Ans: Stand-up sessions are daily discussions that take place and are usually 15 minutes long. Daily Stand-up sessions help understand:

• What tasks went well.
• What tasks were completed.
• What tasks are pending, and
• The obstacles the team is facing

The meeting helps in understanding the overall scope and status of the project. Further discussions can take place after the stand-up sessions.

9. What is Scrum-ban?

Ans:

• Scrum-ban is a methodology that’s a combination of Scrum and Kanban. It can be used to meet the needs of the team, minimize the batching of work, and adopt a pull-based system.
• It ingeniously includes the structure of Scrum and the flexibility and visualization of Kanban.

10. What is Sprint 0 and Spike?

Ans: Sprint 0 refers to the small amount of effort put in to create a rough skeleton of the product backlog. It also includes insights towards estimating the release of products. Sprint 0 is required for:

• Creating the project skeleton, along with research spikes
• Keeping minimal design
• Developing some stories completely
• Having low velocity and being lightweight

The spike is a set of activities that involve Extreme Programming (XP) for research, design, investigation, creating POCs, etc.

The spike aims to reduce risks of the technical approach, helping gain knowledge to better understand requirements and improve reliability

11. What is ‘Scrum of Scrums’?

Ans:

• It is a terminology used for scaled agile technologies, which is required to control and collaborate with multiple scrum teams. It is best used in situations where teams are collaborating on complex assignments.
• It is also used to ensure that the required transparency, collaboration, adaption, and adoption are established and to ensure that the products are deployed and delivered.

12. What is User-Story Mapping?

Ans:

• User story mapping represents and arranges user stories that help with understanding system functionalities, system backlog, planning releases, and providing value to customers.
• They arrange user stories based on their priority on the horizontal axis. On the vertical axis, they are represented based on the increasing levels of sophistication.

13. What happens in a Sprint Retrospective?

Ans: The sprint retrospective takes place after the sprint review. During this meeting, past mistakes, potential issues, and new methods to handle them are discussed. This data is incorporated into the planning of a new sprint.

14. What is Empirical Process Control in Scrum?

Ans:

• Empiricism refers to work that’s based on facts, experiences, evidence, observations, and experimentation. It is established and followed in Scrum to ensure project progress and interpretation is based on facts of observations.
• It relies on transparency, observation, and adaption.
• The mindset of the team and the shift in thought process and culture are essential to achieve the agility required by the organization.

15.What are Some drawbacks to using Scrum?

Ans:

• Scrum requires individuals with experience
• Teams need to be collaborative and committed to ensuring results
• A scrum master with lesser experience can cause the collapse of the project
• Tasks need to be well defined, lest the project has many inaccuracies
• It works better for smaller projects and is difficult to scale to larger, more complex projects

16.What are the key skills of a Scrum Master?

Ans:

• A strong understanding of Scrum and Agile concepts
• Fine-tuned organizational skills
• Familiarity with the technology used by the team
• To be able to coach and teach the team to follow Scrum practices
• Having the ability to handle conflicts and resolve them quickly
• To be a servant leader

17.How can discord be dealt with within the Scrum Team?

Ans:

• The issue’s root cause needs to be identified and addressed
• Complete ownership needs to be established
• Try to diffuse the disagreement
• Emphasize on focus areas that complement the project
• A common understanding needs to be established to guide the team
• Performing continuous monitoring and providing complete visibility

18. What is a User Story?

Ans:

• A user story is an agile software development/ project management tool that provides teams with simple, natural language explanations of one or more features of the project that’s written from the perspective of the end-user.
• The user story doesn’t go into detail but only mentions how certain types of work will bring value to the end-user. The end-user, in this case, could be an external component or an internal customer/colleague within the organization.
• They also form the building block of agile frameworks like epics and other initiatives.
• They ensure that the teams work towards the goals of the organization, with the help of epics and initiatives.
• The requirements to make a user story a reality are added later, after discussions with the team.
• They are recorded on post-it notes, index cards, or project management software.

19. How are user stories, epics, and tasks different?

Ans:

• User Stories: They provide the team with simple explanations of the business’ requirements created from the end user’s perspective.
• Epics: An epic is a collection of related user stories. They are usually large and complex.
• Tasks: Tasks are used to break down user stories further. They’re the smallest unit in Scrum that is used to track work. A person or a team of two people usually work on a task.

20. What is a Sprint?

Ans:

• Sprint is a terminology used in Scrum, used to describe a time-boxed iteration.
• During a sprint, a specific module or feature of the product is created.
• The duration of a sprint can vary between a week or two.

21. What is Velocity?

Ans: Velocity is a metric used to measure the amount of work completed by a team during a sprint. It refers to the number of user stories completed in a sprint.

22. What are the responsibilities of a Product Owner?

Ans:

• Defines the vision for the project.
• Anticipates the needs of the customer and creates appropriate user stories.
• Evaluates project progress.
• Acts as a liaison for all product-related questions.

23. What is a Burnup and Burndown Chart?

Ans:

• A burnup chart is a tool that’s used to track the amount of work that’s been completed and to represent the total amount of work that needs to be done for a sprint/project.
• A burndown chart represents how fast working through user stories is. It shows total effort against the amount of work for each iteration.

24. How is Estimation Done in a Scrum Project?

Ans:

• The estimation of user stories is done based on their difficulty
• A particular scale is used to assess the difficulty of the user stories. Some type of scales are:
  • Numeric Sizing (1 – 10)
  • T-shirt Sizes (S, M, L, XL…)
  • Fibonacci Series (1, 2, 3, 5, 8…)
  • Dog breeds (Great Dane, Chihuahua…)

25. What are some risks in Scrum? How are they handled?

Ans: Some types of risks in Scrum are:

• Budget: The risk of exceeding budgets
• People (team): Team members need to be of appropriate skill and capability
• Sprint (duration and deliverables): Exceeding the duration, addition of the scope of work
• Product (user stories, epics): Having ill-defined user stories and epics
• Knowledge and capability: Having the appropriate resources

Managing risks involves identifying, assessing, analyzing, defining, and implementing risk responses, monitoring, and managing them. These are done on a continual basis right from the starting of the project until completion. It is essential to understand that the impact of the risk is based on the proximity of the actual occurrence of the risk.

26. How does a Scrum Master track Sprint progress?

Ans:

• Daily Scrum meetings
• Scrum retrospectives
• Sprint planning
• Escaped defects
• Defect density
• Sprint burndown
• Team velocity

27. How to deal with Scope Creep?

Ans: Score creep refers to a change that’s uncontrolled and added without checking its impact on scope, time, cost, etc.

To handle it, here’s what needs to be done:

• Close monitoring of work being done on a day-to-day basis.
• Understanding and communicating the vision to the team and ensuring they’re aligned.
• Capturing, reviewing the project requirements regularly (against what is delivered), to emphasize to the team & customer about the requirements signed off.
• Ensuring that any changes introduced go through change control & are implemented based on the approval for change request.
• Avoid gold plating.

28. What are MVP and MMP?

Ans:

• Minimum viable product (MVP) is a Lean Startup concept that stresses the impact of learning while performing product development. This allows one to test and understand the idea by getting exposed to the initial version for target customers & users. To accomplish this, one has to collect all the relevant data and learn from that collected data. The thought behind MVP is to produce the product, to provide access to the users, and to observe how the product is used, perceived, and understood. This will also provide more insight towards what the customers’ or users’ needs are.
• The MMP (Minimal Marketable Product) refers to the description of the product, which will have a minimal number of features that address the requirement of the users. The MMP would help also help the organization reduce the time to market

29. What does DoD mean?

Ans:

• Definition of Done (DoD) refers to the collection of deliverables, which includes written codes, comments on coding, unit tests, integration testing, design documents, release notes, etc. This adds verifiable and demonstrable values to project development. DoD is very helpful to scrum while identifying the deliverables to achieve the objective of the projects
• It helps with:
  • Defining the steps required to deliver the iteration
  • The usage of appropriate tools like burndown to make the process more effective
  • Ensuring on-time feedback throughout the project life cycle
  • Ensuring the walkthrough of the product backlog items are done and understood correctly
  • The creation of a checklist for the product backlog items
  • Ensuring the DoD is defined to become task-oriented
  • Involving the product owner for reviewing during the sprint and sprint retrospective

30. How can a Scrum Master be a Servant Leader?

Ans:

• The term “servant leader” mainly focuses on the service orientation which a leader should demonstrate.
• The Scrum Master needs to be a facilitator, a guide, a mentor, etc.
• This helps the team have increased involvement, empowerment, etc.

31.How can you coordinate between multiple teams?

Ans:

• One of the most common approaches for this is the Scrum of Scrums (SoS) meeting, where members representing each scrum team discuss the progress, performance, issues, risks, etc. together.
• The frequency of these meetings must be pre-defined. Generally, scrum masters would represent a particular scrum team, besides having the Chief Scrum Master (whose responsibility is coordination & collaboration among all the scrums) who facilitates these meetings.

32.What are the Scrum values?

Ans:The five Scrum Values are:

• Openness: In order for the Scrum team to make the most progress in the shortest time feasible, each member of the team must be completely honest about their personal development. The objective of the daily Scrum meeting is to identify and address problems. That will happen only if team members are open about any issues or roadblocks they’re seeing. Members of the team should be willing to work together and regard each other as important contributions to the project’s success.
  Scrum masters can create openness by being honest with their teams. Giving honest feedback at daily Scrum meetings inspires team members to be open and honest in return and is important for making necessary modifications.
• Courage: Scrum teams must have the courage to be authentic, open, and honest with themselves and stakeholders about any bottlenecks they experience and the project’s progress. Members of the team must also be gutsy enough to ask for help when they need it, try unfamiliar procedures, techniques, and respectfully disagree and debate openly. Scrum masters should foster courage first and foremost by demonstrating it just like respect. In order to avoid mid-sprint modifications or scope creep, the Scrum Master must have the confidence to stand up to product owners and stakeholders.
• Focus:To get the most out of each sprint, every team member must remain focused on the task at hand and how it influences the sprint goal. To keep team members engaged throughout sprints, scrum masters may limit the number of tasks or priority allocated to each team member. Individuals can also stay on task by making sure that the whole team is engaged in daily Scrum sessions.
• Respect:In a Scrum team, respect is accepting that no one person or contribution is more valuable than the other. Respect means appreciating your accomplishments, trusting your teammates to fulfill their tasks and also considering their ideas, and listening to them. Scrum masters may help their teams create mutual respect by demonstrating respect for the team members, product owners, and stakeholders.
• Commitment:To achieve a common purpose, scrum teams must work together. This means trusting one another to finish their tasks and deliver their best. It will only happen only if every member of the team is entirely committed to the team and the project.

33.How would you handle conflict within the team?

Ans:Giving individual coaching to team members is one of the most effective strategies to resolve a problem. It is imperative for a Scrum Master to maintain positive relationships with team members and provide guidance when they face challenges.

For a Scrum Master, paying attention to the source of the problem and listening and acting accordingly would go a long way. Any disagreements should be shared with other team members in a manner that they would be open to suggestions for resolving the issue. When a conflict arises, the Scrum Master must intervene so that the process runs smoothly and without hiccups.

The following steps help in handling conflicts within the team:

Step 1 – Scene setting

First, we must determine the source of the team’s quarrel. Before taking any action, it is necessary to understand the discrepancy between two groups or two persons. In times of dispute, Scrum Masters typically react aggressively against team members in the hopes of resolving the conflict on their own. However, while this may temporarily cure the problem, it does not address any underlying concerns. The Scrum Master must lead the team and teach them that disagreement is a regular occurrence in the workplace and it can be resolved with assertiveness. It is the leader’s responsibility to guarantee that team members’ concerns are acknowledged and addressed.

Step 2 – Gathering Information

Gathering facts about the conflict is usually crucial before coming to a conclusion about a certain individual or suppressing the topic. This could be accomplished by listening to each party separately and comprehending the situation from their point of view. The Scrum Master should also consider other team members’ perspectives and also respect every team member’s decisions. As a result, the Scrum Master must elicit everyone’s assistance in order to gain a picture of the workplace conflict.

Step 3 – Brainstorming to find a solution

It is often impossible for the leader to resolve problems on his or her own. Furthermore, several members of the Scrum Team would have better answers that would quickly remedy the problem. Organizing spontaneous group talks and sharing opinions on various activities would stimulate good discourse between the two people or groups in these situations. This would urge both sides to see things from the other’s perspective. This also provides opportunities for superior ideas to be pushed and for the disparity to be bridged.

Step 4 – Solution conferring

Listing all of the possible answers to an issue would only be useful if those solutions were put into action. Scrum Master removes the team’s roadblocks by implementing the solution in this step. Throughout the conflict resolution process, remembering to stay calm and respectful will aid in a speedier and more efficient resolution.

34.How would you deal with a difficult stakeholder?

Ans:The four strategies by which we can deal with difficult stakeholders are:

1. Listen to them carefully:Make an effort to comprehend their point of view. If what they say aggravates you, consider whether their needs are in line with the project’s goals. Is it possible that they want things done a little differently? Make efforts to discover some common ground. People desire to be understood and to believe that their voices are heard.
2. Estimate their motivation:Try to understand the motivation behind the stakeholders’ opposition. This will allow you to compromise, and come up with a win-win solution, and complete the project. Answer questions like – Are they reporting to a board of directors that has its own reservations? What’s the source of your stakeholders’ sudden opposition? Are they concerned about exceeding their budget? Concerned that the project may not turn out as planned?
3. Meet them one after another:Meeting without other stakeholders in the room relieves stress and allows the stakeholders’ to be more at ease. So, make time to meet with each challenging stakeholder separately. This results in interactions becoming clearer and calmer. Take advantage of this chance to learn more about their point of view and recommended solutions. However, don’t ask them why they don’t like your plan outright. Ask open-ended inquiries about their thoughts and how the project is moving instead.
4. Watch the stakeholders closely by identifying them:Determining the stakeholders and finding out what inspires them should be the first step. Anyone who is influenced by our work has control or influence over it or is interested in its success is referred to as a stakeholder.

35.What are the three pillars of Scrum?

Ans: The three pillars of Scrum are summarized below –

• Adaption:The method being processed must be changed if an inspector determines that one or more aspects of a process are outside of permitted limits. A correction must be made as quickly as possible to avoid future deviation.
• Transparency:Transparency mandates that those elements be specified by a consistent standard in order for viewers to understand what they are viewing. For example, while referring to the process, all participants must use the same terminology. Those reviewing as well as those executing the job and the resulting addition must have the same definition of “done.”
• Inspection:Scrum users must check Scrum artifacts and progress toward a Sprint Goal on a regular basis to discover unwanted deviations. Inspections should not be carried out so frequently that they constitute a burden to their work. Inspections are most successful when skilled inspectors do them attentively at the point of work.

36.Explain user story structure with an example.

Ans: The User Story Structure is defined below –

User Story Structure:

As a < role of user>,

I want < To achieve a goal / perform a task>,

I want < To achieve a goal / perform a task>,

So that < I may achieve some value/goal>.

Example:

User Story of a person’s online course purchase –

As a Customer,

I want to purchase educational courses online from ed-tech websites,

So that I do not have to visit a training center.

37.How can you assure that the user stories meet the requirements?

Ans:

A good user narrative includes both a description and acceptance criteria. It should be completed in a sprint with the fewest possible dependencies. The team should be able to develop and test while still delivering estimations within the sprint’s constraints. In short, good user stories adhere to the INVEST concept.

I → Independent: The user story should be written in such a way that team members are less dependent on one another.

N → Negotiable: it should define the functionality of the user story and is subject to the Product Owner and the Team’s approval.

V → Valuable: It should offer value to the customer’s experience.

E → Estimable: This lets us be able to roughly approximate in terms of time.

S → Small: The user story should be tiny enough for the team to finish in a sprint.

T → Testable: Good acceptance criteria after testing is required.

38.What are the five steps of Risk Management?

Ans: The five steps of Risk Management are given below –

• Risk Identification: To identify the risks that your company is exposed to in its current operating environment. There are several types of risks, such as market risks, legal risks, regulatory risks, environmental risks, etc. It’s crucial to be aware of as many risk factors as possible.
• Risk Analysis: Once a risk has been identified, it must be investigated. The scope of the danger must be determined. It’s also important to understand the connection between other internal factors and risk. It’s critical to determine the risk’s severity and importance by examining how it affects the business operations.
• Ranking the risk: Risks must be ranked and prioritized. Most risk management solutions include numerous risk categories based on the severity of the danger. Risks that may cause minor discomfort are prioritized the least, but risks that can result in significant loss are prioritized the highest.
• Treating the risk: As much as possible, all risks should be avoided or reduced by contacting experts in the field in question. In a manual environment, this would include contacting each and every stakeholder and setting up meetings for everyone to discuss the issues.
• Risk review:To ensure that it has been entirely eradicated, the risk evaluation is done.

39.What do you mean by timeboxing in Scrum? When can a Sprint be canceled, and by whom?

Ans: Timeboxing is the practice of devoting a set amount of time to a single activity. A timebox is a unit of time measurement. A timebox should not exceed 15 minutes in length. A Sprint can be canceled before the Sprint timebox limit ends. Only a Product Owner can cancel the sprint.

40.What do you understand about Scope Creep? How can Scope Creep be managed?

Ans:Scope creep is used to describe how a project’s requirements tend to grow over time, like – a single deliverable product becomes five when a product with three essential features becomes ten, or when the customer’s needs change midway through a project, requiring a reassessment of the project requirements. Changes in project needs from internal miscommunication and disagreements, and key stakeholders are some of the common causes of scope creep.

To manage scope creep, we need to use the change control mechanism to keep it under control. This includes the following –

• Maintaining a baseline scope and keeping track of the project’s progress.
• To evaluate actual work performance metrics to the baseline scope, i.e., “How different is the current project from the original plan?”, we need to perform Variance analysis.
• Identifying the severity and source of the observed alterations.
• Selecting whether to take preventive or corrective action in response to requests regarding changes.
• To recommend actions and manage all change requests by using the Perform Integrated Change Control method (whether preventive or corrective).

41.When should a Scrum Master not act as a facilitator?

Ans: A workshop facilitator must be objective when it comes to the topics being discussed and should avoid contributing facts or opinions to the conversation. Even though a Scrum Master’s job is to assist the team in achieving the best possible results, workshop facilitation can be challenging at times. Most of the general product development workshops can be facilitated by the Scrum Master if someone has the required knowledge. The Scrum Master should not facilitate a workshop about modifying the Scrum process.

42.How do you make different stakeholders attend daily scrum meetings?

Ans:The coordination of business people and developers defines the success of a project. The scrum master should conduct the daily standup meetings and encourage all stakeholders to be a part of the call by explaining the impact it will have on the project. The motive of the daily scrum is to know whether or not they will reach the sprint goal. If all stakeholders are present on the call, they can see a clear picture of the product development and change their priorities to meet the set expectations. Problems faced by different parties are also discussed here to bring everyone together.

43.What is the structure of a good story?

Ans: The structure of a good user story is as follows:

1. Who are we building it for, and who are the users? – As a < type of user>
2. What are we building, and what is the intention? -I want < some goal or objective >
3. Why are we building it, and what value does it bring for the user.? – So that < benefit, value>

Well-formed stories will meet the criteria of Bill Wake’s INVEST acronym:

1. Independent – Does your story have the potential to be stand-alone?
2. Negotiable – Your story should have the scope to make adjustments.
3. Valuable – There has to be some takeaway for users or customers.
4. Estimable – The team should be able to use it for planning.
5. Small – Longer stories take more time to plan and implement. Keep your story short.
6. Testable – Can you test the story?

44.What is the role of a Scrum Master in a sprint retrospective?

Ans: The scrum master in sprint retrospective inspects the progress of previous improvements. With the help of team discussion, new improvements are also inspected and adapted. Scrum Master plays the role of a facilitator for the team.

45.How can Scrum Masters ensure timely delivery of action items?

Ans: Regular scrum retrospective ensures timely delivery of action items. An effective retrospective makes sure that the team has identified the action items. Some organizations use a retrospective tracker to monitor action items. Here are the targeted categories: priority, ownership, status, description, identified on, and type. Working on the action items gives the team a boost that they are moving towards improvement and enhances the sense of ownership.

46.What exactly do you mean by Sprint in Scrum?

Ans: A Sprint is at the heart of Scrum. An incremental product is released every two weeks or every month. After the previous Sprint gets completed, a new Sprint begins. It breaks down large projects into smaller, more manageable chunks. It allows companies to produce high-quality work more frequently and quickly, making project management easy. Sprints have made them more adaptable to changes. Daily scrums, Sprint planning, sprint review, development work, and sprint retrospectives are part of a sprint.

• The Scrum Team as whole plans the work that gets accomplished during the Sprint planning phase.
• The Scrum Team values efforts and develops a plan for the following day during the Daily Scrum Meeting, a timed 15-minute session.
• At the end of each Sprint, a Sprint Review gets held to evaluate the increment and, if necessary, make changes to the Product Backlog.
• A Sprint Retrospective is held after the Sprint Review but before the subsequent Sprint Planning. The Scrum Team will evaluate its performance and develop a plan for implementing changes during the following Sprint during this meeting.

47.What does the concept of Confidence Vote mean in Scrum? Why is it vital?

Ans: The Confidence Vote gets held at the Program Increment Planning session following the risk analysis. It is when all team members assemble and voice their opinions and vote with their fingers on their confidence level in completing the PI Targets. The confidence vote can be used only once all the features and user stories get adequately estimated and prioritized. All work must be clear to all parties involved, with all dependencies and risks clearly defined.

A vote of confidence can help to create an environment in which people feel comfortable sharing and expressing their ideas. It boosts team morale because members should feel that their opinions are valued.

48.Is a daily meeting suggested for all teams, irrespective of their size or experience level? Explain.

Ans: A team can evaluate its progress in sticking to the sprint goal during the daily meeting. To ensure that all are on the same page, all agile teams should meet frequently. They can conduct the meeting in different ways depending on the size as well as the level of experience.

• Small and Experienced – A small, experienced team can get together for a brief break or even an informal meeting.
• Small and Inexperienced – If the team is small and inexperienced, the Scrum Master should prefer going through a standup because the team needs to understand the progress. They may require assistance with technicalities or business functionality and must also understand the values, principles, and discipline.
• Large – Taking a relaxed attitude with huge teams may be troublesome, as formal meetings are required to provide advice and clarity.
• Distributed Teams – Because scattered teams are at a distance from each other, they can use the ‘dial-in’ feature to undertake meetings in an organized manner.

49.Can the Scrum team members participate in the product development process? If so, please explain how.

Ans: It is advantageous to involve the scrum team in the discovery phase stage of the product development lifecycle. Agile teams collaborate with stakeholders early in the development cycle to ensure that both parties are on the same page.

• By identifying technical implementation issues early in the process, development teams can assist in modifying specifications with the client.
• Working with the product owner, the team starts to share a common understanding of what needs to be ready. They can aid the product owner in identifying requirements that may have gone undetected.
• They share an understanding of what needs to be ready. It also helps teams maintain their dedication and confidence, encourages them to take ownership of their work, and, most importantly, boosts team spirit.
• To assist with this, the scrum master can begin involving teams in early product discussions while the requirements are still hazy. The product owner and the team can create the product backlog.

50.In Scrum, what do you mean by user stories? What benefits come from using them?

Ans: A user story is an informal, generic description of a software feature written from the end user’s perspective. Its purpose is to explain how a software feature could benefit the customer. Putting people first is a critical element of agile software development, and a user story accomplishes this by putting end-users at the center of the discussion. These anecdotes use non-technical language to describe the development team and their efforts. After reading a user story, the team understands why they are developing, what they are building, and what value it adds.

The following are some of the benefits of using User Story:

• The primary benefit of User Story is the user-centric definition. It is because, in the end, the user will use the product in the relevant user scenarios. It creates a connection between end users and team members.
• The syntax of the User Story ensures that the user’s desired goal, benefit, or value gets captured.
• Because the acceptance criteria get included in the user story, the Scrum Team will benefit from them.
• A user story can change at any time during the project’s execution. If the scope of the user story becomes too large, it must get divided into smaller user stories. The conditions of the acceptance criterion can also get altered.