Best 53 Agile Interview Questions And Answers Pdf - Latest Updated
1. What is a test stub?
Answer: A small code which mimics a specific component in the system and can replace it. Its output is the same as the component it replaces.
2. What is Sashimi?
Answer: Sashimi is a Japanese word which means pierced body. Basically, it is a Japanese dish which consists of fresh meat or fish, sliced into thin pieces. Each piece is similar in taste when compared with the other pieces.
Sashimi in scrum methodology means every phase of the software development cycle in a sprint which includes requirement analysis, planning & design, development, testing, documentation is complete or not and the product is ready to be displayed, etc.
3. What is a Sprint Retrospective meeting?
Answer: This is mostly the last part of the sprint or may be done after the sprint review meeting. Scrum master and the whole team participate in it, they discuss ‘ what was good during the sprint’,’ what was bad’,’ what needs to be improved’. It generally lasts for 2-3 hrs.
4. Why aren’t user stories simply estimated in man hours?
Answer: Estimation of user stories on the basis of man-hours can be done but preferably not. You won’t be able to concentrate on the quality product to be delivered to the customer. Moreover, you will concentrate on cost and budget of the management while using man hours.
Instead of that, one can use story points, as it provides a complete idea about both the complexity of work and required efforts.
5. Is it ever suggested to use waterfall over Scrum?
Answer: If yes, explain when.
Yes, sometimes it is suggested to use the waterfall model over Scrum. It is done when the customer requirements are simple, well-defined, fully understood, predictable, and are not subjected to change until the completion of the project. It may the case that you would haven’t ever used waterfall over Scrum but you need to prepare for such Agile Scrum interview questions.
6. What is a Daily Stand-up Meeting?
Answer: Daily Stand-up Meeting is a daily routine meeting. It brings everyone up to date on the information and helps the team to stay organized.
Each team member reports to the peers the following:
1. What did he/she do yesterday
2. What are the impediments faced
3. What he/she will do today
In general, it’s not a recorded meeting. Reporting will be between peers not to Scrum Master or Product Owner. It is normally timeboxed to a maximum of 15 minutes.
It is aka 15 Minute Stand-up Meeting.
7. What is the lifespan of the scrum cycle?
Answer: The project size and team size are the two main factors which determine the time length of the scrum cycle. The size of a team can be 3 to 9 members. Usually, it can be estimated that the time span of a scrum sprint of about 3 to 4 weeks on average.
8. What are the disadvantages of the agile model?
Answer: Some of the disadvantages of using an agile model are as follows:
a) Not easy to predict: When you encounter a large project, it is not easy to get an idea of how much effort will it need
b) If the guidelines given by the customers is not properly grasped, then the final outcome of the project is not customer satisfying
c) Sometimes focusing on design and documentation is not proper
d) High-level decisions are under the hand of Veterans, if not combined with non-experienced one, freshers have little scope to grasp proper knowledge.
9. What does the X and Y-axis of the burndown chart?
Answer: In burn down, chart X-axis shows working days and Y-axis shows remaining efforts.
Project XYZ
Here, in the image blue line depicts the ideal time suggested for completing the project. For example in a project ideally, 28 tasks (efforts) are pending on the starting day of the project. And the project is scheduled to be completed in 20 days. So on the 20th day, zero tasks (efforts) should remain, which means the project should get completed.
On the other hand, the red line depicts the actual task (efforts) given with respect to the days. Here on day 5, 7 tasks need to be completed as per planning, however, in actual only 4 tasks were completed.
Thus, it provides proper tracking down of the progress of the project and thereby helps in improving the efficiency and on-time taken to deliver the project.
10. What are the main roles in the scrum?
Answer:
- Scrum team: – Scrum team is made by an individual person who works collectively to achieve a particular task. The team works in a bond to deliver committed and requested product
- Scrum master: – scrum master is responsible for the proper execution or working of the scrum team. Being a servant – leader and a coach, he ensures the proper productivity of a team towards scrum a sprint goal.
- Product owner: – product owner has the responsibility to deliver a complete picture of what to build and to convey that idea to the team
11. What are the places where Scrum and Kanban are used?
Answer: When there is a need for shifting towards appropriate and prominent process then you use Scrum. When you need to improve the process that is running provided that there are not many changes then Kanban is used.
12. What are the most important agile Matrices?
Answer: The following are the important agile Matrices.
Velocity – To have a clear about your progress, capacity and many more keeping track of the velocity is important. It can be measured by adding all the estimates of the stories that are approved.
Work category allocation – the work category allocation will provide a clear idea about where you are investing your time and also about the priority of the work.
Defect removal awareness – active members can produce quality products.
The cumulative flow diagram – the uniform flow of work can be checked thought this diagram of cumulative flow. Here the x-axis represents time and the y-axis stands for the number of effort.
- The sprint burndown matric – it helps in keeping track of the completion of the work with the sprint.
- Business value delivered – this is an entity that is concerned with the work efficiency of the team. It is used to measure and 100 points are associated with every project.
- Time coverage – it is defined as the amount of time that is given to code while it is being tested. This is measured with the help of the ratio of the number of lines of code that is called by the test suite by the number of relative lines of codes.
- Defect resolution time – this is a term which is concerned with the process in which team members detect bugs and also fixes them. There are a number of processes involved in fixing a bug.
clearing the picture of the bug
Schedule a fix
Fixation of a defect is done.
Report of resolution is handed.
13. What does a scrum burndown chart comprise?
Answer: A scrum burndown chart should consist of
X-axis that displays working days
Y-axis that displays remaining effort
Ideal effort as a guideline
Real progress of the effort
14. What are the artifacts of Scrum process?
Answer:
- Sprint backlog – The Sprint Backlog is the set of Product Backlog items selected for the Sprint, plus a plan for delivering the product Increment and realizing the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Backlog is a forecast by the Development Team about what functionality will be in the next Increment and the work needed to deliver that functionality into a “Done” Increment.
- Product backlog – The Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything that might be needed in the product and is the single source of requirements for any changes to be made to the product. The Product Owner is responsible for the Product Backlog, including its content, availability, and ordering.
- Velocity chart- A velocity chart shows the sum of estimates of the work delivered across all iterations. Typically, velocity will stabilize through the life of a project unless the project team make-up varies widely or the length of the iteration changes.
- Burn-down chart – It is a chart that shows how quickly you and your team are burning through your customer’s user stories. It shows the total effort against the amount of work we deliver on each iteration.
15. What do you know about Scrum ban?
Answer: Scrum-ban is a Scrum and Kanban-based model for software development. This model is specifically used for the projects that need continuous maintenance, have various programming errors or have some sudden changes. This model promotes the completion of a project in minimum time for a programming error or user story.
16. What does the term scrum of scrums mean?
Answer: There are 7 teams appointed on a particular project and let us consider that each team has got 7 members each. A particular team will conduct their own scrum meetings. In order to have coordination among the teams, another separate meeting is held and this is known as a scrum of scrums. The person who will present the team in the scrum of scrums is an ambassador. In the meeting g the points that are discussed are:- After the last meeting how far the team has progressed.
17. What do you mean by planning poker or scrum poker technique?
Answer: The technique which is a card-based estimation based on a general agreement is known as scrum poker or planning poker. Some features of it are:-
- The first step is to story of the agile user is read by the customer or owner. Then the estimator understands the features.
- There are different planning cards with a different number for each estimator. The different numbers are the story points.
- Based on the estimation which is done by discussing features, the estimator will select a card.
- When a common value is selected then it is considered to be an estimate otherwise there is a discussion on maximum and minimum estimation.
- Until a general agreement is reached this process is repeated.
18. What do you mean by the disadvantages of the agile model?
Answer: There are certain disadvantages of the agile system which are discussed below.
- It is not easy to predict. If a big project is assigned you will have a problem to estimate the effort you need to put into that.
- Focusing on design and documentation is not always proper.
- The final product will not satisfy the customers if the guidelines given by the client are not properly understood.
- The high-level decision making is in the hands of the higher authorities which makes the fresher to have little knowledge.
19. What is the role of the Scrum Master?
Answer: Here’s how you can answer Scrum Master interview questions like this –
The scrum master is the leader as well as coach of the Scrum team. The scrum master is responsible to serve and protect his team from any kind of distractions that could affect their performance. The main role of the scrum master is to motivate his team to achieve the sprint goal. He is focused to build a self-organized and motivated team where each member is familiar with the implementation of Agile and Scrum principles and applications. The scrum master keeps a proper check on the scrum team if they are executing committed tasks properly. He is also responsible to increase the efficiency and productivity of the team so that they can achieve the sprint goal effectively.
20. What do you understand by the term “Scrum of Scrums”?
Answer: This is one of the commonly asked scrum master interview questions. Consider a case to understand the meaning of the term scrum of the scrums. Let us assume an active project on which seven teams are currently working. The number of members of each team is also seven. Each team is responsible to lead its own scrum meeting. But, in order to coordinate and communicate with different teams, it is required to organize a separate scrum meeting. The scrum meeting organized to hold coordination between scrum teams is known as the scrum of scrums. There is one team leader from every team, known as an ambassador, who is responsible to represent his team in the scrum of scrums.
21. What do you know about impediments in Scrum?
Answer: Impediments are the obstacles or issues faced by the scrum team which slows down their speed of work. If something is trying to block the scrum team from their getting work “Done” then it is an impediment. Impediments can come in any form. Some of the impediments are given as
Resource missing or sick team member
Technical, operational, organizational problems
Lack of management supportive system
Business problems
External issues such as weather, war, etc
Lack of skill or knowledge
While answering impediments related agile scrum interview questions remember that you may be asked the way to remove any of the mentioned impediment.
22. Name some methodologies and development where you have used Agile model?
Answer: While answering this type of agile scrum interview questions, keep in mind to mention those methodologies that are familiar with.
Some of the methodologies and development where Agile model can be used are:
- Crystal methodologies
- Lean software development
- Dynamic development
- Feature-driven development
23. How do you know if you are using agile development?
Answer: Whenever you are using certain things like Test-driven development, time-boxed task board, class responsibilities collaborators, daily stand up meeting, pair programming, continuous integration, reviews and much more… you will get to know that you are using agile development.
24. What do you mean by sprint retrospective meeting?
Answer: Sprint retrospective meeting is the last part of the sprint. It is probably done after the review meeting of a sprint. The whole teams along with scrum master participate in this discussion and it lasts for 2 to 3 hours.
25. What is the difference between the agile & traditional way of working?
Answer: This question is to judge whether one is aware of the environment of the agile way of working. Here the answer is expected to cover few or all of below:
- The traditional way is sequential where design-> Development-> Testing etc. happen one after another whereas in agile all of this is done in every iteration/sprint
- Changes are welcomed in agile as Scope is flexible whereas in traditional manner scope is fixed in the beginning due to which changes have to follow change request path
- Progress is measured with % completion traditionally whereas working software is the measure of progress in agile
Project Manager as a central controlling authority is traditionally driving the project whereas Self-motivated and self-organizing teams drive the projects in agile.
26. What are the responsibilities of a Scrum Master?
Answer: Key responsibilities of a Scrum Master involves:
- Tracking and monitoring
- Understanding requirements properly
- Work to reach the project goal
- Process checking master and quality master
- Protect the team from detachments
- Improving the performance of the team
- Lead the meetings and resolve issues
- Resolution of conflicts and impediments
- Communication and reporting
27. How does agile testing (development) methodology differ from another testing (development) methodologies?
Answer: The testers (developers) ensure that the whole process of testing (development) is broken into small steps as possible, and just a small unit of code is tested (developed) in each of these steps. The team of testers (developers) consistently communicates the results of their work and changes the short term strategy and even the development plan on the go, based on the results of agile testing. The agile methodology encourages a flexible and rapid response to change, which should lead to better end results.
28. How much time should a person expect to spend on Scrum Master activities?
Answer: A ScrumMaster should make this role their top priority to focus on the benefits of the overall team. Their load will vary from sprint to sprint depending on what impediments and issues the team are dealing with. Newly formed teams typically take more ScrumMaster time; 50%-100%, while experienced ScrumMasters with established well functioning teams might spend 50% or less time on the ScrumMaster role.
29. What is the difference between Epic, User stories & Tasks?
Answer: An epic is a group of related user stories.
User Stories define the actual business requirement. Generally created by the business owner.
Task: To accomplish the business requirements, development team create tasks.
30. What is the difference between the Sprint Planning Meeting and Sprint Retrospective Meeting?
Answer: The difference between the Sprint Planning Meeting and Sprint Retrospective Meeting is as follows:
- Sprint Planning Meeting – A meeting in which all the Scrum roles (product owner, scrum team, and scrum master) have a discussion about the team’s priority features and product backlog items is known as a sprint planning meeting. This meeting is held every week and lasts for almost 1 hour.
- Sprint Retrospective Meeting – A meeting in which all the Scrum roles (product owner, scrum team, and scrum master) have a discussion about the good part of the sprint, the bad part of the sprint, and the sprint improvements is known as sprint retrospective meeting. This meeting that is held at the sprint review meeting or at the end of the sprint; it lasts for 2-3 hours.
This is one of the frequently asked Agile Scrum interview questions. You may be asked to define the above terms separately or the difference between these two.
31. What is the difference between agile & scrum?
Answer: This question will test whether you are aware of a broader picture of agile and its different frameworks or flavors. Below image will help you explain this answer where you can say agile is an umbrella of values and principles and under it, one of the lightweight frameworks is called Scrum.
Difference between Agile and Scrum
Certification-related Agile Scrum Interview Questions
Certifications have become very important these days. Although it’s not compulsory to have a certification for any job position but it demonstrates your skills to the employers. So, interviewers include these certification-related agile scrum interview questions in an agile scrum interview.
32. Do you have a Scrum Master certification?
Answer: This question may seem awkward to you but it is one of the most popular Agile Scrum interview questions. If an interviewer asks this question, it doesn’t mean that certification is must for the job position. Just be confident while answering whether you have a scrum master certification or not. If you are a certified scrum master, just share the details of your certification like certification exam, score obtained, and the year of passing the certification exam. In case you don’t have a certification, mention and highlight your
(company) experience in the particular field. Also, let the interviewer know if you are planning to invest in the certification in the near future.
33. How to measure velocity if our iteration lengths change?
Answer: You can’t measure it easily. Velocity’s value comes from its inherent consistency. A fixed iteration length helps drive the reliable rhythm of a project. Without this rhythm, you are constantly revising, re-estimating, and reconciling, and the ability to predict out in the future is minimized due to inconsistent results.
If, on the other hand, almost everyone is going to be out a week for the holidays or a couple of days for company-wide meetings then, by all means, adapt iteration dates or velocity accordingly. Like most agile practices, these are guidelines, not strict rules.
34. What square measures the principles of agile testing?
Answer: Some major principles of agile testing are:
- Customer satisfaction
- Face to face communication
- Sustainable development
- Quick answer changes
- Continuous feedback
- Successive improvement
- Self-organized
- Focus on essence
- Error-free clean node
- Collective work
35. What square measure the 2 key factors once operating as a QA in an associate Agile team?
Answer: QA will add lots useful to associate an agile team due to the various mindsets. Testers will and will admit the various doable situations to check a story.
But the foremost vital plus that they will bring is:
To forestall defect: QA ought to advocate best practices on the thanks to forestalling defects from getting into the system within the 1st place.
To offer quick feedback: it’s vital for developers to grasp if the new practicality works evidently and if regression tests pass, and that they would like that feedback quite quickly. QA ought to offer the results of the tests to developers as shortly as doable.
36. What are impediments?
Answer: Any hindrance that prevents the sleek flow of labor or because of that the team isn’t able to perform its task in an exceedingly higher manner is what we tend to decision ‘impediments’.
37. What is the scrum of scrums?
Answer: Suppose there are 7 teams working on a project and each team has 7 members. Each team leads its own particular scrum meeting. Now to coordinate among the teams a separate meeting has to be organized, that meeting is called Scrum of Scrums.
Scrum of Scrums
An ambassador ( a designated person who represents team) represents its team in the scrum of scrums.
Few points discussed in the meeting are:
- The progress of the team, after the last meeting.
- The task to be done before the next meeting.
- Hindrance which the team had faced while completing the last task.
38. Describe the places where ‘Scrum’ and ‘Kanban’ are used?
Answer: ‘Scrum’ is used when you need to shift towards more appropriate or more prominent process while if you want improvement in running the process without much changes in the whole scenario, you should use ‘Kanban’
39. Should scrum master remove impediments on behalf of the scrum team?
Answer: The scrum master can do that, but he should not. The scrum master should neither over-rule nor pamper his/her team. Initially, there may be chances of failure, unplanned excursions or dead-end where the team can trap, here scrum master should support them and show the proper way of getting out of it. A scrum team should be independent to take its own decision.
40. What are the principles of Agile Software Development?
Answer:
1. Highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of business valuable software
2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development
3. Deliver working software frequently
4. Business people and developers must work together with transparency on a daily basis throughout the project
5. Build projects around motivated individuals
6. The best form of communication is to do face-to-face conversation
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress
8. Able to maintain a constant pace
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence
10. Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential
11. Self-organizing teams
12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly
41. What are the main roles in Scrum?
Answer: Scrum consists of three main roles:
- Product Owner: Product Owner usually represents the Client and acts as a point of contact from the Client side. The one who prioritizes the list of Product Backlogs which Scrum Team should finish and release.
- Scrum Master: Scrum Master acts as a facilitator to the Scrum Development Team. Clarifies the queries and organizes the team from distractions and teach the team how to use scrum and also concentrates on Return on Investment (ROI). Responsible for managing the sprint.
- Scrum Development Team: Developer’s, QA’s. Who develops the product. Scrum development team decides the effort estimation to complete a Product Backlog Item.
- Scrum Team: A cross-functional, self-organizing group of dedicated people (Group of Product Owner, Business Analyst, Developer’s and QA’s). The recommended size of a scrum team is 7 plus or minus 2 (i.e, between 5 to 9 members in a team).
42. What is a Sprint?
Answer: In Scrum, the project is divided into Sprints. Each Sprint has a specified timeline (2 weeks to 1 month). This timeline will be agreed by a Scrum Team during the Sprint Planning Meeting. Here, User Stories are split into different modules. The end result of every Sprint should be a potentially shippable product.
43. What is Defect Burndown Chart?
Answer: A graph which shows how many defects identified and fixed.
44. What is a Sprint Planning Meeting?
Answer: The first step of Scrum is the Sprint Planning Meeting where the entire Scrum Team attends. Here the Product Owner selects the Product Backlog Items (User Stories) from the Product Backlog. Most important User Stories at the top of the list and least important User Stories at the bottom. Scrum Development Team decides and provides effort estimation.
45. What is a Sprint Review Meeting?
Answer: In the Sprint Review Meeting, Scrum Development Team presents a demonstration of a potentially shippable product. Product Owner declares which items are completed and not completed. Product Owner adds the additional items to the product backlog based on the stakeholder’s feedback.
46. What is a Sprint Retrospective Meeting?
Answer: Scrum Team meets again after the Sprint Review Meeting and documents the lessons learned in the earlier sprint such as “What went well”, “What could be improved”. It helps the Scrum Team to avoid the mistakes in the next Sprints.
47. Is it possible to apply agile methodology another testing apart from software testing and development testing?
Answer: The methodology of a file testing can be applied in case of biophysics, biochemistry, biomedical and those places that have insufficient data and the project needs to complete with a small team.
48. What does story point mean in the scrum?
Answer: The unit that is used to estimate the total effort which is needed to finish or do a particular work or implementing a backlog is referred to as a story point in the scrum.
49. What do you mean by the X and Y-axis of the burndown chart?
Answer: In the burndown chart, the X-axis represents the working days and the Y-axis stands for showing the remaining efforts.
50. Can agile methodology also be applied in other than software testing and development projects?
Answer: There are several places where agile methodology can be applied in the field of biochemistry, biophysics, bio-medical or at the place where there is insufficient data, where the project needs to be completed in a small team, where to work in unknown and there are several areas.
51. What is Zero sprint in Agile?
Answer: It can be defined as pre-step to the first sprint. Things like setting up the development environment, preparing backlog etc needs to be done before starting of the first sprint and can be treated as Sprint zero.
52. What do you know about Kanban?
Answer: A tool which is used in helping the team to overlook the work which includes its progress is known as Kanban. Along with progress, the status of the current development story is also described by Kanban and it is done by Kanban board.
53. What is your view on scrum master removing impediments for the scrum team?
Answer: The scrum master can remove impediments on behalf of the scrum team but he should not do that. The scrum master should not pamper nor overrule the scrum team. Also, the scrum team should be able to make their own decisions…
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