Scrum Interview Questions

Scrum is the most popular methodologies that are being used by many organizations. In this post, we will discuss the Scrum interview questions. Our experts have gathered together the top 30 Scrum interview questions. Go through the below frequently asked Scrum interview questions and answers to improve your skill.

1. What is the difference between agile and scrum methodologies?

Ans:

  • Agile uses a set of values or principles for project management. Scrum is a  specific Agile methodology that is used to focus on delivering the value of a project.
  • Leadership is a vital role in Agile. Scrum employs self-organizing and cross-functional teams.
  • Agile has face-to-face interactions between the stakeholders. Scrum follows daily stand up meetings for collaboration.

[ Related Article: difference between agile and scrum ]

2. Name a few agile frameworks.

Ans: Here are some of the Agile frameworks.

  • Scrum
  • Test-driven development
  • Kanban
  • Feature-driven development
3. What are the roles in Scrum?

Ans: A Scrum team consists of three roles.

  • Product Owner - He/She is responsible for explaining the idea to the team and the delivery of the product.
  • Scrum Master - A Scrum master is the leader of the team. He/She is responsible for the paper execution of the end result.
  • Development Team - The team consists of people who work collaboratively to complete a task. 

As the scrum team is cross-functional, the development team consists of designers, ops engineers, and testers along with developers.

4. Explain about daily stand up meeting.

Ans: It is an everyday meeting held at the beginning of the working day. All the stakeholders of the project, including the project owner, Scrum Master, and the development team, meet for about 30 to 60 minutes. They discuss what was done the previous day, the tasks that have to be done that day, any impediments that are blocking the task, etc.

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5. What are the responsibilities of a Scrum Master?

Ans: A Scrum Master acts as the leader or coach for the scrum team. They schedule the interactions with the development team. They remove any obstacles that the team faces during the development and maximizes the productivity of the team. They make sure that the Scrum practices are followed throughout the project. 

6. What is a user story, epic, and task?

Ans:

  • User story - It defines a feature or functionality from an end-user perspective. It is like a description of the user’s requirements.
  • Epic - It is a feature defined by the customer and is categorized as the product backlog. An epic is broken down into several smaller stories.
  • Task - It is the smallest unit of work in Scrum. Tasks are the breakdown of user stories, i.e., a user story has multiple tasks associated with it.
7. What are the artifacts of the Scrum framework?

Ans: The Scrum framework consists of three main artifacts.

  • Product Backlog
  • Sprint Backlog
  • Product Increment
8. Explain about Scrum of Scrums.

Ans: The Scrum of Scrums is a scaled agile technique used to handle bigger teams. The project team is broken into smaller teams, and separate scrum meetings are held for each of these smaller teams. To establish coordination between the teams, a scrum meeting knows as Scrum of Scrums is held where a leader from each team joins. The leader or ambassador represents their team in this meeting.

9. What do you mean by sprint?

Ans: A sprint is a regular work cycle or a repeatable fixed time-box in which high-value tasks are added. The development team has to work on the tasks and be ready for review by the end of the sprint. A project is divided into multiple sprints. A sprint can last for a month or two weeks.

10. What are the responsibilities of a product owner?

Ans: A product owner is the main point of contact for a scrum team. He/She is responsible for defining stories and prioritizing the product backlog items. They guide the team on when to deliver what parts of the product. They ensure that the project is on track and focus on the success of the product. The product owner represents the team in front of the customer.

If you want to Explore more about Scrum? then read our updated article - Scrum Tutorial

11. List some of the Scrum project management tools.

Ans: Here are some of the popular Scrum tools that are used for project management.

  • Simple Excel
  •  Atlassian 
  • Jira
  • Version One
  • RTC Jazz
  • Sprintster
  • monday.com
  • MeisterTask

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12. What is the duration of a Scrum cycle?

Ans: A scrum project has fixed-length sprints. The sprints have a period ranging from 1 to 4 weeks, depending on the project. So, the length of sprints depends on the complexity of the project.

13. What is the product backlog in Scrum?

Ans: All the requirements or features of a project are added into the scrum board as product backlogs. The product owners define the product backlog items for the upcoming sprints. The product backlogs items include new features, bug reports, enhancements, and change requests.

14. Explain time boxing.

Ans: The process of allotting a fixed unit of time for an activity is called time boxing. It limits the amount of time dedicated to an activity. If the time is over, the activity is also over whether it is done or not. It enforces discipline across the members of the team. Scrum uses time boxing for all the events.

15. What is a Scrum burndown chart, and what does it contain?

Ans: The burndown chart is a graphical representation of work that is left to do versus remaining time. It is used to understand how quickly a user story is being completed by the team. It shows the total effort against the amount of work for each sprint. The quantity of work remaining will be on the vertical axis, and the vertical axis will be on the horizontal axis.

16. What are impediments in Scrum?

Ans: An impediment is a roadblock that keeps the development team from completing the work. The obstacles that do not allow the work to flow smoothly are called impediments. The impediments include sick team members, resource missing, operational problems, lack of skill, lack of management support, and more.

17. Tell me about velocity.

Ans: Velocity is a measure of the amount of work a development team can handle during a sprint. At the end of the sprint, velocity is calculated by the summing of all the points for all fully completed user stories. 

18. What is an increment in Scrum?

Ans: An increment is the total number of the product backlog items completed during the current sprint along with previous sprints increment values. Each increment is a step towards the end goal. The increment should always be in usable condition.

19. What is the Scrum poker technique?

Ans: Scrum poker, also known as planning poker, is a technique used for estimation and planning. It estimates the relative size of development goals. The members of the team make estimates by playing numbered cards face-down to the table without speaking them out. The estimates are revealed when the cards are revealed.

20. What are the limitations of using Scrum?

Ans: Even though Scrum has a lot of benefits, it also does have some limitations.

  • A less experienced scrum master might ruin the development process.
  • If a task is not defined properly, the project will result in inaccuracy.
  • If the scrum team does not understand the principles, problems will arise.
  • If there is no definite end date set, it leads to scope creep.
21. Explain the build breaker.

Ans: Sometimes, a developer might commit the project with a bug in it. This might result in stopping the build process, failures in the automated test environments, unacceptable warnings, etc., which are known as build breakers. Then the developer has to rectify the bug and get the build to normal.

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22. List some agile quality strategies.

Ans: Here are some of the agile quality strategies.

  • Iteration
  • Re-factoring
  • Milestone reviews
  • Short feedback cycles
  • Reviews and inspection
  • Standards and guidelines
  • Dynamic code analysis
23. What do you know about zero sprint and spikes?

Ans:

  • Zero Sprint - A zero sprint is the preparation step of the first sprint. There will be some items that need to be completed before starting the actual development of the project. Those items will be added to the zero sprint. The items in zero sprint will be setting up the environment, adding backlog items, etc.
  • Spikes - Spikes are a special type of user story that can be included in-between the sprints. These are used to gain knowledge of particular items related to project or technical issues.
24. What are the story points used for?

Ans: A story point is a measure to estimate the difficulty of implementing a user story. In other words, it is the abstract measure of effort required to implement a user story. A story point is calculated by considering the development effort, resolving dependencies, testing effort, and any other factors that contribute to the completion of a user story.

If you have any doubts on Scrum, then get them clarified from Scrum experts on our Scrum community

25. What is the difference between sprint planning meetings and sprint retrospective meetings?

Ans:

  • The sprint planning meeting is held at the beginning of each sprint to discuss the important features of the project and the product backlog items. This meeting lasts for an hour, and all the stakeholders must attend it.
  • The sprint retrospective meeting is held at the end of each sprint after the review meeting with the client. The duration of this meeting will be around 2 to 3 hours, and all the stakeholders must attend it.
26. What do you know about the release candidate?

At the final stage of development, the final build released internally for testing purposes is called a release candidate (RC). This helps in identifying any undetected problems in the code. A release candidate is not for production deployment.

27. Explain about the product roadmap.

Ans: A product roadmap is a plan of action that represents how the project will evolve. It provides details of the team's everyday work. It is like a high-level visual summary of the direction in which the product grows with time. It includes items like timeline, features, goals, resources, etc.

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28. List some agile certifications.

Ans: Here are some of the popular agile certifications.

  • ASM (Agile Scrum Master)
  • ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner)
  • PSM (Professional Scrum Master)
  • Safe Agilist
  • CSM (Certified Scrum Master)
29. Explain about refactoring.

Ans: To improve the performance of the project, a developer can make changes to the code without changing the functionality or behavior of it, which is called code refactoring. With each sprint, developers maintain and extend the existing program's source code. 

30. Can we cancel a sprint? If so, who can cancel it?

Ans: Yes, it is possible to cancel a sprint before the sprint time box is over. A sprint can be canceled only when it becomes obsolete with the sprint goal. Only a product owner can cancel a sprint.

Conclusion

The Scrum principles can be applied to all kinds of teamwork. Scrum defines a set of tools and roles that coerce teams' structures and manages their work. Scrum follows an iteration based product development, which makes sure that the product meets the customer needs exactly. The customer can give modifications in these iterations, and the team can apply the changes to the product. There are a lot of opportunities for Scrum-based roles. Doing a certification will be an added advantage for your resume.

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Kavya Gowda
Kavya Gowda
Research Analyst
Kavya works for HKR Trainings institute as a technical writer with diverse experience in many kinds of technology-related content development. She holds a graduate education in the Computer science and Engineering stream. She has cultivated strong technical skills from reading tech blogs and also doing a lot of research related to content. She manages to write great content in many fields like Programming & Frameworks, Enterprise Integration, Web Development, SAP, and Business Process Management (BPM). Connect her on LinkedIn and Twitter.