Scrum Master Interview Questions: Today’s job market is quite competitive and getting a job is not a piece of cake. Scrum Master is one of the emerging roles in the software industry today and bagging a role like this needs thorough preparation for the interview process.
In this blog, we have covered some most commonly asked interview questions for the Scrum Master role.
Who is a Scrum Master?
A Scrum Master is a highly skilled professional who is responsible for leading a team during a project with the best practices of agile project management methodologies. A Scrum Master takes charge of all the plans, communication, and collaboration with team members to ensure the best positive outcomes at the end. There are numerous methodologies available in the market today, and Scrum Master is one of the best frameworks for fast-moving projects. Not only IT industry has adapted the agile methodologies, but Scrum Master jobs are available in every industry around the globe.
Scrum Master Interview Questions: General Questions
Question 1: What is Scrum?
Scrum is an Agile framework that helps teams work together. Scrum can enable teams to learn from experiences, self-organize while working on problems, reflect on their victories and failures, and make improvements. This Agile Scrum interview question is often used as a starter question to get the interview moving.
Question 2: Define the roles in Scrum?
There are 3 fundamental roles in Scrum:
Product Owner: The product owner is an individual who is responsible for increasing the ROI by determining product features, prioritizing these features into a list, what needs to be focused on the upcoming sprint, and much more. These are constantly re-prioritized and refined.
Scrum Master: This individual helps the team in learning to apply Scrum to ensure optimum business value. The scrum master removes impediments, shields the team from distractions, and enables them to adopt agile practices.
Scrum Team: They are a collection of individuals who work together to ensure that the requirements of the stakeholders are delivered.
Question 3: What do you mean by Agile?
Agile is an iterative project management and software development methodology that enables teams to deliver value to clients faster with fewer difficulties. The agile team provides work in small, consumable pieces rather than putting all on a “big bang” release. Requirements, strategies, and outcomes are all evaluated on a regular basis, giving teams a natural method for adapting to change.
Question 4: What is the Agile Manifesto?
Four values and principles behind the Agile philosophy are
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
Check Out: Our blog post on Agile SDLC.
Question 5: What are the Artifacts of the Scrum Process?
- Product Backlog: It is a list that consists of new features, changes to features, bug fixes, changes to the infrastructure, and other activities to ensure a particular output can be obtained.
- Sprint Backlog: It is a subset of the product backlog that contains tasks focused on by the team to satisfy the sprint goal. Teams first identify the tasks to be completed from the product backlog. These are then added to the sprint backlog.
- Product Increment: It is a combination of all product backlog items completed in a
sprint and the value of previous sprints’ increments. The output must be in usable condition, even if the product owner doesn’t release it.
Read: Scrum Roles, Artifacts & Events – Scrum Framework
Question 6: Who is a Scrum Master? And what does he/she do?
A Scrum Master is someone who promotes and supports the usage of Scrum within the team.
• He/She understands the theory, practices, rules and, values of Scrum
• He/She ensures that the team follows the values, principles and, practices of
Scrum
• They remove any distractions and impediments that hamper the progress of
the project
• The Scrum Master ensures that the team delivers value during the sprint
Question 7: What do you mean by Sprint in Scrum?
A Sprint is at the heart of Scrum. It is a two-week or one-month period in which a potentially releasable product increment is generated. Following the conclusion of the preceding Sprint, a new Sprint begins. It breaks down large, difficult undertakings into manageable chunks. It helps teams provide high-quality work faster and more frequently, making projects easier to manage. Sprints provide them with more flexibility in adapting to changes.
Sprint planning, daily scrums, development work, Sprint review, and sprint retrospective are all part of a sprint.
- The work to be done in the Sprint is planned collectively by the Scrum Team during Sprint planning.
- The Daily Scrum Meeting is a 15-minute timed event in which the Scrum Team synchronizes efforts and creates a strategy for the following day.
- At the end of each Sprint, a Sprint Review is held to review the Increment and, if necessary, make modifications to the Product Backlog.
- After the Sprint Review and before the following Sprint Planning, there is a Sprint Retrospective. The Scrum Team will inspect itself and prepare a plan for changes to be implemented during the next Sprint during this meeting.
Question 8: What do you mean by user stories in Scrum? What are the advantages of using them?
A user story is a casual, generic explanation of a software feature written from the end user’s perspective. Its goal is to communicate how a software feature will benefit the customer. Putting people first is a critical component of agile software development, and a user story does just that by putting end-users at the heart of the discussion. The development team and their efforts are described in these anecdotes using non-technical language. The team knows why they’re developing, what they’re building, and what value it adds after reading a user story.
Following are the advantages of using User Story:-
- The main advantage of User Story is the user-centric definition. This is because, in the end, the user will be the one who uses the product in the relevant user scenarios. It establishes a link between end-users and team members.
- The User Story’s syntax ensures that the objective, benefit, or value that the user wishes to attain is captured.
- The Scrum Team will benefit from the acceptance criteria because they are included in the user story.
It is possible to make changes to a user story throughout the project’s execution. If the user story’s scope grows too large, it must be divided into smaller user stories. The acceptance criterion’s conditions can also be changed.
Question 9: Who is responsible for writing the User Story?
User stories can be written by anyone. Although it is the product owner’s job to ensure that an agile user story backlog exists, this does not imply that the product owner is the one who produces them.
During the early stages of product development, the team discusses needs and records them as user stories. As long as there is a product backlog, it will never be frozen. As a result, if someone thinks there’s a missing requirement or anything that could benefit the client, they can add it to the queue as a user story. There is no rule or guideline indicating that the stories must be written solely by the product owner. Because there is a set format, anyone creating the story should know exactly what it means and how to write it.
Question 10: Differentiate Between Agile and Scrum.
The difference between Agile and Scrum is a very fundamental and common Scrum Master interview question asked in an interview.
Question 11: What do you mean by timeboxing in Scrum? When can a Sprint be canceled and by whom?
Timeboxing refers to allocating a specific amount of time to a specific activity. A timebox is a time measurement unit. A timebox should be no more than 15 minutes long. Before the Sprint timebox limit expires, a Sprint can be canceled. The sprint can only be canceled by the Product Owner.
Read: Scrum Master Certification Day 4 Q/A Review: Scrum Events
Question 12: What do you mean by Sprint 0 and Spike?
The modest amount of effort put in to establish a rough skeleton of the product backlog is referred to as Sprint 0. It also contains information on calculating product release dates. Sprint 0 is necessary for the following tasks:
- Creating a skeleton for the project, as well as research spikes
- Maintaining a minimalist design
- Creating a few stories completely
- Being lightweight and having a low velocity
The spike is a collection of activities that use Extreme Programming for research, design, investigation, prototyping, and other purposes. It tries to mitigate the technical approach’s risks by assisting with the acquisition of knowledge in order to better comprehend requirements and increase reliability.
Question 13: What is ‘Scrum of Scrums’?
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.
Question 14: What is Empirical Process Control in Scrum?
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, inspection, 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.
Question 15: What do you mean by DoD?
DoD stands for Definition of Done. It is the set of deliverables that contain written codes, comments on coding, unit tests, integration testing, design documents, release notes, and so on. This provides project development with quantifiable and demonstrable benefits. It is quite beneficial to scrum when it comes to identifying deliverables that will assist the project reach its goal.
It assists with:
- Identifying the steps necessary to complete the iteration.
- The use of appropriate technologies, such as burndown, to improve the efficiency of the process.
- Providing timely input at all stages of the project’s life cycle.
- Assuring that the product backlog items are properly walked through and understood.
- The establishment of a checklist for the backlog items in the product.
- Assuring that it is defined in such a way that it is task-oriented.
- Including the product owner in the sprint review and sprint retrospective
Read: Scrum Master Roles & Responsibilities, Servant Leadership & Coaching
Question 16: What are the three C’s in a User Story?
Following are the three C’s in a User Story:
- Card: It is a written account of the story that is utilized to plan and estimate. To keep user stories succinct, they are manually written on index “cards.”
- Conversation: The Conversation is required to learn more about the Card. The conversation encourages the agile team to work together in small steps to develop a shared understanding of the problem and potential solutions.
- Confirmation: Confirmation is an acceptance criterion that contains the fundamental requirements and turns them into test criteria so that we can determine when the user story has been properly provided.
Question 17: What do you mean by Velocity in the context of Scrum? Does having maximum Velocity ensure maximum Productivity?
The amount of work performed by a team during a sprint is measured by velocity. It refers to the number of user stories that have been finished in a sprint.
No, having maximum Velocity does not ensure maximum Productivity. A team’s attempt to enhance velocity may actually result in the reverse. If pressed for time, a team may forgo unit or acceptance testing, reduce customer collaboration, forgo issue fixes, minimize refactoring, and many other critical benefits of the agile development approach. While there may be a short-term benefit, there will be a long-term detrimental consequence. The goal is to achieve optimal velocity over time, which takes into account a variety of parameters, including the end product’s quality.
Read: Scrum Master Certification – Product Planning, Agile Estimation & Fibonacci Sequence
Question 18: What do you mean by Scrum Master as a Servant Leader?
- A servant-leader is someone who :
- Focuses on establishing a trusting relationship.
- Encourages transparency and empowerment.
- Encourages teamwork and collaboration
- Demonstrates ethical and compassionate behavior by prioritizing the needs of others.
- Is humble, well-informed, upbeat, socially conscious, and situationally aware.
A Scrum Master is a master at motivating, enabling, and inspiring individuals to work together as a team and reach their maximum potential. A Scrum Master is a servant-leader who prioritizes the needs of team members and those they serve (customers), with the purpose of generating results that are consistent with the organization’s values, principles, and goals.
The Scrum Master’s responsibilities as a servant-leader include:
- Setting Scrum up as a servant rather than a commanding process.
- Assisting the Development team in becoming self-organized.
- Guiding the group via constructive conflict and debate.
- Scrum adoption and use are taught, coached, and mentored by the organization and team
Question 19: What are some risks in Scrum? How are they handled?
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.
Question 20: What are the burn-up and burn-down charts in scrum?
Burn-Up and Burn-Down Charts are used to trace the progress of the project. The burn-up chart illustrates the amount of work completed, while the burn-down chart illustrates the amount of work remaining to complete a project. Remember that the efforts are measured in terms of user stories and not hours.
Question 21: What is the difference between Sprint and Iteration in Scrum?
Iteration: It is terminology used to define a single development cycle in general agile methods. It is a common term used in the iterative and incremental development process.
Sprint: It is used to define one development cycle or iterative step in a specialized agile methodology referred to as Scrum. Sprint is scrum specific, and not all forms of iterations are Sprints
Read: Introduction To Sprint in Scrum & Its Uses
Question 22: What is a Story Board in scrum?
An important principle in Scrum is the idea of transparency. That’s why making things visible for the entire team to see is really important. A big factor of this is the Story Board. It is a visual representation of a software project’s progress which generally has four columns, namely, ‘To do’, In Progress’, ‘Test’, and ‘Done’.
Scrum Master Scenario Based Interview Questions and Answers
Question 23: A user story is lacking the final designs, and the design team is promising to deliver on day 2. The Product Owner also agrees with that and tries to push the user story to the sprint backlog. What will be your step?
The entry criteria for any story in a sprint relies on Definition of Ready which involves creating clear criteria that a user story must meet before being committed into an upcoming iteration. In our scenario, the user story lacks final designs which clearly indicates that it is NOT ready to be picked up for the commitment. Also, in this scenario, the product owner agrees and pushes the team to commit. As per Agile, it is a wrong practice, BUT it also depends on the team’s circumstances. If the past experience says that the design team has been delivering as promised on the timelines, or if the story is of high value to the client, in such cases the team can go ahead with the exception and commit the story.
However, this should not be made a regular practice as it would be a compromise with the principles and with the core essence of Scrum. The Scrum Master should look for such anti-patterns and help the team understand the importance of the Definition of Ready.
It all depends on the team’s situation to go ahead with the exception or reject the same. Accepting stories that do not meet the ready definition increases the risk of completion and even impacts the teams’ efficiency.
Question 24: How do you deal with a Product Owner who assigns user stories/tasks to the individual team members?
As part of a Scrum Master role, one of the responsibilities entails helping and coaching the Product Owner. It is really critical for the Scrum roles to understand their role and function accordingly. If the product owner is assigning the user stories/tasks, it is the job of a scrum master to make the product owner realize the meaning of self-organization.
In the Scrum Guide, a partial definition of self-organizing is given as Scrum Teams are self-organizing. Self-organizing teams choose how to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team.” Self-governance is one of the utmost motivators there is for people doing creative and problem-solving types of work. Assigning tasks to people is an implicit claim that the product owner knows better than the team, this not only passes on the wrong notion but it also lowers the morale of the team and at the same time defies the scrum values and Agile principle – “Point 5. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.” And “Point 11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.”
Hence, the product owner is assigning work, the Scrum Master should intervene and help the Product Owner in understanding the true sense of working in a Scrum framework and refrain him/her to continue this practice.
Read: Scrum Master Roles and Responsibilities
Question 25: How do you make the stakeholders attend the daily scrum?
One of the Agile Principles states “Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project”. The stakeholders can join the daily scrum meeting but they can be mute spectators till the time scrum is not complete. The Scrum Master should encourage the stakeholders to join the meeting by making them understand that it will be worth their time.
The goal of the Daily Scrum is to know whether or not they will reach the Sprint Goal. If the stakeholders are joining the daily scrum, then they will get to know the updated picture of product development and can accordingly adjust their expectations. They get to know about the real issues that the team is facing, which helps both parties. This event gives the opportunity to the development team to directly ask questions with the stakeholders. It not only promotes a platform for discussion but also provides early detection of risk for the stakeholders. But the Scrum Master should make sure that the inclusion of the stakeholders in the daily scrum is not converting the meeting into a status update. Although stakeholder presence is not mandatory, it doesn’t matter if they are there as a listener because it can facilitate the resolution of any impediments.
Question 26: Should the Scrum Master be present at the daily Scrum?
This is one of the most common Scrum Master interview questions. A Scrum Master does not have to be there; he or she only has to ensure the Development Team has a Daily Scrum. The Scrum Master enforces the rule that only Development Team members participate in the Daily Scrum. Although the Scrum Master or Product Owner can attend this meeting to facilitate the Daily Scrum, this is certainly not required by Scrum. The Development Team members synchronize their work, monitor their progress toward the Sprint Goal and if required they adapt the Sprint Backlog and the plan for the next 24 hours during the Daily Scrum
Question 27: How would you instill an Agile mindset and approach across departments?
While a typical waterfall work environment focuses on the end product, Agile environments compartmentalize projects into individual tasks with realistic timelines. This maximizes productivity and quality.
Here are some ways in which you can instill an Agile mindset:
- A Scrum Master needs to discuss the idea of the outcome of projects with the team members. All performance metrics need to be defined and communicated to stakeholders.
- Regular engagement with customers is necessary to further the sense of shared ownership.
- Team members should be involved in all processes to gradually facilitate the shift to an Agile environment.
- Make flexible strategies that can be changed based on situations
Read: Scrum vs Kanban
Question 28: A member of the scrum team does not want to participate in the sprint planning meetings and considers meetings as a waste of time. How do you deal with that kind of attitude?
For a Scrum Master, it is important to understand the pulse of the team. If there’s a member in your team who takes the meetings as useless, it’s time to know why he/she is adopting such a behavior. The focus should be on the behavior rather than the individual, the Scrum Master should try to talk to the team member individually by asking open-ended questions to find out the reason for not attending the meeting. Certainly, there is a need to understand the cause of this behavior and try to explain the importance of the planning meeting (Scrum ceremonies).
In Scrum, each individual is important, it is like the wheels of a truck, any wheel gets dealigned or malfunctioned, the complete vehicle suffers. Hence, the need to explain the impact of not having his presence in the planning meeting and its impact on the entire team arises. Even the team can start to feel this imbalance. If it is still not resolved, the Scrum Master can set up a meeting with his reporting manager to talk about the concern and look out for ways to help the team member and the team.
Question 29: How do you help in picking up the good user stories for the team members?
As a Scrum Master, one of the responsibilities is to help the team pull up the backlog for a sprint that is already prioritized and pull items that are placed on the top (sorted as per the priority). Once, the team is able to identify items that can add value from the pile of requirements, the Scrum Master can help them (Product Owner + Development Team) to convert them into good user stories (if it is not already).
A good user story is one that includes a description and has acceptance criteria defined. It should be a piece that can be delivered in a sprint and entails minimum dependencies. The team should be able to develop and test within the boundaries of the sprint along with providing the estimates. In short, good user stories follow the INVEST principle.
- Independent – Reduced dependencies
- Negotiable – Describes the functionality, can be negotiated between the Team and PO
- Valuable – Provides value to the customer
- Estimable – Too big or too vague = not estimable
- Small – Can be done in a Sprint by the team
- Testable – Good acceptance criteria
The scrum master can help the team in creating good user stories during the backlog refinement or sprint planning so that the team can pick them up for the commitment.
Read: Scrum Master vs Product Owner: Which Role is Suitable For You
Question 30: Is There a Time When Waterfall Is Preferable Over Scrum?
There shouldn’t be an all-in-or-all-out approach to any project. Sometimes a hybrid methodology works best. Other times a strictly traditional course best serves the project. For example, if the work is simple, predictable, and fully defined, it would probably be right to use waterfall. This scrum master interview question will determine if the candidate is thinking of their focus or the overall good of the project.
Conclusion
If reading through these Scrum Master interview questions and answers has you a little unsure about how well you’ll do in an interview, here’s a solution: earn a certification first. With a Scrum Master certification, you’ll know more about the fundamentals, and you’ll be able to answer even very technical questions. More importantly, you’ll add credibility to your résumé as well as give your confidence a boost.
Download The Complete Scrum Master Interview Questions Guide
Note: K21Academy also offers a Scrum Master Interview Questions & Answers Guide where learners get to look at some of the commonly asked questions in the interview!
To download the complete Scrum Master Interview Questions & scenario based interview questions for scrum master guide click here.
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