Top 32 Agile Scrum Master Interview Questions & Answers

Here are a few frequently asked Agile Scrum Master Interview questions with answers that will help you prepare for your Agile Scrum job interview:

What are Scrum Masters overall responsibilities?

Is responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. Scrum Masters do this by helping everyone understand Scrum theory, practices, rules, and values.

Acts as a servant-leader for the Scrum Team.

Helps those outside the Scrum Team understand which of their interactions with the Scrum Team are helpful and which aren’t.

It helps everyone change these interactions to maximize the value created by the Scrum Team.

In simple words, SM is a person who believes in Scrum Values and processes and motivates everyone to follow it and creates an environment for everyone to follow it.

How does the Scrum Master help the Product Owner?

Product Owner is served by Scrum master in the following ways:

Make sure goals, scope & product domain are understood by everyone on the Scrum Team as well as possible; Helping the Scrum Team understand the need for clear and concise Product Backlog items;

Finding techniques for effective Product Backlog management; eg – different Prioritization techniques like MoSCoW & Requirement breaking and Business value allocation techniques

Helping know how to do product planning in an empirical situation;

Making sure that Product Owner knows the ways to arrange the Product Backlog to maximize product & business value;

Understanding and practicing agility &

Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed. (Makes sure events happen and inappropriate way & help course correction & coach if required)

What is a "user story" in Scrum?

A user story is a tool used in Agile software development that captures the description of a feature from an end-user perspective. It describes, among others, the type of users and their motivations. A user story creates a simplified description of a user’s requirements.

What are the main artifacts of the Scrum Framework?

There are three main artifacts in SCRUM:

Product Backlog

Sprint Backlog

Product Increment

What do you understand by the term Sprint? What is its duration?

A Sprint is heart of Scrum. Sprint is a time boxed container which has all 4 mandatory events Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review & Retrospective. It’s a repeatable event of maximum 1 month or less during which Team delivers a potentially releasable software or solution.

During the Sprint:

No changes are made that would endanger the Sprint Goal

Quality goals do not decrease

Scope may be clarified and re-negotiated between the Product Owner and Development Team as more is learned

Each Sprint may be considered a project with no more than a one-month horizon. Like projects, Sprints are used to accomplish something. Each Sprint has a goal of what is to be built, a design and flexible plan that will guide building it, the work, and the resultant product increment.

Sprints are limited to one calendar month. When a Sprint’s horizon is too long the definition of what is being built may change, complexity may rise, and risk may increase. Sprints enable predictability by ensuring inspection and adaptation of progress toward a Sprint Goal at least every calendar month. Sprints also limit risk to one calendar month of cost.

I'm Vijay Wade from Agilewaters Consulting, Pune. I have 21 years of experience in IT industry & is consultant with multiple Mncs across the globe. There are thousands of followers to my work & blogs.