Agile BA Interview

Questions
What is the Agile Manifesto?

Answer: Agile Manifesto is a software guide about the Agile development principles which ensure
iterative solutions.

What are the essential qualities of an Agile BA?

Answer: An Agile BA must be able to:

• The BA is expected work collaborate with product owner and developers to elicit
requirements. The BA also must work to develop realistic functional requirements.
• The BA must do requirement elicitation in an iterative way
• The BA must make requirement specifications, data models and business rules as much
lightweight as possible.
• The BA must be technically sound so that he can understand how the components of the
system interact with each other. Besides that, he must understand the agile terminologies as
he acts as the middleman between the customer and the project team.
• The BA must concentrate on the just-enough requirement and test criteria to meet the just in
time delivery goal of an agile project.

When should you use Waterfall model instead of Scrum?

Answer: If the requirement is simple and specific, we should go for Waterfall model instead of Scrum.

What are the four key phases of business development?

Answer: The four key phases of business development:

• Forming
• Storming
• Norming
• Performing

What do you know about Kanban?

Answer: Kanban is a tool which helps the agile team to visually guide and manage the work as it
progresses through the process. Besides, it works as a scheduling system in Agile just-in-time
production. The Kanban board is used to describe the current development status.
Mention about some of the most important agile metrics

Answer: The following are some important agile Matrices

• Velocity – This is used to track the progress of a project

• The sprint burndown matric – This helps to track the work done with the sprint.
• The priority of the work
• Work category allocation – This metric helps to get an idea about the priority of the work and
work category allocation.
• 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.
• Defect removal awareness – This helps to produce quality products.
• Business value delivered – This is used to estimate the work efficiency of the team. It
associates 100 points for measurement.
• Time coverage – It estimates the amount of time invested in coding during testing. It is the
ratio of the number of lines of code called by the test suite to the number of relative lines of
codes.
• Defect resolution time – This is the turnaround time for detecting and fixing bugs. There
processes involved in for this purpose are:
o bug fixing
o eliminating the bug
o Scheduling a fix
o Defect fixation
o Handover of the resolution report

Explain the term ‘increment’?

Answer: Increment refers to the sum of all the product backlog items completed in a sprint. The new
increment value also includes the increment of the previous sprints.

What are the different types of Agile methodologies?

Answer: Some of the well-known agile methodologies are:

• Scrum
• Kanban
• Lean software development and Extreme Programming (XP)
• Feature-driven development (FDD)
• Crystal Methodology
 • DSDM (Dynamic Software Development Method)

Is there any difference between incremental and iterative development?

Answer: Yes.

In an iterative development software development happens without any interruption. Here the
software development cycles which typically consists of sprint and release are repeated till the final
product is obtained. Whereas, in an incremental model, software development follows the product
design, implementation, and testing incrementally until the product is finished. Hence, it involves
development and maintenance.

Difference between extreme programming and scrum?

Answer: Scrum and extreme programming both follow iterations which are known as sprints.
However, the sprints in a Scrum process last up to two weeks to one month long whereas in extreme
programming (XP) team the iteration lasts for one or two weeks. Extreme programming is more
flexible than Scrum as Scrum does not allow any change in during iterations.

What is the duration of a scrum sprint?

Answer: Generally, the duration of a scrum sprint (scrum cycle) depends upon the size of project and
team working on it. The team size may vary from 3-9 members. In general, a scrum script complete
in 3-4 weeks. Thus, on an average, the duration of a scrum sprint (scrum cycle) is 4 weeks. This type
of sprint-based Agile scrum interview questions is very common in an agile or scrum master
interview.

What is Velocity?

Answer: Velocity question is generally posed to understand if you have done some real work and
familiar with the term. Its definition “Velocity is the rate at which team progresses print by sprint”
should be enough. You can also add saying the important feature of velocity that it can’t be
compared to two different scrum teams.

What do you know about impediments in Scrum? Give some examples of impediments.

Answer: Impediments are the obstacles or issues faced by scrum team which slow 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.

What is the difference and similarity between Agile and Scrum?

Answer: Difference between Agile and Scrum – Agile is a broad spectrum, it is a methodology used for
project management while Scrum is just a form of the Agile that describes the process and its steps
more concisely. Agile is a practice whereas scrum is a procedure to pursue this practice.

The similarity between Agile and Scrum – The Agile involves completing projects in steps or
incrementally. The Agile methodology is considered to be iterative in nature. Being a form of Agile,
Scrum is same as that of the Agile. It is also incremental and iterative.

What is the increment? Explain.

Answer: This is one of the commonly asked agile scrum interview questions and a quick answer can
be given this way. An increment is the total of all the product backlogs items completed during a sprint.
Each increment includes all the previous sprint increment values as it is cumulative. It must be in the
available mode in the subsequent release as it is a step to reach your goal.
6. What is the “build-breaker”?

Answer: The build-breaker is a situation that arises when there is a bug in the software. Due to this
sudden unexpected bug, compilation process stops or execution fails or a warning is generated. The
responsibility of the tester is then to get the software back to the normal working stage removing the
bug.

What do you understand by Daily Stand-Up?

Answer: You may surely get an interview question about daily stand-up. So, what should be the answer
to this question? The daily stand-up is an everyday meeting (most preferably held in the morning) in
which the whole team meets for almost 15 minutes to find answer to the following three questions –

• What was done yesterday?

• What is your plan for today?
• Is there any impediment or block that restricts you from completing your task?

The daily stand-up is an effective way to motivate the team and make them set a goal for the day.
What do you know about Scrum ban?

Answer: Scrum-ban is a Scrum and Kanban-based model for the 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.

State some of the Agile quality strategies.

Answer: Some of the Agile quality strategies are –

• Iteration
• Re-factoring
• Dynamic code analysis
• Short feedback cycles
• Reviews and inspection
• Standards and guidelines
• Milestone reviews

Do you know about Agile Manifesto & its Principles? Explain in brief.

Answer: This is the theory which most of agile/scrum roles aspirant should be on tips. Four manifesto
values and 12 principles should be explained as much as possible as part of this question. Even if it’s
not explained in 100% accurate manner it should be fine but intentions of values and principles should
come out e.g.

• Working Software should be demonstrated at regular intervals

• Individuals & interaction – self-organization, self-motivating should be encouraged
• Customer collaboration
• Welcoming change at any point in time in the project

Is there any drawback of the Agile model? If yes, explain.

Answer: Yes, there are some drawbacks of the Agile model, some of them are as follows –

It is not easy to make a prediction about the effort required to complete a task. It becomes more
problematic in case of large projects as it becomes difficult to get an idea of the total effort required.
At sometimes, it’s not possible to properly focus on the design and documentation of the project
In case the requirements of the client are not understood properly, the final project will not meet the
customer requirements. Thus, it will lead to the customer dissatisfaction.
Only the leader who has considerable experience in Agile methodologies is capable to take important
decisions. The team members with little or no experience are not involved in decision-making, thus
they don’t get chance to advance their knowledge.

What is the use of burn-up and burn-down charts?

Answer: The burn-up chart illustrates the amount of completed work in a project whereas the burn-
down chart depicts the amount of work remained to complete a project. Thus, the burn-up and burn-
down charts are used to trace the progress of a project.

Define Zero Sprint and Spike in Agile.

Answer: To answer this question, describe Zero Sprint and Agile in detail, as follows –
• Zero sprint – Zero Sprint can be defined as the preparation step of the first sprint in Agile.
There are some activities that are required to be done before actually starting the project.
These activities are considered as the Zero sprint; the examples of such activities are – setting
the environment for development, preparation of backlogs etc.
• Spike – Spike is the type of story that can be taken between the sprints. Spikes are commonly
used for the activities related to the design or technical issues such as research, design,
prototyping, and exploration. There are two types of spikes – functional spikes and technical
spikes.

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.

What do you know about a story point in Scrum?

Answer: A story point in Scrum is the unit for the estimation of total efforts that are required to
perform or complete a particular task. So, here is how you can answer such agile scrum interview
questions on a single line.

What are the different roles in Scrum?

The three scrum roles i.e. Scrum Master, Product Owner and Team should be explained with the
details of few primary responsibilities of each role. You can add more details as mentioned below for
a particular depending on the role you are getting interviewed for.
Product owner – A product owner is actually the stakeholder of the project. He represents the project
requirements before the team. He is responsible to have a vision of what to build and convey his
detailed vision to the team. He is the starting point of an agile scrum software development project.

Scrum team – Scrum team is formed by the collective contribution of individuals who perform for the
accomplishment of a particular project. The team is bound to work for the timely delivery of the
requested product.

Scrum master – Scrum master is the leader and the coach for the scrum team who checks whether
the scrum team is 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.

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

What are different ceremonies and their importance in Scrum?

Scrum planning, Scrum – Daily stand up, Scrum review & scrum retrospective ceremonies should be
clearly expressed with the purpose of the ceremony. It’s important to remember the time-boxing of
the ceremonies for a standard 4 weeks of Sprint or as per the Sprint you have used in your projects.

What do you understand by the term Agile testing?

Answer: Agile testing is a software testing practice that is fully based on the agile principles of software
development. It is an iterative methodology where the requirements are the outcome of collaboration
between the product owner and team. The agile principles and applications are applied to meet the
customer requirements by successful completion of the project.

State some major principles of Agile testing.

Answer: Some major principles of Agile testing are –

 • Customer satisfaction
• Face to face communication
• Sustainable development
• Quick respond to changes
• Continuous feedback
• Successive improvement
• Self-organized
• Focus on essence
• Error-free clean node
• Collective work

What are the skills of a good Agile Tester?

Answer: An agile tester is one who implements agile software development principles for software
testing. Followings are the skills of a good agile tester –
Required to be familiar with the concepts and principles of Agile
Should have an excellent communication to communicate with the team and the clients
Ability to set priority for the tasks according to the requirements
Should be able to understand the requirements properly
Understanding of the risks involved with a project due to changing requirements

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 a coordination between scrum teams is known as the scrum of scrums. There is one team leader
from every team, known as ambassador, who is responsible to represent his team in the scrum of
scrums.

What do you know about “Planning Poker” technique?

Answer: Planning poker, also known as Scrum Poker, is a card-based agile technique that is used for
planning and estimation. To start a session of planning poker technique, the agile user story is read by
the product owner. The steps performed in the poker planning technique are –

• Each estimator has a deck of poker cards with the values such as 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, and so on, to
denote story points, ideal days or something else that the team uses for estimation.
• Each estimator has a discussion with the product owner and then privately selects a card on
the basis of their independent estimation.
• If the cards with same value are selected by all estimators, it is considered as an estimate. If
not, the estimator discusses the high and low value of their estimates.
 • Then again, each estimator privately selects a card and reveals. This process of poker planning
is repeated to reach a general agreement.

Share your experience as a Scrum Master/Product Owner/Agile team member and what
were your primary responsibilities?

Answer: Here you have to explain your project details where you worked in Scrum team and defining
your role with the responsibilities you held. The trick in this question is whether while explaining you
are showing self-organizing and self-motivational team. Also, the interviewer will try to judge how in
depth you have worked in the agile/scrum environment based on your explanation.

What was the length of sprints/iterations in your project?

Answer: This is probably the most common question asked in agile interviews. The idea here is to
judge in which kind of environment you have worked. There will be definitely follow up question like
was this length fixed in the beginning and never changed? Have you tried with more than this length
or less than that?

How have you done user story mapping & estimation of stories in your projects?

Answer: This question is to under how you have done story writing, mapping, and estimation. Have
you used any estimation technique like planning poker, t-shirt, sizing etc? Whatever technique you
used in your project just mention it very clearly.

What is the biggest challenge you faced in your project while handling the Scrum team
members?

Answer: This question is pure to judge your experience. The better you articulate your challenges
working in agile better it will be. Challenges generally faced in the initial stages of scrum is stabilizing
the velocity, team members conflicts, sticking to time-boxing etc..

Have you ever performed the removal of impediments as a scrum master on behalf of scrum
team?

Answer: As the scrum master acts as a coach for his team, he should motivate his team to perform
every task. Although he can remove impediments on behalf of scrum team but he should not do this.
It is recommended for a scrum master not to over pamper nor overrule the team. There may be
something when the team can face failure, at that time the scrum master should help them. He should
guide them with an appropriate method t0 get out of the problem. Scrum master should prompt his
team members to become independent enough to face problems and take a decision by themselves.
This is one of the frequently asked scrum master interview questions, so prepare now and get ready
to answer.
Why does Scrum encourage the use of automated testing for projects?

Answer: Scrum encourages the use of automated (automated performance or automated regression)
testing to make the fastest possible delivery of the project. While answering this question, you may
explain some tools that you have used for automated testing.

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. happens 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

What is the difference between Sprint Planning Meeting and Sprint Retrospective Meeting?

Answer: The difference between 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 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.

How is an agile testing methodology different from other testing methodologies?

Answer: Agile scrum interview questions may include a number of questions from agile testing. Let’s
understand how you can answer such questions.
The agile testing methodology involves the division of the whole testing process into multiple small
segments of codes. In every step, these segments of codes undergo testing. There are a number of
additional processes involved in agile testing methodologies such as team communication, strategic
modifications for optimal results and many others.

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.

Do you have a Scrum Master certification?

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 a 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 experience in the particular field. Also, let the interviewer know if you are
planning to invest in the certification in the near future.
What is the purpose of the sprint planning meeting?

The spring planning meeting is held at the start of every sprint and comprises of the project team,
product owner and the scrum master. The
aim of this meeting is to: Ascertain the capacity of the team for the current sprint. Prioritize the items
from the product backlog that are to be completed in the current sprint. Select the items from the
product backlog to be done in the current sprint based on the capacity of the team. Plan the work and
assign responsibilities for complete sprint duration. The complete duration of the spring planning
meeting is eight hours.

What are the advantages of agile methodology over the other software development
methodologies?

Agile development, due to its innate nature, is both iterative and incremental. Owing to this
characteristic, all the development aspects (design, quality, requirements) are constantly reviewed
and improved progressively with each sprint. Thus, the product could be adapted at any time based
on the client’s need and the level of customer satisfaction is very high. Whereas, in the conventional
development methodologies, each project phase is only traversed once which restricts the flexibility
to incorporate new requirements or modify existing requirements.

How do you define a sprint backlog?

Sprint backlog is a collection of requirements that the development team must achieve in the next
sprint. A sprint backlog is created based on the development team’s capacity and the priority of the
requirements. Conversely, a product backlog is a prioritized list of high-level requirements of the
product.

Why do we use a sprint burndown chart?

A sprint burndown chart is graphic visualization of the rate of progress of the current sprint. This chart
is updated daily over the course of a sprint.

What do you know about the term ‘Spike’ in relation to scrum?

A spike is a time bound activity to conduct analysis or answer question rather Than producing
shippable product. Spikes are usually planned to take place in between sprints.

What is the Velocity of a sprint?

Velocity of a sprint is the total amount of work the development team is capable of doing over the
duration of the sprint. Velocity for a sprint is agreed upon based on the historical data available about
the previous sprint of the project.
What is a ‘Story Board’?

The progress of an agile project is represented by a story board. To do so, a white board is divided in
four columns ‘To do’, ‘In Progress’, 'Test’ and ‘Done’ and post It notes are placed in each column
indicating the progress of individual development item (user story/task). This way, everybody is aware
of the current status of the project and of the user stories as well.

Are you aware of the term ‘Tracer Bullet’?

The tracer bullet is a spike with the current architecture, current technology set, and current set of
best practices which results in production of quality code.

What do we mean by the terms ‘Impediment’ and ‘ScrumBag’?

Impediment denotes the ‘cause’ that is hindering the team member to work to its fullest capability
and ScrumBag refers to the person, group, or any other blockers that could be a factor for Impediment.

How do you define a user story with respect to Agile?

A User story is document which defines the requirement of a system/project/product in the agile
environment. They dictate the ‘who', 'what' and 'why' of a requirement. To explain a requirement, a
number of user stories might get created with each one of them defining a specific
aspect of the requirement. These user stories are the prioritized based on their importance, broken
down into tasks followed by the developers estimating the duration of completion of each of these
tasks.

What is Product Backlog Refinement?

Backlog Refinement is when the product owner and some, or all, of the rest of the team refine the
backlog on a regular basis to ensure the backlog contains the appropriate items, that they are
prioritized, and that the items at the top of the backlog are ready for delivery.

What is the difference between Product Backlog Refinement and Product Backlog
Grooming?
They are the same. The word Grooming is replaced by the word Refinement since Grooming has
negative meaning in some parts of the world.

What is Definition of Ready?

Answers: Definition of Ready involves creating clear criteria that a user story must meet before being
accepted into an upcoming iteration.

Is Facilitation same as coordination?

No. Coordination is just a small aspect of the facilitation. Facilitation is a process of getting a group to
conclusions. Facile as a word means making it easy.

What is Coaching?

Coaching is a way of unlocking potential of a coachee. In a coaching model, the coach keeps in mind
that coachees may know the answers. Coach tries not to give direct answers and helps the coachees
get to the answers. One of the most powerful tool that a coach uses is ask powerful questions.

Have you heard about Given-When-Then?

Given-When-Then comes from Behaviour Driven Development and is from a business language called
Gherkins. The Given-When-Then is a template intended to guide the writing of acceptance tests for a
User Story: (Given) some context, (When) some action is carried out, (Then) a particular set of
observable consequences should obtain.

Is the word Incremental and Iterative same?

No. Incremental means breaking down the work into smaller pieces of work. Iterative means repetitive
to get feedback.

What is Information Radiator?

“Information radiator” is the term for any of a number of visual displays which a team places in a
highly visible location, so that all team members can see the latest information at a glance. Examples
of Information Radiator includes Burndown chart, scrum board, kanban board, burnup chart,
cumulative flow diagrams etc.

Can you use Kanban Board in Scrum?

Yes. A Kanban Board is a visual workflow tool consisting of multiple columns. Each column represents
a different stage in the workflow process. scrum believes in transparency and Sprint Backlog is
transparently represented by development teams. Kanban Board is a very effective way of
representing the Sprint Backlog.
What is Lead Time?

Lead Time is the time between a customer order and delivery. In software development, it can also
be the time between a requirement made and its fulfillment.

What is MMF?

A Minimum Marketable Feature is a small, self-contained feature that can be developed quickly and
that delivers significant value to the user. The main difference with a Minimum Viable Feature is that
MMF is associated with "usefulness to the market". Viability is associated with feedback.

What is MVP?

A Minimum Viable Product is, a version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum
amount of feedback or validated learning about customers with the least effort. MVP does not
necessarily mean its marketable.

Have you heard about Planning Poker?

Planning Poker is an way of estimation generally used for Story Point Estimation or Relative Estimation.
This approach to estimation is used by Agile teams. Each team member “plays” a card bearing a
numerical value corresponding to a point estimation for a user story.

What is Refactoring?

Refactoring is code clean-up activity. A way of making the code maintainable. Clean up the code,
comment the code, document inside the code etc.

What is Scrum of Scrums?

Scrum of Scrums is a coordination meeting between multiple scrum teams. Generally the scrum team
sends the person in the team to attend the Scrum of Scrums. The main topic is to discuss the technical
dependencies in this meeting.

What is Continuous Integration?

Continuous Integration is the practice of merging code changes into a shared repository several times
a day in order to release a product version at any moment. This requires an integration procedure
which is reproducible and automated.
What is ATDD?

Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) involves team members with different perspectives
(customer, development, testing) collaborating to write acceptance tests in advance of implementing
the corresponding functionality.

What is TDD?
TDD stands for Test Driven development. In TDD approach, the tests are written first. Then code is
written to pass the test case.

Is Cross functionality same as each person having all skills and he/she is expert on
everything?

NO. A crossfunctional team is a "team" which has all skills necessary to do the job. It does not mean
that each person is expert on everything.

Is Self-organization mean that team does what they want?

No. A Self organizing team organizes the work themselves. That does not mean this is a chaotic way
of working. The team decides its own rules. however, once the rules are decided by team members,
everyone respects the rules.

What is a Tester called in Scrum?

Development Team. The Development team does not mean its "programmers". Development team
means anyone required to deliver the product.

What is the meaning of Emergence?

The process of the coming into existence or prominence of new facts or new knowledge of a fact, or
knowledge of a fact becoming visible unexpectedly. Product Backlog therefore is emergent. New
things always keep coming as more is known on the product.

What is Empiricism?

Process control type in which only the past is accepted as certain and in which decisions are based on
observation, experience and experimentation. So you try things and find out if what you tried is correct
or not. Empiricism has three pillars: transparency, inspection and adaptation.
What are the Scrum Values and why are they required?

Scrum Values are set of fundamental values and qualities underpinning the Scrum framework;
commitment, focus, openness, respect and courage. These are behavioral aspects in Scrum and
without them executing scrum implementations might be a challenge.

Is Scrum only for IT industry?

NO. Scrum is a process framework. It is used to solve complex problems - that means the problems
which have unknownness. Generally IT problems have unknown requirements. Non-IT problems have
unknown solutions.

Is Sprint Goal necessary in Scrum?

YES. Sprint Goal a short expression of the purpose of a Sprint, often a business problem that is
addressed. Functionality might be adjusted during the Sprint in order to achieve the Sprint Goal. Sprint
Goal is a central aspect of Scrum and it is necessary element of Scrum.

What is a Technical Debt?

The typically unpredictable overhead of maintaining the product, often caused by less than ideal
design decisions, contributing to the total cost of ownership. May exist unintentionally in the
Increment or introduced purposefully to realize value earlier.

What is a stakeholder in scrum?

Stakeholder is a person external to the Scrum Team with a specific interest in and knowledge of a
product that is required for incremental discovery. Represented by the Product Owner and actively
engaged with the Scrum Team at Sprint Review. Development Team is not called a stakeholder in
Scrum.

What is Cadence?

Cadence means heartbeat. Cadence is the approach to achieving commitment and reliability with a
system. It is a measure of balance and the rhythmic flow of the process. Sprints of regular time interval
or duration establish a cadence for a development effort.

What is MOSCOW principle?

A technique used to categorize the importance of different attributes in a product from Customer
point of view to enable the development team to place importance on the delivery of each
requirement. This teaching is useful in defining the 'Acceptance Criteria' of a product by specifying
'Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won't Have' requirements.

Is Product Owner necessary in a Retrospective?

YES. It is essential to have a Product Owner in a Retrospective.

What is a Spike?

Spike is an experiment. Agile teams use Spikes to know more about a technical problem. They try
technical spikes to find out if a particular solution might work or not. Generally a spike is a throwaway
prototype which gives a chance to development team a chance to check if the solution works.

Have you heard about Dot Voting?

This technique is used for identifying items with higher priority. Participants have to cast their vote by
placing a colored dot against one item among the listed, and the item with most dots is considered an
item of higher priority. This technique is frequently used during the sprint retrospective.

Have you heard about Fist of Five?

Fist of five is a facilitation technique used by agile software development teams to poll team members
and help achieve consensus.

Closed fist - No. A closed fist is a way to block consensus.

• 1 finger - I have major concerns.

• 2 fingers - I would like to discuss some minor issues.
• 3 fingers - I’m not in total agreement but I feel comfortable enough to let this proposal pass
without further discussion.
• 4 fingers - I think it’s a good idea and will work for it.
• 5 fingers - It’s a great idea and would like to take the lead when we implement it.

Do you know what is Continuous Delivery?

Continuous Delivery is the ability to get changes of all types—including new features, configuration
changes, bug fixes and experiments—into production, or into the hands of users, safely and quickly in
a sustainable way.

Have you heard about JIRA?

JIRA is a project management tool used in Scrum or Agile software development. This is a visual
management tool and sprint backlogs can be effectively represented in JIRA tool.

Can DevOps be used with Scrum?

Absolutely. DevOps is a philosophy where Dev and Ops work together towards creating Increment.
DevOps does not have any framework. Infact Scrum works beautifully along with Scrum.

What is Docker?

Docker is a container management DevOps tool. Virtual Machines and Container Management are
two effective ways of managing the shared infrastructure effectively.

Is Cloud necessary in DevOps way of working?

Cloud has nothing to do with DevOps. Cloud is way of managing shared infrastructure. DevOps is a
philosophy to manage Dev and Ops work and creating really usable increments every Sprint.

Have you heard about AWS?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform.

What is Github?

GitHub brings together the world's largest community of developers to discover, share, and build
better software. GitHub is a code hosting platform for collaboration and version control. GitHub lets
you (and others) work together on projects

What is Jenkins?

Jenkins is an open source automation tool for Continuous Integration purpose. Jenkins is used to build
and test your software projects continuously making it easier for developers to integrate changes to
the project, and making it easier for users to obtain a fresh build.

Name a few project management tools used in Agile Software Development?

JIRA, TFS, REDMINE, TRELLO

Since Agile requires face-to-face, do you think Agile can be used in distributed
environment?
Agile does not talk about co-location. its about face-to-face. You can achieve face-to-face via various
ways - travel, videocons, telecons, onsite-offshore rotation etc. There are thousands of teams using
Agile in a distributed environment.

What is the maximum sprint length in Scrum?

One month.

What are burn-up and burn-down charts in scrum?

The sprint burn down chart is a publicly displayed chart showing remaining work in the sprint backlog.
Updated every day, it gives a simple view of the sprint progress. It also provides quick visualizations
for reference

A burn up chart tracks progress towards a projects completion. At each day you can see the amount
of work completed and the total amount of work.
This is a powerful measure of how close you are to completion of the project, similar to a burn down
chart.

What is empirical process control?

In defined process each piece of work is understood and executed. But in empirical process control
you expect the unexpected. In Scrum, decisions are made based on observation and experimentation
rather than on detailed upfront planning. So Empirical process control relies mainly on the three main
ideas of transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

What are the three main artifacts of Scrum Process?

The term “artifact” refers to an object that was made by a human.

Scrum describes three primary artifacts:

i) The Product Backlog: The product backlog is an ordered list of requirements that is
maintained for a product.
ii) The Sprint Backlog: The list of the tasks to be executed by the Scrum Team in upcoming
Sprint is called the “Sprint Backlog”.
iii) The Product Increment: The Increment is the sum of all Product Backlog Items completed
during a Sprint and the value of the increments of all previous Sprints.

What is Scrum? How is it different from Waterfall?

Scrum is an iterative and incremental Agile development framework for managing projects and
product or application development. Its focus is on “a flexible, holistic product development strategy
where a development team works on activities concurrently as opposed to a “traditional, sequential
approach”.
Waterfall Model is sequential order of doing work. In this project development team moves to next
phase or work only if the previous step is completed successfully.

What is the scrum sprint? That is the ideal duration of a Sprint?

Scrum break work into small increments with minimal planning and do not directly involve long-term
planning. In Scrum Sprints are short time frames (timeboxes) that are typically less than 30 days. Each
Sprint involves a cross-functional team working in all functions: planning, requirements analysis,
design, coding, unit testing, and acceptance testing. At the end of the Sprint a working product is
demonstrated to stakeholders.

The ideal duration of a Sprint is 1 Month.

Is it required to release the increment at the end of each Sprint?

No.
It’s required to create an increment ready to release at the end of each Sprint but it’s not required to
release the increment.
Product Owner decides whether to release or not.

Should there be a Release Sprint?

No. There is no Release Sprint in Scrum.

Should there be a Hardening Sprint to remove technical debts?

No. There should be no Hardening Sprint just for the purpose of resolving technical debts.
In each Sprint it’s required to deliver an increment. Techical debts can be removed regularly during
Sprints.

Is it required to deliver an increment in the first Sprint?

Yes. First Sprint isn’t different from other Sprints. In each Sprint it’s required to deliver an increment.

What do burn down charts show?

It shows the work remaining over time within the sprint.

What should be done in Sprint 0?

There is no Sprint 0 in Scrum.

It’s not always the case that you will be asked the questions about the characteristics and advantages
of the agile and scrum in an agile scrum interview. So, just prepare yourself for the drawbacks and
disadvantages related agile scrum interview questions.

Though we have categorized the above business analyst interview questions based on our
experience, however, it could be a mixed and match for any career level depending on the
organization and their requirement.