0 Agile- Scrum

Agile - Scrum
Questions and Answers -
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Q 1. How is scrum different from waterfall?

Answer: The major differences are:
• The feedback from the customer is received at an early stage in Scrum than waterfall, whereas the
feedback from the customer is received towards the end of the development cycle.
• Accommodate the new or changed requirement in scrum is easier than the waterfall.
• Scrum focuses on collaborative development than waterfall where the entire development cycle is
divided into phases.
• At any point of time, we can roll back the changes in scrum than in waterfall.
• Testing is considered a phase in the waterfall, unlike scrum.

Q 2. How is scrum different from the Iterative model?

Answer: A1: Scrum is a type of iterative model but it is iterative + incremental. As we break the product into
small Incremental builds and then small piece of builds are provided in multiple iterations.

Q 3. Do you know any other agile methodology apart from Scrum?

Answer: Scrum is one of the type of Agile Methodology and Other Agile methodology includes KanBan, XP
(Extreme Programming), Lean etc.

Q 4. What are the ceremonies you perform in the scrum?

Answer: There are 3 major ceremonies performed in Scrum:
• Planning Meeting: Here, the entire scrum teams along with the scrum master and product owner
meet to discuss each item from the product backlog that they can work on the sprint. When the
story is estimated and is well understood by the team, the story then moves into the Sprint
Backlog.
• Review Meeting: Here, the scrum team demonstrates their work done to the stakeholders.
• Retrospective meeting: Here, the scrum teams along with the scrum master and product owner
meet to retrospect the last sprint they worked on. They majorly discuss on the 3 things:
• What went well?
• What could be done better?
• Action Items
Apart from these three ceremonies, we have one more called “Backlog grooming” meeting.

In this meeting, the scrum team along with the scrum master and product owner.
The product owner presents the business requirements and as per the priority team discussed over it and
identifies the complexity, dependencies, and efforts.
The team may also do the story pointing at this stage.

Q 5. Do you know the Three Amigos/ in Scrum? OR Who all are involved in SCRUM?
Answer:
The three Amigos are – Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Scrum Team.

OR

There are three types of persons involved in Scrum which are Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Scrum Team
which involves Developer, Tester and BA’s.

Q 6. What do you think should be the ideal size of a Scrum team?

Answer: The ideal size is 7 to 9 resources with + or – 2 as per the requirement of Project.
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Q 7. What do you discuss in the daily stand-up meeting?

Answer:
We discuss the following three things:
• What I am going to do today?
• What I have done Yesterday?
• Any Blockers due to which I am not able to proceed.
Such things we discuss in our Daily Stand-up Meeting.

Q 8. What is the “Time Boxing” of a scrum process called?

Answer: Timeboxing is nothing but the “Sprint” which is the specific amount of time to complete the specified
amount of work.

Q 9. What should be an ideal duration of a sprint?

Answer:
A1: It is recommended to have 2 to 4 weeks of the sprint cycle. Sprint duration generally can’t be more than 30
days.

A2: Depending on the project and team we can decide the duration of Sprint, many company Follows the 15
Days Sprint.

Q 10. How requirements are defined in a scrum?

Answer: A1: Requirements are termed as “User Stories” in Scrum.

USER STORIES: It is a process of Phrasing the requirements in a form of story, It is a way of describing a feature
set/Requirement like – “I need …, SO that ...”.

Q 11. What are the different artifacts in scrum?

Answer: A1: There are two artifacts maintained in Scrum:
• Product Backlog: Containing the prioritized list of business requirements or User Story
• Sprint Backlog: Contains the user stories to be done by the scrum team for a sprint.

Q 12. How do you define a user story?

Answer:
A1: Generally, the User stories are written by BA’s. So I am not sure about the Syntax but it is a process of
Phrasing the requirements in a form of story, It is a way of describing a feature set/Requirement like – “ I need …,
SO that ...”.

A2: The user stories are defined in the format of

As a <User / type of user>

I want to <action/feature to implement>

So that < objective>

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Q 13. What are the roles of a Scrum Master and Product owner?
Answer:
Scrum Master: He/she acts as a Leader/Manager for the scrum team. He leads over all the scrum ceremonies
and coaches the team to understand and implement scrum values and principals.

Product Owner: Is the point of contact for a scrum team. He/she is the one who works closest to the business
People/Client. The main responsibility of a product owner is to identify and refine the product backlog items.

Q 14. How do you measure the work done in a sprint?

Answer: It’s measured by Velocity; it is a Metric which is used to measure the units of work completed in a given
timeframe.

Q 15. What is Velocity?

Answer:
A1: Velocity is the sum of story points that a scrum team completes (meets the definition of done) over a sprint.

A2: Velocity is a Metric which is used to measure the units of work completed
in a given timeframe.

Q 16. So, in scrum, which entity is responsible for the deliverables? Scrum Master or Product Owner?
Answer:
A1: Neither the scrum master, not the product owner. It’s the responsibility of the team who owns the
deliverable.

Q 17. How do you measure the complexity or effort in a sprint? Is there a way to determine and represent it?
Answer:
A1: Complexity and effort are measured through “Story Points”. In Scrum, it’s recommended to use Fibonacci
series to represent it.

A2: Story Points are Unit of measure for expressing an estimate for overall effort that will be required.

When we Estimate with story points- We assign the point value to each item.

To set the Story Point- Find the simplest story and assign the 1 value to that story and accordingly on basis of
complexity we can assign the values to user stories.

Q 18. How do you track your progress in a sprint?

Answer: A1: The progress is tracked by a “Burn-Down chart”.

Q 19. How do you create the Burn-Down chart?

Answer: A1: Burn-down chart is a graph that shows the estimated v/s actual effort of the scrum tasks.
It is a tracking mechanism by which for a particular sprint; day to day tasks is tracked to check whether the
stories are progressing towards the completion of the committed story points or not. Here, we should remember
that the efforts are measured in terms of user stories and not hours.
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Q 20. What do you do in a sprint review and retrospective?

Answer: A1: During Sprint review we walk-through and demonstrate the feature or story implemented by the
scrum team to the stakeholders.
During Retrospective, we try to identify in a collaborative way what went well, what could be done better and
action items to have continuous improvement.

Q 21. Do you see any disadvantage of using scrum?

Answer: I don’t see any disadvantage of using scrum. The problems mainly arise when the scrum team do not
either understand the values and principles of the scrum or are not flexible enough to change.

Note : Kindly have the basic idea about the values and Principle

Q 22. Do you think scrum can be implemented in all the software development process?
Answer:
A1: Scrum is used mainly for
• Complex projects.
• Projects which have early and strict deadlines.
• When we are developing any software from scratch.

Q 23. During Review, suppose the product owner or stakeholder does not agree to the feature you
implemented what would you do?
Answer:
A1: First thing we will not mark the story as done.
We will first confirm the actual requirement from the stakeholder and update the user story and put it into the
backlog. Based on the priority, we would be pulling the story in the next sprint.

Q 24. In case, the scrum master is not available, would you still conduct the daily stand-up meeting?
Answer: A1: Yes, we can very well go ahead and do our daily stand-up meeting.

Q 25. Apart from planning, review, and retrospective, do you know any other ceremony in scrum?
Answer: A1: These three meetings are the ones which occurs on regular basis, apart from these We have one
more meeting which is Product Backlog Refinement meeting (backlog grooming meeting) where the team, scrum
master and product owner meets to understand the business requirements, splits it into user stories, and
estimating it.

Q 26. Can you give an example of where scrum cannot be implemented? In that case, what do you suggest?
Answer: Scrum can be implemented in all kinds of projects. It is not only applicable to software but is also
implemented successfully in mechanical and engineering projects.

Q 27. Tell me one big advantage of using scrum?

Answer:
A1: The major advantage is – Early feedback from client so if any changes are required those can be done at
initial stage and producing the Minimal Viable Product to the stakeholders.
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Q 28. What is DoD? How is this achieved?

Answer: A1: DoD stands for Definition of Done. It is achieved when
• The story is developed completely
• QA complete
• The story meets and satisfies the acceptance criteria
• Regression around the story is complete
• The feature is eligible to be deployed in production.

Q 29. What is MVP in scrum?

Answer:
A1: A Minimum Viable Product is a product that has just the bare minimum required feature which can be shown
to the stakeholders and is eligible to be deployed to production.

Q 30. What are Epics?

Answer:
A1: An Epic can be a high-level description of what the client wants, and accordingly, it has some value attached
to it, it is nothing but the collection of similar type of user stories.

A2: Epics are equivocal user stories or we can say these are the user stories that are not defined and are kept for
future sprints.

Q 31. How do you calculate a story point?

Answer:
A1: A story point is calculated by considering the development effort+ testing effort + resolving dependencies
and other factors that would require to complete a story.

Q 32. Cancelled Question.

Q 33. You are in the middle of a sprint and suddenly the product owner comes with a new requirement, what
will you do?
Answer:
A1: In an ideal case, the requirement becomes a story and moves to the backlog. Then based on the priority,
team can take it up in the next sprint.
But if the priority of the requirement is really high, then the team will have to accept it in the sprint but it has to
very well communicated to the stakeholder that incorporating a story in the middle of the sprint may result in
spilling over few stories to the next sprint.

Q 34. In case you receive a story in the last day of the sprint to test and you find there are defects, what will
you do? Will you mark the story as done?
Answer:
A1: A story is done only when its development is completed + QA completed + acceptance criteria is met + it is
eligible to be shipped into production. In this case, if there are defects, the story is partially done and not
completely done, so I will spill it over to the next sprint.

A2: No, I will not be able to mark the story as done as it has open defects and the complete testing of all the
functionality of that story is pending. As we are at the last day of sprint we will mark those defects as Deferred for
next sprint and we can spill over that story to next Sprint.
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Q 35. Which are the top agile matrices?

Answer:
1. Velocity: Tracking your velocity gives you a clear idea about your progress, capacity, etc.
Measurement can be done by the sum of all approved estimates of the stories.
2. Work category allocation: This factor provides us a clear idea about where we are investing our
time or where to set priority.
3. Defect removal awareness: Quality product can be delivered by active members and their
awareness
4. Cumulative flow diagram: With the help of this flow diagram, the uniform workflow can be
checked, where X-axis shows time and Y-axis shows no. of efforts.
5. Sprint burndown matric: Tracking on the completion of work along with the sprint is done.
6. A business value delivered: Business value delivered is an entity that shows the team’s working
efficiency. This method is used to measure, in which around 100 points are associated with each
project. Business objectives are given value from 1,2,3,5 and so on according to complexity,
urgency, and ROI.
7. Defect resolution time: It’s a process where team member detects the bug and priority intention
by the removal of the error. A series of process is involved in fixing the bug:
• Clearing the picture of a bug
• Schedule fix
• Fixation of Defect is done
• Report of resolution is handed
8. Time coverage: Amount of time given to code in question in testing. It is measured by the ratio of
no. of the line of code called by test suite by total no. of the relative lines of code (in percentage)

Q 36. How does agile testing (development) methodology differ from another testing (development)
methodologies?

Answer: In agile testing methodology, the entire testing process is broken into a small piece of codes and in each
step, these codes are tested. There are several processes or plans involved in this methodology
like communication with the team, short strategical changes to get the optimal result, etc.

Q 37. Cancelled Question.

Q 38. Describe the places where ‘Scrum’ and ‘Kanban’ are used?
Answer:
A1 ‘Scrum’ is used when you need to shift towards a 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’.

Q 39. Why aren’t user stories simply estimated in man-hours?

Answer:
A1: Estimation of user stories on the basis of man-hours can be done but it is not preferred. If we do so we will
concentrate on the cost and budget of the management while using man-hours.
Instead of that, we can use story points, as it provides the complete idea about both the complexity of work and
required efforts which can’t be derived from Man hours.
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Q 40. Cancelled Question.

Q 41. What are the other frameworks used in agile model?

Answer:
A1: There are some development and methodologies where you can use agile like feature-driven development,
lean software development, crystal methodologies, dynamic development.

Q 42. What is the Release candidate?

Answer:
A1: The release candidate is a code /version /build released to make sure that during the last development
period, no critical problem is left behind. It is used for testing and is equivalent to the final build.

Q 43. What are the principles of agile testing?

Answer: A1: Some major principles of agile testing are:
• Customer satisfaction
• Bug-free clean code
• Changes are welcome by customer
• Whole team, business people and developers work collectively
• Instead of lengthy documentation, focus on the essence
• It focuses on face-to-face conversation
• It promotes sustainable development

Q 44. How long the Scrum cycle last?

Answer:
A1: Basically, the Scrum cycle depends on the project size and team size. Team size may vary from 3 members to
9 members. Normally, it takes 3 to 4 weeks to complete a Scrum sprint. On an average, a scrum sprint ends in 4
weeks.

Q 45. 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.
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An ambassador (a designated person who represents team) represents its team in the scrum of scrums.

Few points discussed in the meeting are:

1. The progress of the team, after the last meeting.
2. The task to be done before the next meeting.
3. Hindrance which the team had faced while completing the last task.

Q 46. Cancelled Question.

Q 47. Cancelled Question.

Q 48. What qualities should a good Agile tester have?

Answer:
• One should be able to understand the requirements quickly.
• One should know Agile concepts and principals.
• As requirements keep changing, One should understand the risk involved in it.
• The agile tester should be able to prioritize the work based on the requirements.
• Communication is a must for an Agile tester as it requires a lot of communication with developers
and business associates.

Q 49. What is the difference between Epic, User stories & Tasks?
Answer:
User Stories: It defines the actual business requirement. Generally created by the business owner.
Task: To accomplish the business requirements development team create tasks.
Epic: A group of related user stories is called an Epic.
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Q 50. What is a Task board in Agile?

Answer: Task board is a dashboard that shows the progress of the project.
It contains:
• User Story: It has the actual business requirement.
• To Do: Tasks that can be worked on.
• In Progress: Tasks in progress.
• To Verify: Tasks pending for verification or testing
• Done: Completed tasks.