30 Basic Scrum Interview Questions

Here are some basic scrum interview questions. These questions can also help one to understand scrum. 

This list of scrum interview questions can be used for interview preparation or by interviewers to ask questions to check on the basic understanding of scrum. 

1. What is Scrum? –
   • Scrum is an agile framework that helps teams create value for their customers in shorter sprints. The Scrum team consists of a Product Owner, a Scrum Master and developers. Product owner is responsible for product backlog and developers are responsible to convert a product backlog item into working releasable increment. Scrum framework lists our 4 scrum events within a sprint, scrum artefacts, rules and accountabilities. The scrum events enable teams to inspect and adapt constantly towards their sprint and product goals.
2. What are the events in Scrum? –
   • Scrum has a container event called Sprint and within the container event of Sprint, Scrum defines 4 events – Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review and Sprint Planning. Each of these events are an opportunity to inspect and adapt.
3. What is the purpose of sprint planning? –
   • As the name states, the purpose of sprint planning is to build a shared understanding on a sprint goal and plan out the items and the tasks for the sprint. Sprint planning is a planning done keeping the product goal in mind.
4. Who participates in Sprint Planning? and What happens in Sprint Planning? –
   • Product Owners, Developers and Scrum Master participate in Sprint Planning. If there are items selected in the sprint for which the team needs external expertise, this external expert can also be invited to the sprint planning, so he/she can help the team understand the subject matter. Sprint planning has 3 parts to it – the what, why and how.
   • In the first part of sprint planning, Product Owner helps the team to understand the top ordered items and why the items are relevant to the product goal. He/she provides as many details as possible for the items selected for the sprint. In the second half of the sprint planning, developers go about decomposing each item into more granular tasks and discuss their plan to implement the selected items. By the end of sprint planning, scrum team has an agreed sprint goal and a sprint backlog with a list of items and tasks.
5. What is the Sprint Backlog?
   • Sprint backlog contains the list of items selected to be worked upon and the list of tasks that needs to be undertaken in order to complete those items in the duration of the sprint.
6. What is Product Backlog?
   • Product backlog contains ordered/prioritized list of items/features/stories that needs to be developed in order to get to the product goal.
7. What is the difference between Product Backlog and Sprint backlog?
   • Sprint Backlog is specific to the sprint, it contains a list of items selected to be worked up within the sprint and the tasks that are needed to be undertaken in order to get to the sprint goal. Sprint backlog is emergent in nature and can change throughout the sprint. Sprint backlog is owned by developers and they are the ones responsible to track and make changes to the backlog.
   • Product Backlog on the other hand, contains an ordered/prioritized list of items/features/stories that are needed to be developed in order to get to the product goal. Product Backlog is owned by Product Owner and the product owner is the only one accountable for items within product backlog. Product Backlog is also emergent and keeps changing throughout the product life cycle.
8. What is the purpose of Daily Scrum?
   • Purpose of daily scrum is to inspect and adapt sprint work towards committed sprint goal. This is where developers come together and inspect their work so far and evaluate their strategy to get to the sprint goal and plan their daily work.
9. Who participates in Daily Scrum?
   • Daily scrum is primarily for the developers. This is the event for a self managed team to come together and inspect and adapt towards their sprint goal. Scrum Master and Product Owner can attend however they should not be participating. Scrum Master can facilitate daily scrum, if asked for.
10. What is the purpose of Sprint Review?
    • Purpose of Sprint Review is to inspect and adapt towards the product goal. This is the event where the scrum team and the stakeholders come together and inspect the product developed so far and evaluate if they’re developing the right product keeping in mind the product goal and the feedback from the market and changing conditions.
11. Who participates in Sprint Review?
    • Scrum Master, Product Owner, Developers and Stakeholders participate actively in sprint review.
12. What is the purpose of Sprint Retrospective?
    • Purpose of sprint retrospective is to inspect and adapt towards processes and interactions within the team. Sprint Retrospective is an event where Scrum Team comes together to reflect back on their own processes and interactions and identify at least one improvement that they can make in the next sprint.
13. Who participates in Sprint Retrospective?
    • Scrum Master, Product Owner and developers participate in Sprint Retrospective
14. What is the Definition of Done? and what is its purpose?
    • Definition of Done is shared agreement as to when to call the work being done as “Done”. An item will not be called “done” until it meets the definition of done. This ensures the quality of the increment that is being developed. It also ensures a certain level of governance that is needed to produce a quality product. Definition of Done brings transparency within the scrum team as to when to call an item or the increment as done. In fact, an increment is an increment only if it meets the definition of done. This definition evolves sprint on sprint, as the team looks at improving the quality of their product. If there are multiple scrum teams working on a product, all the teams must follow the same definition of done.
15. What is an increment?
    • Scrum guide says – “An Increment is a concrete stepping stone toward the Product Goal”. Essentially an increment is an item or set of items that are complete per definition of done. Increment must be usable and potentially releasable. A sprint should produce at least one increment.
16. What is a user story? When do you know that you have written a good user story?
    • A user story is statement of software requirement from user perspective. It is stated in the format of – “as a (“who”), I want (“what”),,,,, so that (“why”)….,
    • A user story also has a set of acceptance criteria, which defines rules and conditions, on when one would consider the story as accepted and accomplishing the business value.
    • A good user story should be independent, negotiable, valuable, estimatable, small and testable.
17. What is the difference between Acceptance Criteria and Definition of Done?
    • Acceptance Criteria is a set of business requirements which is specific to the backlog item. It usually is a bulleted list of business rules, validation or conditions when the specific item can be said to be complete. Product Owner is the person accountable for the acceptance criteria.
    • Definition of done on the other hand is a list of rules or conditions that are necessary to produce a releasable increment. Every item, as well as the whole increment should meet the DoD for it to be called as “done”. The DoD is not specific to a business requirement of an item but the definition is applicable for all items, which is used by scrum teams to ensure quality of work produced.
18. What are the accountabilities of a Scrum Master?
    • Scrum Master is accountable to foster an environment where a product owner can order product backlog items and developers work together to convert the product backlog item into a working increment. Scrum Master causes removal of impediments for scrum team and facilitates meetings/events, conversations wherever needed. Scrum Master is essentially accountable to establish Scrum by teaching and facilitating scrum events, scrum rules, artefacts and values within the scrum team. Scrum Master works as coach and servant leader for the team and works closely with the team to ensure that team is focused on sprint goal and becomes a self-managed team. Scrum Master is responsible for the effectiveness of the team. Scrum Master is also accountable to work with other scrum masters and establish scrum within the organisation.
19. What is an impediment?
    • Anything that is slowing or blocking the team from moving towards their goal is an impediment.
20. What are the accountabilities of a Product Owner?
    • Product Owner is accountable to maximise the value of the work done by the sprint team. Product owner is accountable for product backlog, prioritise/order product backlog items, provide clarity on product goal and ensure that the team understands product backlog items. Product Owner works with business stakeholders to create and prioritise backlog items. PO is also accountable to manage the cost, business risks and stakeholder through effective product backlog management.
21. What are the accountabilities of developers?
    • Developers are accountable to produce working increments every sprint. Developers need to be cross functional and should have all the skills required to convert product backlog items into a work increment. Developers are accountable to plan the sprint, hold each other accountable and ensure the quality of increment produced.
22. What are the values of Scrum and how do they impact the working of a Scrum Team?
    • There are essentially 5 scrum values – commitment, focus, openness, respect and courage. Each of these values are essential to the success of the scrum team. To give an example, if a scrum team member lacks courage and openness, it is likely that he/she may not share the exact update on the progress of an item or task and this can have significant impact on the team’s ability to produce an increment.
    • Openness and courage will impact a team’s ability to inspect and adapt in all 4 events. Similarly, if a team lacks commitment, one can see low team collaboration and ownership, which again will impact team’s ability to produce and increment.
    • Similarly, if a team isn’t focussed on delivering sprint goal, it is very likely that they may work overtime and still not accomplish their goal.
23. What is a Sprint Goal? Give me some examples
    • Sprint Goal is a clearly articulated goal that the scrum team commits for the sprint. Goal should not be vague, instead it should be articulated in a way that everybody understands when it is accomplished.
    • Some examples of sprint goals are
      • Develop ability to checkout using credit cards
      • Develop ability to search products by typing product name
      • Ability to list out products in product catalogue
      • Ability to book an appointment with a doctor
24. Why do we need a Sprint Goal, when the team has already identified a set of items that they plan to accomplish within the sprint?
    • Sprint goal helps the team to stay focused on the goal instead of individual items. A sprint may have items within the sprint that may not be related to the sprint goal, which clearly would mean that the team needs to focus on items that help us deliver the goal. Sprint goal also provides the flexibility to negotiate various requirements within each item, so that the scrum team is able to accomplish sprint goal within the sprint duration.
25. What are the timeboxes of various scrum events?
    • Per Scrum Guide – Sprint planning is timeboxed to 8 hours for a month long sprint, daily scrum is time boxed to 15 mins, sprint review and retro are timeboxed to 4 hours and 3 hours respectively for a month long sprint.
26. How do you estimate items in Scrum?
    • Scrum guide does not prescribe an estimation method. Scrum teams use various different kinds of estimation methods. One of the most popular estimation methods in Scrum teams is planning poker.
    • In planning poker method, team uses cards with Fibonacci series numbers printed on them and the team comes together virtually or physically to show the numbers on what they each think should be the estimate for an item or task. If there are major differences in the estimates, then the team discusses the item further, which eventually leads to an agreement on an estimate. Items in product backlog are sized in story points and tasks are usually estimated in hours during sprint planning.
27. What is the difference between Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective?
    • Sprint review is an inspect and adapt event on the increment and the product. In sprint review, scrum team and stakeholders come together to review the product developed so far in light of product goal and market changes or feedback.
    • Sprint retrospective on the other hand is an inspect and adapt event on the processes and people interaction. In Sprint retro, scrum team members come together to reflect and identify at least one area of improvement.
28. How are technical Debts handled by Scrum Teams?
    • Developers should work with Product Owner and add technical debt items to the product backlog. The items should be prioritised/ordered along with other business items. Technical debts are crucial to improve product quality, so developers should work closely with product owner and educate him/her on the criticality of tech debt items.
29. What is Product Backlog Refinement?
    • Product Backlog Refinement is an activity, where product backlog items for at least next 2-3 sprints are detailed out, sized and ordered/prioritized. This activity usually is a meeting  between developers and PO but it does not have to be a meeting. It can be as simple as, Product Owner walking up to the developers and discussing the product backlog items and in the process, elaborate on the details of the item, splitting the item if needed, assess/change the order and size the items, if needed.
30. Who is responsible for monitoring progress towards the sprint goal? Who is responsible for monitoring progress towards product goal?
    • It is the responsibility of the Product Owner to track and monitor progress towards the Product Goal. It can be quite helpful for the whole Scrum team to be in the knowhow however as far as responsibility to track the progress and come up with corrective changes in product backlog, lies with the product owner.
    • Sprint Goal on the other hand, is something that the developers commit to, so it is pretty logical that developers should be the one responsible to track and monitor the progress of sprint towards sprint goal. Doing so empowers developers to be self-managed.

Another Important scrum interview questions: What Is The Most Important Responsibility Of A Scrum Master?