Agile - Scrum Questions and Answers

Here, tried to compile basic Agile Scrum interview questions with answers and
hope that these questions will help you while preparing for the agile scrum
interview.

These are quick reference questions/answers you should go through before your
agile scrum interview.

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 1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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

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 4. 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 or framework 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.

5. 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.

7. 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 –

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  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.

8. 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.

9. 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

10. 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.

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  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

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. What is the role of the Scrum Master?

Answer: 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

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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.

14. 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.

15. What is the role of Sashimi in Scrum methodology?

Answer: Sashimi plays an important role in Scrum methodology. Sashimi is a
technique used by Scrum to check the completion of all the functions created by
the developers. Using this technique, all the requirements such as analysis,
designing, coding, testing and documentation that are used in the constitution
of a product are checked and only after that the product is displayed.

16. 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

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is also responsible to increase the efficiency and productivity of the team so that
they can achieve the sprint goal effectively.

17. 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

18. 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.

19. 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.

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 20. 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

21. 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

22. 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

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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.

23. Name a few other Agile frameworks.

Answer: Yes, Scrum is an Agile framework. Few other Agile frameworks are –

 Feature Driven Development

 Test Driven Development
 Kanban
While answering this type of Agile Scrum interview questions please note that
name the frameworks you are familiar with or have followed.

24. Explain some common metrics for Agile.

Answer: You may definitely come across agile scrum interview questions
regarding agile metrics. The question may be related to a particular agile matric
or explaining all the metrics. So, the detailed description of some common
metrics for Agile is as follows:

Velocity – Velocity is the average number of points from last 3-4 sprints. It is
measured by the summation of the all approved estimates of the stories. It
gives an idea of the capacity, progress etc.

Cumulative Flow Diagram – With the help of a cumulative flow diagram, an

inspection is done over the uniform workflow. In this diagram/graph, the x-axis
represents time whereas the y-axis represents the number of efforts.

Work Category Allocation – Work category allocation is an important factor

that gives a quick information of the time investment i.e. where the time is
being invested and which task should be given priority as a factor of time.

Time Coverage – It is the time that is given to a code during testing. It is

calculated in percentage as a factor of the number of lines of code called by the
test suite and the total number of relative lines of code.

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Business Value Delivered – It is a term which denotes the working efficiency
of the team. The business objectives are assigned numerical values 1,2,3.. and
so on, as per the level of priority, complexity, and ROI.

Defect Removal Awareness – It is the factor that helps the team to deliver a
quality product. The identification of an active number of defects, their
awareness, and removal plays an important role in delivering a high-quality
product.

Defect Resolution Time – It is a procedure through which the team members

detect the defects (bugs) and set a priority for the defect resolution. The
procedure of fixing errors/bugs or defect resolution comprises of multiple
processes such as clearing the picture of defect, schedule defect fixation,
completing defect fixation, generation, and handling of resolution report.

Sprint Burn Down Matric – The sprint burndown chart is a graph to represent
the number of non-implemented or implemented sprints during as Scrum cycle.
This matric helps to track the work completed with the sprint.

25. Is it ever suggested to use waterfall over Scrum? If

yes, explain when.
Yes, sometimes it is suggested to use a waterfall model over Scrum. It is done
when the customer requirements are simple, well-defined, fully understood,
predictable, and are not subjected to change until the completion of the project.
It may the case that you would haven’t ever used waterfall over Scrum but you
need to prepare for such Agile Scrum interview questions.

26. 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.

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 27. 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 –

1. 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.
2. Each estimator has a discussion with the product owner and then
privately selects a card on the basis of their independent estimation.
3. 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.
4. Then again, each estimator privately selects a card and reveals. This
process of poker planning is repeated to reach a general agreement.

28. 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.

29. 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?

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 30. How have you done user story mapping & estimation
of stories in your projects?
Answer: This question is to understand 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.

31. What is the biggest challenge you faced in your

project while handling the Scrum team members?
Answer: This question is 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..

32. 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.

33. 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:

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  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

34. 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.

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 35. 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.

36. 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.

37. Do you hold any agile certification? Why did you

choose this certification?
Answer: Agile and scrum certifications are hot in the market and organizations
are expecting the candidates to hold one or more out of it. Certifications
generally looked by organizations are:

o ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner)

o ASM (Agile Scrum Master)
o CSM (Certified Scrum Master)
o PSM I, II, III (Professional Scrum Master)
o Safe Agilist

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If you have any of these certifications, showcase it here in a big manner. Due to
the many options available in the market, organizations also have started
asking why you have chosen one. It’s recommended that for your certification
you know few good points as its advantages handy with you so that it can be
mentioned once asked.

38. When can you say your story is ready to

develop/groom enough to deliver?
Answer: Ready is a stable state of Scrum that is linked to a user story. As per
the Definition of Ready (DoR), a user story have to satisfy some conditions
before picking it up for a sprint i.e. to be in the ready state. So, the conditions
that are essential for the development/grooming of a user story specify if the
user story is ready to develop/groom enough to deliver or not.

Basically, the following questions should be answered to consider a user story

ready:

Why: Is it clear what the business or stakeholders are trying to achieve?

What: Is the goal or outcome of the user story clear?

How: Is the strategy for the implementation of user story clear? Is the story is
small enough?

The conditions for the user story are defined by scrum master in coordination
with the product owner. Although the conditions vary for the different projects,
some of the common conditions for user story are –

 It is clear and well-written in a format to identify user type, function,

and benefits
 It is self-contained i.e. independent of other user story inherently
 It is small so that can be delivered in a single sprint
 It has a defined acceptance criteria for all the functional requirements
and appropriate non-functional requirements
 It should have been estimated by the scrum team

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  All the external blocking dependencies should have been resolved
before starting the sprint
 The resources/team have all the skills required to deliver the sprint
So, if the user story can give satisfactory answers to the above questions and
meet the conditions defined, it is considered to be ready.

39. How do you manage if the story is high priority and

resources left before last day of sprint completion?
Answer: The answer to this question will fully depend on the number of
resources left.

If one or two members leave the story just before a day of the sprint
completion, a scrum master can handle the situation as described below –

First, analyze the pending tasks and the impact on the overall sprint. According
to that, try to find an alternative solution around to manage the situation. As a
leader, you can decide to work for some extra hours to complete the sprint and
can also ask (remember to ask, not to tell) other team members to do so. And
this way, you can do the sprint completion on time.

In case, more or all the members leave just before a day of the sprint
completion, then the situation can be handled as –

Analyze the amount of pending work and its impact on the overall sprint.

Check if you can manage the situation and finish the task by yourself or try to
get some other resources to work. (Although this won’t be feasible as you will
have to first explain everything about the sprint and task done to the new team;
of course it won’t be possible in a day.) So, if you can’t manage to complete the
sprint by yourself, it’s better to tell this to your product owner. You can ask him
to give some more time to complete the sprint, so you can get a new team or
get it done by yourself by working extra hours.

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 40. As a scrum project manager, what are your
responsibilities?
Answer: Firstly, I would like to correct the question as there is no project
manager role in scrum i.e. Scrum Project Manager is not a defined role. The
responsibilities of a project manager are split between the scrum master,
product owner, and the development team.

Scrum Master is a facilitator who is responsible to manage the development

teams working on Agile methodology. He is an intermediate between the
product owner and the development team to work for the achievement of the
final goal. The scrum master role is similar to the project manager in a few
cases, and the responsibilities of a scrum master are:

 Performing Sprint planning

 To schedule the daily Scrum meeting
 Management of responsibilities of the Scrum process
 Assisting Scrum teams to follow Scrum practices
 Work to remove barriers to allow the team focus on work
 Providing assistance with the Product Backlog
 Co-ordinating with Product Owner to design Product Backlog items for
the upcoming Sprint
 Motivating team not to be distracted by the external factors
 Helping team to improve the dynamics to reach the goal

41. How (What are the parameters) to choose the

number of resources required to your scrum team?
Answer: The team members are the resources to build a scrum team. And the
scrum guide recommends that the development team size should be between 3
and 9 (7 +/- 2) without giving any context or reasons for this.

Obviously, one common range can’t define the optimal size of the team for
everyone. So, there are some factors that should be considered while
determining the number of resources required to form a scrum team. These are

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not just the factors but the need for the development of the scrum team, let’s
have a look.

 The broad set of skills required to build the team

 The consistency in team membership for a long period of time
 Dedication of team members to one and only one team
 Diversity and variety in thought and background I.e. a broad set of
ideas and experience for more creativity
The scrum guide also states the issues faced by the teams with over 9 members
in terms of concerns instead of failing points. However, you can even have 15
members in the scrum team.

In that case, two teams will be formed according to the nexus Guide for scaling
Scrum.

But having a larger team won’t be that effective. In that case, there will be no
room for error as going off the tangent will affect large team more. Remember
that the events depend on sprint length, not on the team size. So, just follow
scrum guide along with the consideration of some factors while determining
team size.

42. How is scrum different from waterfall?

The major differences are:

The feedback from customer is received at an early stage in Scrum than waterfall,
where the feedback from customer is received towards the end of development
cycle.

To accommodate the new or changed requirement in scrum is easier than 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.

Test is considered as phase in waterfall unlike scrum.

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 43. What are the ceremonies you perform in scrum
There are 3 major ceremonies performed in Scrum:-

1. Planning Meeting – Where the entire scrum teams along with the scrum
master and product owner meets and 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.
2. Review Meeting – Where the scrum team demonstrates their work done to
the stake holders
3. Retrospective meeting – Where the scrum teams along with the scrum
master and product owner meets and retrospect the last sprint they worked
on. They majorly discuss about 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 put forward the business
requirements as per the priority and the team discussed over it, identifies the
complexity, dependencies and efforts. The team may also do the story pointing
at this stage.

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 44. What do you think should be the ideal size of a Scrum
team?
The ideal size is 7 to9 with +/- 2

45. How do you define a user story?

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>

46. In scrum which entity is responsible for deliverable?

Scrum master or Product owner?
Neither the scrum master, not the product owner. It’s the responsibility of the team
who owns the deliverable.

47. How do you measure the complexity or effort in a

sprint? Is there a way to determine and represent it?
Complexity and effort is measured through “Story Points”. In scrum it’s
recommended to use Fibonacci series to represent it.

48. How do you track your progress in a sprint?

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

49. How do you create the burn down chart?

Burn down chart is a graph which shows the estimated v/s actual effort of the
scrum tasks.

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It is a tracking mechanism by which for a particular sprint; day to day tasks are
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.

50. What do you do in a sprint review and retrospective?

During Sprint review we walkthrough and demonstrate the feature or story
implemented by the scrum team to the stake holders.

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.

51. Do you see any disadvantage of using scrum?

I don’t see any disadvantage of using scrum. The problems mainly arises when the
scrum team do not either understand the values and principles of scrum or are not
flexible enough to change. Before we deciding on scrum, we must first try to
answer the

52. Do you think scrum can be implemented in all the

software development process?
Scrum is used mainly for

 complex kind of project

 Projects which have early and strict deadlines.
 When we are developing any software from scratch.

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 53. During review, suppose the product owner or
stakeholder does not agree to the feature you implemented
what would you do?
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 backlog.
Based on the priority, we would be pulling the story in next sprint.

54. In case, the scrum master is not available, would you

still conduct the daily stand up meeting?
Yes, we can very well go ahead and do our daily stand up meeting.

55. Where does automation fit into scrum?

Automation plays a vital role in Scrum. In order to have continuous feedback and
ensure a quality deliverable we should try to implement TDD, BDD and ATDD
approach during our development. Automation in scrum is not only related to
testing but it is for all aspect of software development. As I said before introducing
TDD, BDD and ATDD will speed up our development process along with maintaining
the quality standards; automating the build and deployment process will also speed
up the feature availability in different environment – QA to production. As far as
testing is concerned, regression testing should be the one that will have most
attention. With progress of every sprint, the regression suit keeps on increasing and
it becomes practically very challenging to execute the regression suit manually for
every sprint. Because we have the sprint duration of 2 – 4 weeks, automating it
would be imperial.

56. Apart from planning, review and retrospective, do you

know any other ceremony in scrum?
We have the 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.

Lomesh Detroja - Agilist

 57. Can you give an example of where scrum cannot be
implemented? In that case what do you suggest?
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.

58. What is DoD? How is this achieved?

DoD stands for Definition of done. It is achieved when

 The story is development complete,

 QA complete,
 The story meets and satisfy the acceptance criteria
 regression around the story is complete
 The feature is eligible to be shipped / deployed in production.

59. What is MVP in scrum?

A Minimum Viable Product is a product which has just the bare minimum required
feature which can be demonstrated to the stakeholders and is eligible to be shipped
to production.

60. What are Epics?

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

61. How do you calculate a story point?

A Story point is calculated by taking into the consideration the development effort+
testing effort + resolving dependencies and other factors that would require to
complete a story.

Lomesh Detroja - Agilist

 62. Is it possible that you come across different story point
for development and testing efforts? In that case how do
you resolve this conflict?
Yes, this is a very common scenario. There may be a chance that the story point
given by the development team is, say 3 but the tester gives it 5. In that case both
the developer and tester have to justify their story point, have discussion in the
meeting and collaborate to conclude a common story point.

63. You are in the middle of a sprint and suddenly the

product owner comes with a new requirement, what will you
do?
In 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 accommodate 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.

64. In case you receive a story at the last day of the sprint
to test and you find there are defects, what will you do? Will
you mark the story to done?
A story is done only when it is development complete + QA complete + 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
next sprint.

Lomesh Detroja - Agilist