Scrum interview questions

What are the different types of agile methodologies that you have used and know about? 
Scrum. Basics:

1. Scrum team
2. Product owner
3. Scrum master: Runs the standups

What are the core components of scrum that you think are most valuable and what things do you feel are not so valuable?
Valuable:

1. Sprint planning
2. Sprint review: demo day
3. Sprint retrospective 
4. Daily scrum 

Not so valuable:

1. When we want estimates upfront. 
2. We want team to be more efficient and productive. 

Please see the chart: 

Source of image: https://medium.com/the-liberators/more-often-than-not-scrum-seems-like-a-bad-idea-44a5346454a1

How would you describe the most effective standup?

1. Quick and easy.
2. Every one states:
1. What they accomplished yesterday
2. What they are planning to accomplish today
3. What are their blockers
3. Issues are not discussed in detailed. They are taken up after the standup. 
4. Finishes within 10-15 mins. 

What are the best methods of sizing during a planning meeting?

1. Dividing the tasks into stories, epics, tasks, bugs. 
2. Allocating days and not hours to the different tickets. 

What kind of preparation is necessary before you start a sprint planning meeting?

1. Meeting with different teams and stakeholders to clarify the requirements. 
2. Writing requirements to a certain level so that they can be discussed with the team during the planning meeting.
3. Review what has been accomplished and what is pending. 
4. Prioritization of new and old tasks. 
5. Determining supporting and maintenance activities that will come up during the sprint. 
6. Monitor progress and see if the tasks are achieve the needed goals. 

How would you decided your sprint length?
Key factors are:

1. Expected project duration. 
2. How often customers and stakeholders can meet to view the demo, provide their feedback. 
1. Internal demos can be weekly. 
2. External demos can be monthly or set cadence. 
3. Team experience in:
1. Scrum
2. Technical capabilities

Source: https://www.mitchlacey.com/blog/determining-sprint-length

Have you ever used kanban? Describe the situation where kanban makes sense and what are its advantages?
No. Please review other sites. I have no experience with Kanban so can't really answer second question.

What are the key components of having a successful Agile team?

1. Communication
2. Organization
3. Metrics Driven
4. Self sufficient
5. Cross functional

Source: https://www.bairesdev.com/blog/5-elements-of-a-high-performing-agile-team/

Various agile tools you have used
Source control tools:

1. GIT, Mercurial
2. Continous integration tools like Jenkins and Hudson

Team management tools:

1. Jira
2. Confluence

What is your take on documentation within a Scrum team?
It is very important as it demos progress, clarifies requirements, keeps track of things when they are moving way to fast, serves as knowledge base for future employees.
Working software with comprehensive documentation makes sense.


What is your take on the SAFe framework?
Not heard of it.


What is your take on MVP?

1. It can help one to focus on the core functionalities and align the process along the core. 
2. Brings focus to critical business functions. 
3. Creates customer impact early on. 
4. Possibility of creating a very sleak product that could have higher adoption like 

When does a scrum team fail and why?

1. Lack of trust or miscommunication causes it
2. Scrummaster instead of helping the team by removing blockers, they keep asking for updates.
3. Product owners is not strong. They take what is provided to them instead of tying the customer feedback to the business goals or KPIs or metrics. They shouldn't just take the feedback and ask the team to develop the features. They need to understand what needs to be developed when. 
4. Very complex requirement leading to project failures by missing deadlines or unexpected developments.

What are the primary advantages of using Scrum?

1. Better quality
2. Decreased time to market
3. Increased ROI
4. Higher customer satisfaction
5. Higher team morale
6. Increased collaboration and ownership
7. Enhanced and better metrics
8. Better progress visibility and exposure
9. Increased project control 
10. Reduced risk

Source: https://www.dummies.com/careers/project-management/10-key-benefits-of-scrum/

How do you split large epic stories? example?

1. One story of core. Subsequent stories that build upon core. 
2. A story for different modules. Then a story for their integration. 
3. Creating story for funtional use-cases. Then create for non-functional use-cases like performance, capacity, etc.
4. Create stories for use-cases that will be incorporate in all functional use-cases like security, validation, exception handling. 

Have you ever moved a team to start using agile? If so describe the experience and the hurdles you faced.
I have not but my PMs have. Based on my chats with them they mention following hurdles:

1. Team members resisting to the change.
2. Misunderstanding process
3. Failing to adapt to the changing roles. 

Technical:
How do you calculate velocity? And how important is this? Where does calculating velocity not
make sense?
Velocity: Amount of work a team can finish in a sprint and is key metric of Scrum. Ex: If each story has 4 points and the team could finish 5 stories during three week sprints then the velocity = 5 * 4 = 20 points.
This metric calculates the amount of work done by the team.
It can be calculated in number of hours, number of tasks.
Historical data of velocity helps one understand their predictions mechanisms.

Difference between cycle time vs lead time?

Difference between burn-up and burn-down chart?

How would you describe a spike in scrum?

What is CI, CD important?

Common problems of estimation during a planning session. - First understand the story point

How do you manage dependencies within an agile development team?
It depends on where the dependency lies:
If the dependency is not a project of any Sprint then Product manager will manage it.
If it in developement then dev team will manage it.