Agile Interview Questions and Answers: Agile is the broader umbrella where Scrum, Kanban, Test Driven Development (TDD), Feature Driven Development (FDD) etc. falls under. Scrum is a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value. Agile Interview Questions and Answers will help you in accessing your knowledge & skills as a Scrum Master or Product Owner.

Please read Agile Coach Interview Questions and Answer for Agile interview questions related to Agile Fundamentals. Scrum Interview Questions and Answer for interview questions related to Scrum Fundamentals.

Agile Interview Questions and Answers

1. What does Agile mean to you?

Answer: This is a common question in Agile Interview. Agile to me is the ability to move quickly, easily and making failure transparent. Whether it is the organization itself or the team, the focus is upon delivering value to customers. It is a framework that encourages “just-in-time” planning and deployment/implementation so that customers can receive end product/software as soon as possible. This process makes failure transparent so that appropriate corrective action can be taken in time.

Agile is built around 4 principles and 12 values. 

Being Agile means working in a highly responsive, lightweight way. There is still process, but it is just enough to not create waste and focus on delivery.

2. Why would one choose Agile?

Answer: Taking an Agile approach allows for change by anticipating it. Allows for being flexible. Work on what is most important. Builds a collaborative design with engineers, analysts and the business. 

End users are involved throughout the process rather than just at the beginning. Earlier delivery of working software corresponding with early feedback and subsequent change based on that feedback that is welcome. Key benefits of Agile can be summarized as

– Better Stakeholder Engagement
– Transparency
– Early and Predictable Delivery
– Predictable Costs and Schedule
– Allows for Change
– Focuses on Business Value
– Focuses on Users
– Improves Quality
– Refer to the Agile Manifesto of Values and Principals

3. Is agile path to success?

Answer: Agile is not a prescribed formula for success, it’s a mechanism for making failure transparent so that team can adapt quickly (Empirical Process – Inspection, Adaption & Transparency). Agile allows development teams to work closely with business in order to overcome the ambiguity of the written description of systems in contracts, and to tailor their system to the needs of the end user.

4. How is Agile different from waterfall?

Answer: Below give few key differences between Agile and Waterfall

• In Waterfall work is done sequentially i.e. previous phase must be over before initiating next phase (Requirement, Design, Development, Testing etc.) whereas in agile all of these are done in every iteration/sprint.
• Feedback from customer/end user is received at a later stage (towards end of the development cycle) where as in agile feedback from customer is received continuously.
• Requirements should be finalized before initiating development activities. Once requirements are locked down, changes are done through change requests whereas in agile changes are welcomed at all stages.
• In waterfall, Progress is measured as percentage completion where as in agile progress is measured by working software.
• In waterfall decision making or controlling authority is in the hand of project manager whereas in agile Self-motivated and self-organizing teams drives the projects.

5. What are the advantages of Agile over Waterfall?

Answer: This is one of the commonly asked questions in Agile Interview. Below are few key advantages of Agile over waterfall

• It minimizes the risk in response to changes made to the system & increases return of investment by reducing waste.
• Achieve Customer satisfaction by early and continuous delivery of useful software (time to market).
• Agile mindset & culture will help people to work as a united team (eventually they will be more committed & feel accountable for what they are doing).
• Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)
• Close & daily cooperation between business and IT team improves collaboration. Sustainable development pace helps your team continuously engaged & motivated.
• Focus on Improving Quality via Definition of Done, Team Working Cadence, Acceptance Criteria, INVEST.
• Focus on Continuous Improvement via regular feedback cycles (retrospective).

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

Answer: Yes, there are some drawbacks of the agile model, some of them to mention in Agile interview 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.

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.

7. How to measure if Agile is working in your team and organization?

Answer: Few indications are

• Increasing velocity of team & continuous Improvement.
• An increase in software quality (less technical debt, less bugs, and generally better maintainability).
• Increased participation of stakeholders in agile meetings, for example, during the sprint demo.
• Working software delivered frequently (weeks rather than months).

8. Why Continuous Integration is important for Agile?

Answer: Continuous Integration is important for Agile for following reasons

• It helps to maintain release schedule on time by detecting bugs or integration errors.
• Due to frequent agile code delivery usually every sprint of 2-3 weeks, stable quality of build is a must and continuous integration ensures that it helps to maintain the quality and bug free state of code-base
• Continuous integration helps to check the impact of work on branches to the main trunk if development work is going on branches using automatic building and merging function.

9. What are the similarities and differences between Agile and Scrum?

Answer: Differences: Agile is the broader umbrella where Scrum, Kanban, Test Driven Development (TDD), Feature Driven Development (FDD) etc. falls under. Agile has 4 principles and 12 values. Scrum has its own set of values and principles and provides a lightweight “framework” to help teams become Agile. In other words, Scrum is a part of Agile. Agile is a practice whereas scrum is a procedure to pursue this practice.

Similarities: 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.

10. What are the differences between Scrum and Kanban?

Answer: Scrum and Kanban are frameworks within Agile that help facilitate the agile principles and values. 

They have different philosophies – Kanban focuses on (1) visualizing the work (2) limiting work in progress (3) reducing the time it takes for a work item to get from start to finish. In Kanban, you are looking to continuously improve the workflow. 

In Scrum, the team works in specific intervals called sprints where the goal is to create feedback loops. The team adopts specific roles, artifacts and ceremonies. Velocity is a key metric for Scrum teams.

• Differences – Scrum has fixed length sprints, Kanban is continuous workflow
• Release – Scrum tends to be at the end of the sprint, Kanban is continuous
• Roles – Scrum has specific roles such as PO, SM, Dev whereas Kanban has no prescribed roles.
• Key metrics – Scrum is velocity where Kanban is lead time, cycle time and WIP
• Change philosophy – Scrum teams should not change during the sprint and Kanban can change at any time.

11. What are the differences between Extreme programming and Scrum?

Answer:

Scrum	Extreme Programming (XP)
Scrum teams usually have to work in iterations called sprints which usually last up to two weeks to one month long.	XP team works in iteration that last for one or two weeks.
Scrum teams do not allow change into their sprints.	XP teams are more flexible and change their iterations.
In scrum, the product owner prioritizes the product backlog, but the team decides the sequence in which they will develop the backlog items.	XP team work in strict priority order, features developed are prioritized by the customer.
Scrum does not prescribe any engineering practices.	XP does prescribe engineering practices.

12. What is test driven development?

Answer: Test driven development or TDD is also known as test-driven design. In this method, developer first writes an automated test case which describes new function or improvement and then creates small codes to pass that test, and later re-factors the new code to meet the acceptable standards.

13. What is your preferred delivery methodology and why?

Answer: For a team that is more mature and in particular a mature PO, then I would prefer Kanban. For example a team of experts or seniors. For a team that is more junior or has strategic members that are newish in the role then I would prefer Scrum. Also for a team whose stakeholders constantly change scope or mix strategy with operations, I would also prefer Scrum to protect the team.

14. What is the essence of Scrum?

Answer: A small team of people that is highly flexible and adaptive.  Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team. Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team.

15. What idea is Scrum founded on?

Answer: Empirical process control theory, or empiricism. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is known. Scrum employs an iterative, incremental approach to optimize predictability and control risk.

16. What is Scrum and few advantages of doing Scrum?

Answer: A framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value. It is light weight, simple to understand and difficult to master. Few advantages of Scrum are

• It minimizes the risk in response to changes requested by stakeholders.
• It increases ROI (Return of Investment) and user satisfaction for stakeholders.
• It improves the process continuously in an iterative process.
• Quicker release of usable product to users and customers.
• Higher quality, higher productivity and Lower costs for development of product.

17. 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 matrix 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.

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 a Scrum cycle. This matric helps to track the work completed with the sprint.

18. What do we mean by “Fail Fast” in agile?

Answer: Fail fast is a philosophy that suggests if a proof-of-concept effort isn’t successful, we can try a different approach and if none of the approaches are successful, we cut the losses.

The principle behind it is that rather than continuing on a project that would have eventually failed, the remaining funds and resources from the project can now be directed to other projects that are awaiting resources.

Fail Fast principle is also applied at the software bug lifecycle. As we know, the longer it takes for a bug to appear on the surface, the longer it takes to fix and the greater it costs.

Fail-fast makes bugs and failures appear sooner, thus:

• Bugs are earlier to detect, easier to reproduce and faster to fix.  
• It’s faster to stabilize software.
• Fewer bugs and defects will go into production, thus leading to higher-quality and more production-ready software.
• The cost of failures and bugs are reduced.

Fail-fast is the principle behind many agile practices like Test Driven Development and Continuous Integration.

19. What is a spike in Agile, its various types and when should you use them?

Answer: A Spike is a key tool used by agile teams to investigate and resolve problems as early as possible. It is a short time-boxed exploration of an approach to reduce project risk by learning just enough about the unknown aspect of a user story.

Although spikes can be done at any time during a project, they are generally don’t at the start of a project, before the development effort begins.

There are two types of spikes:

Architectural spike: The idea is to explore the viability of an approach or a solution in a short time frame.

Risk-based spike: The idea is to investigate, and possibly reduce, an issue or threat to the project.

20. What is Pair Programming and state its benefits?

Answer: Pair programming is a technique in which two programmers works as a team where. One programmer writes code and other one reviews that code. They both can switch their roles. Benefits include

Knowledge transfer is smooth: One experience partner can teach another partner about the codes and techniques.

Code quality: As the second partner simultaneously reviews the code, the chances of mistakes being occurred will reduce.

21. What are the principles of agile testing?

Answer: Some key principles that differentiate agile testing from others are:

• The focus is on satisfied customers.
• The code is clean and bug-free.
• Changes suggested by the customers are always welcomed.
• The work is done collectively by developers and whole team business persons.
• The focus is on essence as opposed to lengthy documentation.
• Face-to-face conversations are emphasized upon.
• Sustainable development is promoted.

22. Describe the Iterative and Incremental Development in Agile?

Answer: Incremental Development: Software development is done mainly in increments or more specifically, parts. In every single increment, a part of the complete requirement is to be delivered.

Iterative Development: Software is known to be delivered after developing it, to the customer. Based on the feedback, the software is again developed in cycles and released in sprints. For example, if in Release 1 after five sprints the software is developed and delivered to the customer. After that, if the customer wants changes to be made, then the development team has to make plans for the second release that will be completed in sprints and so on.

23. What is a Task board in Agile?

Answer: Task board is dash board which shows progress of the project. It contains:

• User Story: which 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.

24. 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.

25. What is Sashimi?

Answer: Sashimi is a Japanese word which means pierced body. Basically, it is a Japanese dish which consists of fresh meat or fish, sliced into thin pieces. Each piece is similar in taste when compared with the other pieces.

Sashimi in scrum methodology means every phase of software development cycle in a sprint which includes requirement analysis, planning & design, development, testing, documentation is complete or not and the product is ready to be displayed etc.

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