Scrum Questions

Metrics

Burn up and down chart Velocity- number of story points a team can achieve in a particular sprint has too be over 3 or 4 sprint too get the average.

DOD and acceptenc critera

DOD is the process requirment and acceptence criteria is user requirments 48

How does a Scrum Master track Sprint progress

Daily Scrum meetings, Scrum retrospectives, Sprint planning, Escaped defects, Defect density, Sprint burndown, Team velocity

What are the responsibilities of a Product Owner

Defines the vision for the project Anticipates the needs of the customer and creates appropriate user stories Evaluates project progress Acts as a liaison for all product-related questions

What does DoD mean

Definition of Done (DoD) The definition of Done is usually a checklist of all the work that team needs to do before it can call the product increment as " Done and move on to the next sprint

How do you handle a situation where the Product Owner isn't attending the Scrum Events? Due to this PO is constantly changing requirements in the middle of the sprint?

Educate the Product Owner why attending the Scrum Events is very important. Conduct a training session with the Product Owner and coach him on how constantly changing the requirements in the middle of the sprint is going against the SCRUM framework, and how it affects the development team. Also, coach him when he can change the requirement without impacting the development team's work.

What is Empirical Process Control in Scrum

Empiricism in Scrum is an approach whereby the team continuously learns and improves from mistakes. In Scrum, empiricism means that the team makes decisions and changes based on what the customer is actually experiencing, rather than what the developers intended them to experience.

How is Estimation Done in a Scrum Project

Estimation is done by the entire team during Sprint Planning Meeting. The objective of the Estimation would be to consider the User Stories for the Sprint by Priority and by the Ability of the team to deliver during the Time Box of the Sprint A particular scale is used to assess the difficulty of the user stories. Some type of scales are: Numeric Sizing (1 - 10)T-shirt Sizes (S, M, L, XL...)Fibonacci Series (1, 2, 3, 5, 8...)Dog breeds (Great Dane, Chihuahua...)

What should your question be geared towards

Everything should be to make sure the customer is happy and if the customer is happy then the company is happy

questions for them

How long have you guys been using scrum What do you guys desire as a scrum master How long have you guys been using liberty mutual whats next with the interview process and how long

Describe your role during your last project.

I was responsible for leading an offshore team of 10 developers. I ensured quality by reviewing their code, made sure the product was delivered on time and kept stakeholders apprised of our status, often using burn up or burn down charts. I was also responsible for writing and testing my own code

How would you deal with a difficult stakeholder

Listen to them carefully - Make an effort to comprehend their point of view. If what they say aggravates you, consider whether their needs are in line with the project's goals. Is it possible that they want things done a little differently? Make efforts to discover some common ground. People desire to be understood and to believe that their voices are heard. Estimate their motivation - Try to understand the motivation behind the stakeholders' opposition. This will allow you to compromise, and come up with a win-win solution, and complete the project. Answer questions like - Are they reporting to a board of directors that has its own reservations? What's the source of your stakeholders' sudden opposition? Are they concerned about exceeding their budget? Concerned that the project may not turn out as planned? Meet them one after another - Meeting without other stakeholders in the room relieves stress and allows the stakeholders' to be more at ease. So, make time to meet with each challenging stakeholder separately. This results in interactions becoming clearer and calmer. Take advantage of this chance to learn more about their point of view and recommended solutions. However, don't ask them why they don't like your plan outright. Ask open-ended inquiries about their thoughts and how the project is moving instead. Watch the stakeholders closely by identifying them - Determining the stakeholders and finding out what inspires them should be the first step. Anyone who is influenced by our work has control or influence over it or is interested in its success is referred to as a stakeholder.

How to deal with technical debt

Making sure we are dedicating 5-10 of our compacity to manage technial debt cause its a huge risk. if po is pushing back i would explain the risk of how if not manage well technial debt can cause us a lot of money.

What are MVP and MMP

Minimum viable product (MVP) It allows you to test an idea by exposing an early version of your product to the target users and customers, to collect the relevant data, and to learn from it. The MMP (Minimal Marketable Product) describes the product with the smallest possible feature set, that addresses the needs of the initial users (innovators and early adopters), and can hence be marketed and/or sold.

What is your approach to influencing people within a team

Modeling Agile myself i.e. leading by example Observation, Gather insights and then act upon those insights. Spending time with the strategically important people first i.e. PO as they have the most influence among the team. At the beginning and end of the team's iteration of work mostly with the team in providing feedback and teaching/training sessions. In the middle of the work iteration, spend time individually with the people. I think to have the right influence on the team, you can't just spend time with the PO but with everyone.

How did you get into scrum

My friend gave me the book scrum the art of doing 2x the work in half the time

What are your major roles as a scrum master

My primary role is to lead the project team. I provide real-time guidance and coaching, remove obstacles and balance the workload. Most of the time, I organize and lead the daily Scrum. I make sure the team understands and follows the Scrum methodology. While the developers don't report to me, I oversee the development process, the pace and the output by organizing sprints. I also code, test and design software, and I usually interface with the product owner on a daily basis."

What are the Artifacts of the Scrum Process

Product Backlog: It is a list that consists of new features, changes to features, bug fixes, changes to the infrastructure, and other activities to ensure a particular output can be obtained. Sprint Backlog: It is a subset of the product backlog that contains tasks focused on by the team to satisfy the sprint goal. Teams first identify the tasks to be completed from the product backlog. These are then added to the sprint backlog. Product Increment: the sum of all the Product Backlog items completed during a Sprint and the value of the increments of all previous Sprints. At the end of a Sprint, the new Increment must be "Done," which means it must be in useable condition and meet the Scrum Team's definition of "Done".

Define the roles in Scrum

Product Owner: The product owner is an individual who is responsible for increasing the ROI by determining product features, prioritizing these features into a list, what needs to be focused on the upcoming sprint, and much more. These are constantly re-prioritized and refined. Scrum Master: This individual helps the team in learning to apply Scrum to ensure optimum business value. The scrum master removes impediments, shields the team from distractions, and enables them to adopt agile practices. Scrum Team: They are a collection of individuals who work together to ensure that the requirements of the stakeholders are delivered.

How can Scrum Masters ensure timely delivery of action items

Regular scrum retrospective ensures timely delivery of action items. An effective retrospective makes sure that the team has identified the action items. Some organizations use a retrospective tracker to monitor action items. Here are the targeted categories: priority, ownership, status, description, identified on, and type. Working on the action items gives the team a boost that they are moving towards improvement and enhances the sense of ownership.

What's the difference between Agile and Scrum

Scrum is a type of Agile approach that is used to develop software applications. It's a framework that speeds up the development process when compared to classic Waterfall processes. Scrum's short sprints and daily feedback make it easy to rectify mistakes, so it's often used when the business requirements are unclear. However, Scrum's flexible nature can lead to scope creep."

What are some risks in Scrum? How are they handled

Some types of risks in Scrum are: Budget: The risk of exceeding budgets People (team): Team members need to be of appropriate skill and capability Sprint (duration and deliverables): Exceeding the duration, addition of the scope of work Product (user stories, epics): Having ill-defined user stories and epics Knowledge and capability: Having the appropriate resources Managing risks involves identifying, assessing, analyzing, defining, and implementing risk responses, monitoring, and managing them. These are done on a continual basis right from the starting of the project until completion. It is essential to understand that the impact of the risk is based on the proximity of the actual occurrence of the risk.

What happens in Daily Stand-up sessions?

Stand-up sessions are daily discussions that take place and are usually 15 minutes long. Daily Stand-up sessions help understand: What tasks went well What tasks were completed What tasks are pending, and The obstacles the team is facing The meeting helps in understanding the overall scope and status of the project. Further discussions can take place after the stand-up sessions.

What does the concept of Confidence Vote mean in Scrum? Why is it vital

The Confidence Vote gets held at the Program Increment Planning session following the risk analysis. It is when all team members assemble and voice their opinions and vote with their fingers on their confidence level in completing the PI Targets. The confidence vote can be used only once all the features and user stories get adequately estimated and prioritized. All work must be clear to all parties involved, with all dependencies and risks clearly defined. A vote of confidence can help to create an environment in which people feel comfortable sharing and expressing their ideas. It boosts team morale because members should feel that their opinions are valued.

Who is a Scrum Master? And what does he/she do?

The Scrum master is the facilitator of the Scrum Team. They organize meetings, remove impediments, and work with the product owner to ensure that the product backlog is up to date He/She understands the theory, practices, rules and, values of Scrum He/She ensures that the team follows the values, principles and, practices of Scrum They remove any distractions and impediments that hamper the progress of the project The Scrum Master ensures that the team delivers value during the sprint

Explain user story structure with an example

The User Story Structure is defined below - As a <role of user>, I want <To achieve a goal / perform a task>, So that <I may achieve some value/goal>. Example: User Story of a person's online course purchase - As a Customer, I want to purchase educational courses online from ed-tech websites, So that I do not have to visit a training center. 37. How can you assure that the user stories meet the requirements? A good user narrative includes both a description and acceptance criteria. It should be completed in a sprint with the fewest possible dependencies. The team should be able to develop and test while still delivering estimations within the sprint's constraints. In short, good user stories adhere to the INVEST concept. I → Independent: The user story should be written in such a way that team members are less dependent on one another. N → Negotiable: it should define the functionality of the user story and is subject to the Product Owner and the Team's approval. V → Valuable: It should offer value to the customer's experience. E → Estimable: This lets us be able to roughly approximate in terms of time. S → Small: The user story should be tiny enough for the team to finish in a sprint. T → Testable: Good acceptance criteria after testing is required.

What are the three pillars of Scrum

The three pillars of Scrum are summarized below - Adaption: The method being processed must be changed if an inspector determines that one or more aspects of a process are outside of permitted limits. A correction must be made as quickly as possible to avoid future deviation. Transparency: Transparency mandates that those elements be specified by a consistent standard in order for viewers to understand what they are viewing. For example, while referring to the process, all participants must use the same terminology. Those reviewing as well as those executing the job and the resulting addition must have the same definition of "done." Inspection: Scrum users must check Scrum artifacts and progress toward a Sprint Goal on a regular basis to discover unwanted deviations. Inspections should not be carried out so frequently that they constitute a burden to their work. Inspections are most successful when skilled inspectors do them attentively at the point of work.

Name some other Agile frameworks

There are other frameworks in addition to Scrum, such as Kanban, Test Driven Development, and Feature-Driven Development. Mention frameworks you have followed and provide scenarios.

A member of the scrum team does not want to participate in the sprint planning and considers the meetings a waste of time. How do you deal with this attitude

This kind of passive-aggressive behavior is not necessarily a problem particular to scrum. It is, however, toxic, and will affect both team-building and performance. If a member of a scrum team is behaving in this way, the Scrum Master will need to take action, as such behavior can neither be ignored nor tolerated if the team is to continue functioning. Dealing with it may require an escalating approach: As a first step, the Scrum Master might address the team member privately to discuss their reservations. Perhaps they just need more coaching or a longer training period to change their attitude. As a second step, the entire team could make it an issue during one or more retrospectives — and offer support to the team member. If there is still no change of attitude, a meeting with the team member and his or her manager is advisable. Finally, if no change can be achieved, the team member should be reassigned — potentially to another, probably non-agile team. Alternatively, a Kanban team that would not force the team member out of their comfort zone could be tried. Scrum is not meant for everybody.

What do you mean by timeboxing in Scrum? When can a Sprint be canceled, and by whom?

Timeboxing is the practice of devoting a set amount of time to a single activity. A timebox is a unit of time measurement. A timebox should not exceed 15 minutes in length. A Sprint can be canceled before the Sprint timebox limit ends. Only a Product Owner can cancel the sprint.

what

Transperency make sure that the team is clear on what they need too do. were transpernt with eachother inspection- every 24 we give our update so if anything is wrong. Adaptation

How are user stories, epics, and tasks different

User Stories: They provide the team with simple explanations of the business' requirements created from the end user's perspective. Epics: An epic is a collection of related user stories. They are usually large and complex. Tasks: Tasks are used to break down user stories further. They're the smallest unit in Scrum that is used to track work. A person or a team of two people usually work on a task.

What is Velocity

Velocity is a metric used to measure the amount of work completed by a team during a sprint. It refers to the number of user stories completed in a sprint.

How many teams have you supported

i've supported 2 teams with 10 memebers. 2 front end developers, 2 backend developers, one full stack developer, user interface design. UX designer, the product owner, and scrum master

How you apply scrum values in your project? Provide any examples

You could mention Scrum values (Openness , Commitment, Focus, courage and respect) and explain what each of these value means. Openness- Scrum team should be open about the work and the challenges/issues during the progress of the sprint. You can tell like all the details and progress of work is visible to everyone at any time including impediments or delays, making the team work as open as possible. Commitment - The team should commit to achieving the sprint goals and committed to support each other any time. Team keeps understanding their progress with daily scrum and working together to deliver the committed work. Focus - Team's focus is mostly about achieving the sprint goals to the best possible way. Make sure team is not distracted with other issues or any problems/impediments holding the team from achieving the sprint goal. Courage -Team members should have the courage to do right things and even point out if something wrong (irrespective of their position) and work on tough problems based on the situation. Respect - Team members respect each other to be capable to do work and it is one of the main characteristic which could do wonders.

How did you handle a mistake that was made

You talk about it in the retro. Depending on the nature of the problem, you might be able to solve it right then and there. Maybe it requires an adjustment to the definition of done. If it's bigger and requires work from the team, you can work with the product owner to come up with stories to add in an upcoming sprint. Scrum is all about iteration - do some work, analyze what worked and what didn't, then make adjustments for the upcoming sprint. Lather, rinse, repeat. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.

What exactly do you mean by Sprint in Scrum

a short, time-boxed period when a scrum team works to complete a set amount of work

a blocker

a situation where work has completely halted on an item and cannot progress without eliminating the issue

Team agreement

agreement for the team

you've completed the work of sprint in 2 days and the PO wants to add more on your ( when a PO is trying to create scope creep what do you do?)

as scrum master sit down with product owner and see where he is coming from. if it is important for customer then we can add it in but something must be taken out because the velocity of the team is only so much and you dont want to overwork your team. If this keeps happening then I would sit with him and teach him on the how scrum is and talk to him about the working agreement and let him know how it will affect the team.

how do you assess the maturity of your scrum team

by transprency, if they are meetin goal, how much work they are committing and how much they are doing, if they are facing and challenges or internal conflicts. velocity is increasing. they can make most of their decision. team is also able to funciton well in my absenc

product refinement

developers break it down in the sprint backlog

Some examples of the varieties of impediments:

technical debt. a bad boss. someone who does not understand agile or scrum or lean. a hurricane. a power outage. a serve that falls over. lack of automated testing. Continuous Integration that is not good enough yet.

What is the difference between coaching and mentoring?

A mentor is someone who shares their knowledge, skills, and/or experience, to help another to develop and grow. A coach is someone who provides guidance to a client on their goals and helps them reach their full potential.

What is a Burnup and Burndown Chart

A burnup chart is a tool that's used to track the amount of work that's been completed and to represent the total amount of work that needs to be done for a sprint/project. A burndown chart represents how fast working through user stories is. representation of work left to do versus time

Describe a time when your Delivery team members didn't seem to be getting along. How did you handle this?

A little bit of conflict is always good, but your interviewer is looking for your ability to be an effective leader. Reflect on a time where you had a few team members that just never seemed to be able to work things out. How did you encourage those team members to work together? Was it a team-building exercise? Did you make sure they had a common goal? State the problem you had, how you addressed it, and the outcome. As with any interview prep, you'll want to customize your answers to cater to the company for which you're interviewing.

What are the key skills of a Scrum Master

A strong understanding of Scrum and Agile concepts Fine-tuned organizational skills Familiarity with the technology used by the team To be able to coach and teach the team to follow Scrum practices Having the ability to handle conflicts and resolve them quickly To be a servant leader

Is a daily meeting suggested for all teams, irrespective of their size or experience level? Explain.

A team can evaluate its progress in sticking to the sprint goal during the daily meeting. To ensure that all are on the same page, all agile teams should meet frequently. They can conduct the meeting in different ways depending on the size as well as the level of experience. Small and Experienced - A small, experienced team can get together for a brief break or even an informal meeting. Small and Inexperienced - If the team is small and inexperienced, the Scrum Master should prefer going through a standup because the team needs to understand the progress. They may require assistance with technicalities or business functionality and must also understand the values, principles, and discipline. Large - Taking a relaxed attitude with huge teams may be troublesome, as formal meetings are required to provide advice and clarity. Distributed Teams - Because scattered teams are at a distance from each other, they can use the 'dial-in' feature to undertake meetings in an organized manner.

In Scrum, what do you mean by user stories? What benefits come from using them?

A user story is an informal, generic description of a software feature written from the end user's perspective. Its purpose is to explain how a software feature could benefit the customer. Putting people first is a critical element of agile software development, and a user story accomplishes this by putting end-users at the center of the discussion. These anecdotes use non-technical language to describe the development team and their efforts. After reading a user story, the team understands why they are developing, what they are building, and what value it adds. The following are some of the benefits of using User Story: The primary benefit of User Story is the user-centric definition. It is because, in the end, the user will use the product in the relevant user scenarios. It creates a connection between end users and team members. The syntax of the User Story ensures that the user's desired goal, benefit, or value gets captured. Because the acceptance criteria get included in the user story, the Scrum Team will benefit from them. A user story can change at any time during the project's execution. If the scope of the user story becomes too large, it must get divided into smaller user stories. The conditions of the acceptance criterion can also get altered.

When should a Scrum Master not act as a facilitator?

A workshop facilitator must be objective when it comes to the topics being discussed and should avoid contributing facts or opinions to the conversation. Even though a Scrum Master's job is to assist the team in achieving the best possible results, workshop facilitation can be challenging at times. Most of the general product development workshops can be facilitated by the Scrum Master if someone has the required knowledge. The Scrum Master should not facilitate a workshop about modifying the Scrum process.

How do you resolve conflict within a team

By adopting a neutral stance Determine whether this is a long-term or short-term conflict or dispute. Address the issue openly and honestly and establish understanding between the parties in dispute. Make sure each party has been heard and acknowledged. Move the conversation towards a positive outcome or a win-win for both parties by identifying the opportunities that are present in the midst of the conflict. This is a subjective question so give an example of a conflict between a senior developer and another junior developer and how you resolve it by taking a neutral stance, discussing it one on one with both parties, and extracting a solution out of them instead of you providing the solution.

Why aren't the user stories' man-hours estimated

Estimating clock-in-hours is one among the most popular methods for evaluating teamwork. Some significant disadvantages are: A few activities are difficult to estimate. Example - legacy work. If one team member provides the estimate, but another completes the task, the estimate is rendered useless. The time it takes to complete a task gets determined by the developer's experience level. Teams frequently exaggerate the difficulties they may face and only consider the best-case scenario. The following are some of the advantages of estimating user stories in points: There is no correlation between the estimator's skills and experience, and story points are independent of the story's author. Because story points are a measurement of relative sizes, and the size cannot get changed by external forces, team members can estimate more accurately. Story Points encourages collaboration by prioritizing team behavior over individual behavior. It serves as a team-building activity because teams exchange, argue, constructively criticize, and have fun while playing poker cards to reach an understanding of estimations.

How would you handle conflict within the team

Giving individual coaching to team members is one of the most effective strategies to resolve a problem. It is imperative for a Scrum Master to maintain positive relationships with team members and provide guidance when they face challenges. For a Scrum Master, paying attention to the source of the problem and listening and acting accordingly would go a long way. Any disagreements should be shared with other team members in a manner that they would be open to suggestions for resolving the issue. When a conflict arises, the Scrum Master must intervene so that the process runs smoothly and without hiccups. The following steps help in handling conflicts within the team: Step 1 - Scene setting First, we must determine the source of the team's quarrel. Before taking any action, it is necessary to understand the discrepancy between two groups or two persons. In times of dispute, Scrum Masters typically react aggressively against team members in the hopes of resolving the conflict on their own. However, while this may temporarily cure the problem, it does not address any underlying concerns. The Scrum Master must lead the team and teach them that disagreement is a regular occurrence in the workplace and it can be resolved with assertiveness. It is the leader's responsibility to guarantee that team members' concerns are acknowledged and addressed. Step 2 - Gathering Information Gathering facts about the conflict is usually crucial before coming to a conclusion about a certain individual or suppressing the topic. This could be accomplished by listening to each party separately and comprehending the situation from their point of view. The Scrum Master should also consider other team members' perspectives and also respect every team member's decisions. As a result, the Scrum Master must elicit everyone's assistance in order to gain a picture of the workplace conflict. Step 3 - Brainstorming to find a solution It is often impossible for the leader to resolve problems on his or her own. Furthermore, several members of the Scrum Team would have better answers that would quickly remedy the problem. Organizing spontaneous group talks and sharing opinions on various activities would stimulate good discourse between the two people or groups in these situations. This would urge both sides to see things from the other's perspective. This also provides opportunities for superior ideas to be pushed and for the disparity to be bridged. Step 4 - Solution conferring Listing all of the possible answers to an issue would only be useful if those solutions were put into action. Scrum Master removes the team's roadblocks by implementing the solution in this step. Throughout the conflict resolution process, remembering to stay calm and respectful will aid in a speedier and more efficient resolution.

How would you establish a highly motivated Scrum team or Trust within the team

I think Team Building Activities (Team Lunch, Adventure activities, etc) greatly impact teams in a positive way as they help to boost team trust & motivation. Trust isn't something established quickly, it can be quickly lost but not so easily gained. So work continuously with them. Another way to motivate any team is to empower that team to have control over their own work where they own it and are self-managing. Stay positive during setbacks, no blame game. The work has to be challenging and create an environment in the team in which they can master a particular skill set but make sure each team member has a balanced workload. Also, aligning the team with a higher purpose will motivate, so having the team aligned with other teams but remaining strongly decoupled with little hand-offs. Being part of a larger vision, and engineering strategy will also motivate. Give the team opportunities to grow - through knowledge-sharing sessions, and lab-like work where they experiment with different ways of doing things including different technologies. All these are ways to establish a highly motivated Scrum team but it is important to have FUN in the team.

If your manager comes and says they're not comfortable sizing in story points. They request that we do estimates in hours since it gives them more confidence. If we insist on estimating in points, could we do both hours and points?

I'd ask why they want it and educate the manager on Agile/Scrum values and the importance of relative sizing in Agile. Focus on getting the team to deliver value consistently. Emphasize tracking value delivered vs tracking how much time it took.

What are the challenges you faced during the release as a SM? What kind of role you play in release

If the Product owner is on top of things then mostly Scrum master role is limited to facilitating the release planning only. But that's always not the case and there are always things to discuss , disagreement between stakeholders & PO or PO & Team or issues between team may be with the estimation of user stories etc. That's where as a Scrum master your facilitation skills comes into picture and work with the team or PO or stake holders to reach an alignment and agree on what to be achieved as part of release planning. Prioritization of features to be taken or planned for release, is one area where there is more chance for disagreements as team cannot take all and PO needs to prioritize accordingly as per team capacity for delivery.

What is 'Scrum of Scrums'

It is a terminology used for scaled agile technologies, which is required to control and collaborate with multiple scrum teams. It is best used in situations where teams are collaborating on complex assignments. It is also used to ensure that the required transparency, collaboration, adaption, and adoption are established and to ensure that the products are deployed and delivered.

Can the Scrum team members participate in the product development process? If so, please explain how.

It is advantageous to involve the scrum team in the discovery phase stage of the product development lifecycle. Agile teams collaborate with stakeholders early in the development cycle to ensure that both parties are on the same page. By identifying technical implementation issues early in the process, development teams can assist in modifying specifications with the client. Working with the product owner, the team starts to share a common understanding of what needs to be ready. They can aid the product owner in identifying requirements that may have gone undetected. They share an understanding of what needs to be ready. It also helps teams maintain their dedication and confidence, encourages them to take ownership of their work, and, most importantly, boosts team spirit. To assist with this, the scrum master can begin involving teams in early product discussions while the requirements are still hazy. The product owner and the team can create the product backlog.

Backlog Refinement

It's a Scrum meeting where the Scrum team organizes the backlog to make sure it's ready for the next sprint or iteration. Removes unnecessary user stories Creates new user stories based on user feedback Prioritizes features that must be included in the next sprint

What is a User Story

It's a brief description of a specific product feature or a function that customers would find helpful. They provide the team with simple explanations of the business' requirements created from the end user's perspective A user story looks something like this: 'As (user name/type), I want to (do a thing), so I can (achieve a goal). For example: Let's say you're tasked with developing an app for Batman!. So a sample user story would be like: 'As Bruce Wayne, I want to be able to get a 'Bat Signal' notification on my app, so I can save the day.' The requirements to make a user story a reality are added later, after discussions with the team. They are recorded on post-it notes, index cards, or project management software.

iteration

It's a period of time in which an Agile team needs to develop working software. An iteration generally lasts for around 2-4 weeks for Kanban and Scrum teams.

What tools do you use

Jira, Rally, Version One, Redmine, TFS those tools are important visibilty and transperency. this is where we see the progress of the team. I know Jira the most.

How can you coordinate between multiple teams

One of the most common approaches for this is the Scrum of Scrums (SoS) meeting, where members representing each scrum team discuss the progress, performance, issues, risks, etc. together. The frequency of these meetings must be pre-defined. Generally, scrum masters would represent a particular scrum team, besides having the Chief Scrum Master (whose responsibility is coordination & collaboration among all the scrums) who facilitates these meetings.

What do you understand about Scope Creep? How can Scope Creep be managed

Scope creep is used to describe how a project's requirements tend to grow over time, like - a single deliverable product becomes five when a product with three essential features becomes ten, or when the customer's needs change midway through a project, requiring a reassessment of the project requirements. Changes in project needs from internal miscommunication and disagreements, and key stakeholders are some of the common causes of scope creep. To manage scope creep, we need to use the change control mechanism to keep it under control. This includes the following - Maintaining a baseline scope and keeping track of the project's progress. To evaluate actual work performance metrics to the baseline scope, i.e., "How different is the current project from the original plan?", we need to perform Variance analysis. Identifying the severity and source of the observed alterations. Selecting whether to take preventive or corrective action in response to requests regarding changes. To recommend actions and manage all change requests by using the Perform Integrated Change Control method (whether preventive or corrective).

How to deal with Score Creep

Score creep refers to a change that's uncontrolled and added without checking its impact on scope, time, cost, etc. To handle it, here's what needs to be done: Close monitoring of work being done on a day-to-day basis. Understanding and communicating the vision to the team and ensuring they're aligned. Capturing, reviewing the project requirements regularly (against what is delivered), to emphasize to the team & customer about the requirements signed off. Ensuring that any changes introduced go through change control & are implemented based on the approval for change request. Avoid gold plating.

What is Scrum?

Scrum is an Agile framework where decisions are based on observation, experience and experimentation Scrum is an Agile methodology in which a team works in short bursts of work ranging from 2-4 weeks, called sprints. At the end of the sprint, they deliver the product to the customers, and in turn, the customers give the developers their feedback

What are Some drawbacks to using Scrum?

Scrum requires individuals with experience Teams need to be collaborative and committed to ensuring results A scrum master with lesser experience can cause the collapse of the project Tasks need to be well defined, lest the project has many inaccuracies It works better for smaller projects and is difficult to scale to larger, more complex projects

What is Scrum-ban

Scrum-ban is a methodology that's a combination of Scrum and Kanban. Scrum-ban can be used to meet the needs of the team, and to minimize the batching of work, and to adopt a pull-based system. It ingeniously includes the structure of Scrum and the flexibility and visualization of Kanban.

How can you as a Scrum Master contribute to sprint planning in such a way that the team is working only on the most valuable user stories

Sprint planning is determining the most efficient path to value creation. The best way to accomplish this is to ensure that: The scrum team should be involved in the product discovery process at an early stage. The product backlog refinement process is well understood by both the developers and the product owner. (This can be supported, for example, by the creation of a "Definition of Ready" standard for user stories.) All user stories are created in a collaborative effort between the product owner and the scrum team. (A shared understanding and joint ownership is the goal). All user stories selected for the sprint should satisfy INVEST & the product owner should prioritize those using the MoSCoW technique.

Q42. How do you make different stakeholders attend daily scrum meetings

The coordination of business people and developers defines the success of a project. The scrum master should conduct the daily standup meetings and encourage all stakeholders to be a part of the call by explaining the impact it will have on the project. The motive of the daily scrum is to know whether or not they will reach the sprint goal. If all stakeholders are present on the call, they can see a clear picture of the product development and change their priorities to meet the set expectations. Problems faced by different parties are also discussed here to bring everyone togethe

What are the Scrum values

The five Scrum Values are: Openness - In order for the Scrum team to make the most progress in the shortest time feasible, each member of the team must be completely honest about their personal development. The objective of the daily Scrum meeting is to identify and address problems. That will happen only if team members are open about any issues or roadblocks they're seeing. Members of the team should be willing to work together and regard each other as important contributions to the project's success. Scrum masters can create openness by being honest with their teams. Giving honest feedback at daily Scrum meetings inspires team members to be open and honest in return and is important for making necessary modifications. Courage - Scrum teams must have the courage to be authentic, open, and honest with themselves and stakeholders about any bottlenecks they experience and the project's progress. Members of the team must also be gutsy enough to ask for help when they need it, try unfamiliar procedures, techniques, and respectfully disagree and debate openly. Scrum masters should foster courage first and foremost by demonstrating it just like respect. In order to avoid mid-sprint modifications or scope creep, the Scrum Master must have the confidence to stand up to product owners and stakeholders. Focus - To get the most out of each sprint, every team member must remain focused on the task at hand and how it influences the sprint goal. To keep team members engaged throughout sprints, scrum masters may limit the number of tasks or priority allocated to each team member. Individuals can also stay on task by making sure that the whole team is engaged in daily Scrum sessions. Respect - In a Scrum team, respect is accepting that no one person or contribution is more valuable than the other. Respect means appreciating your accomplishments, trusting your teammates to fulfill their tasks and also considering their ideas, and listening to them. Scrum masters may help their teams create mutual respect by demonstrating respect for the team members, product owners, and stakeholders. Commitment - To achieve a common purpose, scrum teams must work together. This means trusting one another to finish their tasks and deliver their best. It will only happen only if every member of the team is entirely committed to the team and the project.

What are the five steps of Risk Management?

The five steps of Risk Management are given below - Risk Identification: To identify the risks that your company is exposed to in its current operating environment. There are several types of risks, such as market risks, legal risks, regulatory risks, environmental risks, etc. It's crucial to be aware of as many risk factors as possible. Risk Analysis: Once a risk has been identified, it must be investigated. The scope of the danger must be determined. It's also important to understand the connection between other internal factors and risk. It's critical to determine the risk's severity and importance by examining how it affects the business operations. Ranking the risk: Risks must be ranked and prioritized. Most risk management solutions include numerous risk categories based on the severity of the danger. Risks that may cause minor discomfort are prioritized the least, but risks that can result in significant loss are prioritized the highest. Treating the risk: As much as possible, all risks should be avoided or reduced by contacting experts in the field in question. In a manual environment, this would include contacting each and every stakeholder and setting up meetings for everyone to discuss the issues. Risk review: To ensure that it has been entirely eradicated, the risk evaluation is done

How can discord be dealt with within the Scrum Team?

The issue's root cause needs to be identified and addressed Complete ownership needs to be established Try to diffuse the disagreement Emphasize on focus areas that complement the project A common understanding needs to be established to guide the team Performing continuous monitoring and providing complete visibility understand why the team member is feeling this way if they are having problems you had a team member who was not speaking up and you asked her what was going on and she stated that the men were speaking over her. so i reached out to the other team members and they did not know she was feeling that way and then they apologized

What is the role of a Scrum Master in a sprint retrospective

The scrum master in sprint retrospective inspects the progress of previous improvements. With the help of team discussion, new improvements are also inspected and adapted. Scrum Master plays the role of a facilitator for the team.

What happens in a Sprint Retrospective

The sprint retrospective takes place after the sprint review. During this meeting, past mistakes, potential issues, and new methods to handle them are discussed. This data is incorporated into the planning of a new sprint.

How can a Scrum Master be a Servant Leader

The term "servant leader" mainly focuses on the service orientation which a leader should demonstrate. The Scrum Master needs to be a facilitator, a guide, a mentor, etc. This helps the team have increased involvement, empowerment, etc.

Your team is constantly failing to meet commitments, and its performance velocity is volatile. What might the possible reasons be? How would you address this issue

There are many factors that can impact a team's performance. If the team is new and in their initial sprints then it is expected but it is happening more often then it is an issue. New team members are being onboarded. Senior Team members are leaving. Levels of seniority within developers. Working in uncharted territory & new technology with less expertise. Working with legacy code, probably undocumented. Unexpected technical debt. Holidays and sick leave. Too much executive or senior management intervention. Depending on the scenario the solution will be formulated to address it. One thing you may rethink is your story size. Maybe breaking them into smaller parts may help your team in actually delivering something of value. This means smaller points for each story, but since you could deliver more stories, the velocity should, in theory, stay around the same level. We had similar problems in our team. Sometimes it is not possible to actually break a story more, but when we tried to keep larger stories, we could barely deliver anything.

What are the responsibilities of the Scrum Team?

They have to breakdown the requirements, create task, estimate and distribute them. In other words this means that they have to create the Sprint Backlog. They have to perform the short Daily Sprint Meeting. They have to ensure that at the end of the Sprint potentially shippable functionality is delivered. They have to update the status and the remaining efforts for their tasks to allow creation of a Sprint Burndown Diagram

A member of the scrum team does not want to participate in the sprint planning and considers the meetings a waste of time. How do you deal with this attitude?

This kind of passive-aggressive behavior is not necessarily a problem particular to scrum. It is, however, toxic, and will affect both team-building and performance. If a member of a scrum team is behaving in this way, the Scrum Master will need to take action, as such behavior can neither be ignored nor tolerated if the team is to continue functioning. Dealing with it may require an escalating approach: As a first step, the Scrum Master might address the team member privately to discuss their reservations. Perhaps they just need more coaching or a longer training period to change their attitude. As a second step, the entire team could make it an issue during one or more retrospectives — and offer support to the team member. If there is still no change of attitude, a meeting with the team member and his or her manager is advisable. Finally, if no change can be achieved, the team member should be reassigned — potentially to another, probably non-agile team. Alternatively, a Kanban team that would not force the team member out of their comfort zone could be tried. Scrum is not meant for everybody.

three pillars of scrum

Transparency: This means presenting the facts as is. All people involved—the customer, the CEO, individual contributors—are transparent in their day-to-day dealings with others. They all trust each other, and they have the courage to keep each other abreast of good news as well as bad news. Everyone strives and collectively collaborates for the common organizational objective, and no one has any hidden agenda. Inspection: Inspection in this context is not an inspection by an inspector or an auditor but an inspection by every- one on the Scrum Team. The inspection can be done for the product, processes, people aspects, practices, and continuous improvements. For example, the team openly and transparently shows the product at the end of each Sprint to the customer in order to gather valuable feedback. If the customer changes the requirements during inspection, the team does not complain but rather adapts by using this as an opportunity to collaborate with the customer to clarify the requirements and test out the new hypothesis. Adaptation: Adaptation in this context is about continuous improvement, the ability to adapt based on the results of the inspection. Everyone in the organization must ask this question regularly: Are we better off than yesterday? For profit-based organizations, the value is represented in terms of profit. The adaptation should eventually relay back to one of the reasons for adapting Agile—for example, faster time to market, increased return on investment through value- based delivery, reduced total cost of ownership through enhanced software quality, and improved customer and employee satisfaction.

What is Velocity? How can you know the velocity of a newly set up team and how to plan work for that team's coming iterations

Velocity is a measure of the amount of work a Team can plan during a single Sprint and is the key metric in Scrum. Velocity is calculated at the end of the Sprint by totaling the Points for all completed User Stories. Velocity = Completed Story points at the end of the sprint. Average velocity = Total number of story points completed in Sprints (Usually last 3 sprints)/ Number of sprints considered for average velocity calculation Teams commit to an amount of work for a sprint/iteration based on their average velocity. But a new team doesn't have a set average velocity so for the first sprint they go by the gut feel of the team. Even based on the team members' past experience they can tell how much work they can accomplish in a sprint and after pulling that much work in the first sprint they will have to see if that much work was more for them or lesser and based on that experience they choose the amount of work for next sprint and so on. Even you may consider any other comparable team's initial velocity and plan it.

Bank of america and chevron

we worked on online banking, loans for morgatges, car loans. we built apps for IOS for desktops and mobile. Support teams that build software

defenition of ready

when something is ready to be pulled into the sprint

have you ever worked with an offshore teams

yes, find a good time that is good for all parties, because offshores teams are usually a day ahead of us like asia, india because of the time difference.

communitcation tool

zoom, slack, microsoft team, matter most, skype

what are the challenges you faced in scrum during the sprint? How did you address these

You could tell about issues with daily scrum (time boxing not happening or team members not that engaging or it is more of working like a status meeting etc.)

sprint planning

created user stories and by invest criteria making sure that its small enough sliced in a paticualar way that they can be worked on independently.

how did you fail as a scrum master x

during covid that left the team and we ended hiring a junior developer and I was so involved with the event since we lost a member so I was trying to make sure we still meet our goal with good velocity and I wasn't doing a good enough job mentoring the new team member with being up too speed and and he asked for help with learing and getting caught a when we spoke

spike or eneabler

enables user stories too get done.

the events

every event is an opportunity to inspect and adaption 24 hour checks are important

person just won't cooperate

if all else fails then I will take it to their manager and they will most likely get moved to new team.

What is a scrum master

is a profession who faciltated a team through a project using agile project managment techniques. they are a servent leader of the team who implement agile mindset with diffrent methodolgies l

Scope - scrum master community of practice

meeting for scrum masters for projects to talk about their experiences.

capacity planning

planning how many ppl will be working on the sprint

What is a Sprint

print is a terminology used in Scrum, used to describe a time-boxed iteration. During a sprint, a specific module or feature of the product is created. The duration of a sprint can vary between a week or two.

Where do you see your self in

realse train engineer for safe ( supervisor of scrum master), agile coach

How do you integrate into an existing team as a Scrum Master when you first start a new engagement

simply observe. You will alienate people if you come in with a prescriptive approach to how they should be doing things. Pick your moments to provide your suggestions or views, and be completely receptive to any feedback received. That will indicate whether to pursue the matter, or let it rest for a while. Its about leading them to water, and hoping that they drink. If they don't, reflect on the situation, and look for the next opportunity to lead them to another pool of water. It is your job to make things as transparent and visible as possible to both the team and the organization

Realtive sizing

taking two stories and deciding which one is bigger and which one is smaller. so youre just comparing the two stories to eachother

Whats the most important event

thats like someone asking me which finger is most important. they are all important and play a vital role in the success of the event. and if lose one it will effect the outcome of your sprint.

Acceptence Criteria

the condition that a user story must meet to be accepted by a user

poker planning, t-shirt sizing

the estimation of how difficult the story points is going to be during the sprint planning

how has your journey been as a scrum master

theexperience has been great. Its great helping and supporting a team, giving the end users exactly what they want. making end users happy. love creating an atmosphere. Values of courage commitment, focus, respect, Scrum Values: Openness, Courage, Respect, Focus and Commitment. giving people the openness too say how they feel. creating software.

What is User-Story Mapping

visual exercise that helps product managers and their development teams define the work that will create the best user experience. It is used to improve teams' understanding of their customers and to prioritize work.