Scrum Master | Agile Coach | PMP Certification Exam Prep And Interview – Questions And Answers

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Interview And Test Prep For Agile, Scrum And PMP Roles: 

QUES: When multiple Scrum Teams work together on the same product, each team should maintain a separate Product backlog? True Or False?
ANS: FALSE

QUES: What is the project information radiator in Agile?
ANS: The project information radiator is often a physical display of tasks that are being done, and tasks that are in the pipeline. It can be tech-driven too in applications like Jira. But, this is a place where the team and other stakeholders can find out the team velociyt, the product backlog items, burndown chart and the latest test results, defects and results from the retrospectives.

QUES: What are the two kinds of planning in Agile life cycles?
ANS: There are two kinds, the release planning and the iteration planning.
In Iteration planning, there is backlog preparation that is focused upon. The backlog is the ordered list of all the work, presented in story form, for a team. The Developers, tester and the Product owner discuss, write, and then place enough stories into an iteration enough features for a first release.
In release planning, business representatives establish and prioritize the user stories for the release, in collaboration with the team, refining larger user stories into a collection of smaller stories.

QUES: In waterfall, the project team often gets early feedback from customers or markets about the product they are building, so they can act on this feedback on time. True Or False?
a) True
b) False
ANS: False

QUES: In the absence of the scrum master, how can we conduct daily stand-up meetings?
ANS: Developers are the only ones who are required to attend daily stand-up meetings. The Product Owner and the Scrum Master are optional.

QUES: What is BDD in Agile?
ANS: BDD stands for Behavior-driven development where a developer focuses on testing the code based on the expected behavior of the software. It is a method of writing user stories to support the outcome of the test. Given, When, Then is the way BDD is used, particularly when outlining user Story Cards for any iteration. It says, when Given a situation, When something happens, Then we want this to happen.

QUES: What is the difference between Iterative project approach and Predictive project approach?
ANS: A Predictive or Waterfall project management lifecycle focuses on fixed requirements performed once for the project for a single delivery. On the other hand, an Iterative approach is where we have dynamic requirements, repeated with feedback until they are correct, but delivered all at once.

QUES: What are the earned value management metrics in a Predictive project?
ANS: SPI and CPI – Schedule performance index and cost performance index are earned value management metrics from a predictive project methodology – the Waterfall method.

QUES: What is the Agile Team Charter?
ANS: The Agile team charter is the “Why” vision and the team way of work and collaboration. It contains team values, such as sustainable pace and core hours. It has ground rules, such as one person talking in meetings at a time. It has working agreements, such as what “ready” means so that team can take in work, and what “done” means so the team can judge completeness consistently.

QUES: What is the difference between Sprint reviews and Sprint retrospectives?
ANS: Sprint reviews are for product demonstrations while Sprint retrospectives are for lessons learned, where we ask, “What went well, what didn’t go well, and what we can do better?”

QUES: What is Sprint ZERO?
ANS: During sprint zero, the team comes up with a minimal number of user stories to turn into a workable product and, optionally, sets up the infrastructure for development. The sprint is usually kept lightweight and high-level.

QUES: Can multiple scrum teams work together on the same product maintaining one product backlog?
ANS: Yes, it is required that they work on the same product backlog especially if it is about a single project.

QUES: Upon what type of process control is scrum based?
ANS: Empirical process. Empiricism promotes frequent opportunities to make informed decisions thus reducing risk and uncertainty.

QUES: What is the single focus of the scrum team?
ANS: The scrum team must have their eyes on the Product goal.

QUES: What are the different domains of the PMP that are tested in the exam?
ANS: The PEOPLE aspect is tested 42%, the PROCESS is tested with around 50% of the questions and the remaining 8% is on BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT.

QUES: What are some examples of value based measurements for an Agile project?
ANS: Agile works with value delivered as its primary measurement. Some examples are:
Feature burndown chart (features delivered)
Customer satisfaction

QUES: What is the difference between Scrum and Kanban?
ANS: They both are pull systems in their own ways, with Kanban having WIP limits. They both ensure that the items in the Product backlog reach to the Customer in the shortest possible time. Kanban limits the work that the team can do, it limits how much the team has to work on. The work is pulled across into the queue only when the team is ready to work on it.
Scrum works in sprints, whereas Kanban works in Work in Progress limits.

Scrum Vs. Kanban

QUES: What are some examples of predictive measurements of project management?
ANS: The traditional waterfall method of project management has many kinds of measurements. They are often referred to in the PMBOK Guide, like:
Earned value management
Schedule performance index
Variance analysis
Estimate to complete
Variance at Completion
Cost performance index

QUES: When does sprint conclude?
ANS: When the sprint retrospective is complete.

QUES: Who is responsible for managing the progress of the scrum team?
ANS: The scrum master

QUES: What is AUP in Agile?
ANS: Agile Unified Process (AUP) is an auxiliary Agile method that focuses on performing more iterative cycles across 7 key disciplines, and incorporating the relevant feedback before the formal delivery of the product.
They are: (Below notes copyright Wiki)
Model: Understand the business of the organization, the problem domain being addressed by the project, and identify a viable solution to address the problem domain.
Implementation: Transform model(s) into executable code and perform a basic level of testing, in particular unit testing.
Test: Perform an objective evaluation to ensure quality. This includes finding defects, verifying that the system works as designed, and validating that the requirements are met.
Deployment: Plan for the delivery of the system and to execute the plan to make the system available to end users.
Configuration Management: Manage access to project artifacts. This includes not only tracking artifact versions over time but also controlling and managing changes to them.
Project Management: Direct the activities that take place within the project. This includes managing risks, directing people (assigning tasks, tracking progress, etc.), and coordinating with people and systems outside the scope of the project to be sure that it is delivered on time and within budget.
Environment: Support the rest of the effort by ensuring that the proper process, guidance (standards and guidelines), and tools (hardware, software, etc.) are available for the team as needed.

QUES: The CEO of the company asks a developer at the water cooler that a very important item has to be added to the sprint in progress. What should the developer do next?
ANS: Inform the PO of this request from the CEO.

QUES: What is the relative sizing estimation (Fibonacci estimation) to predict how much time tasks take in each sprint?
ANS: After refinement sessions and feedbacks on particular tasks, usually they might not end up taking the exact amount of time that we estimate. So we go for relative sizing. Relative sizing also shows us that we are open to change, and uncertainty.
Each user story is given a specific story point size. 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13
No complexity: 1 story points
Very complex one: 13 story points
If the effort is there but not too much uncertainty: 5 story points

QUES: Why is the daily scrum held at same place and same time?
ANS: The consistency reduces the complexity, this is why we ensure that daily scrum happens at same place same time everytime.

QUES: On what basis is the product backlog ordered?
ANS: Value, Risk, Priority And Necessity

QUES: Who assigns tasks to the Developers in a Scrum team?
ANS: The Developers themselves

QUES: Which two things should the scrum team do during first sprint?
ANS: To atleast,
a. deliver an increment of useful and valuable product
b. develop and deliver at least one piece of functionality

QUES: What are the three pillars of scrum?
ANS: Transparency, Inspection and Adoption; They can also be: People, Events and Artifacts

QUES: What is a Sprint?
ANS: Sprint is a Short, time-boxed iteration during an Agile Project.

QUES: What are the two ways a scrum master serves to enable effective scrum teams?
ANS: one by facilitating developer decision making
two by removing impediments that hinder the scrum team

QUES: Which of the following are examples of a Scrum Team practicing Scrum poorly or not exhibiting traits Of a self-managing Scrum Team?
(choose the best three answers)
A. The Developers are working within the boundaries of their organizations functional description and nicely handing Off work from analyst to developer to tester to integration.
B. The Developers nave all the skills they need to create a valuable, useful Increment.
C. The Developers create their own Sprint Backlog, reflecting all work that is required to meet the Definition of Done.
D. The Developers are collaboratively selecting their own work during the Sprint.
E. The Developers invite external stakeholders to the Sprint Planning to ask them how to turn a Product Backlog item into an Increment via a complete and detailed Sprint Backlog.
F. Stakeholders attend the Daily Scrum to check on the Scrum Team’s progress.
ANS: A, E, F

QUES: Why does the agile manifesto de-emphasize extensive documentation early in the project?
ANS: Rapidly changing requirements would make the documentation outdated.

QUES: What are the Scrum Metrics that a new Scrum master must understand before inheriting a new team?
ANS: There are three metrics. 1. Velocity 2. Capacity and 3. Burn down charts

1. Velocity: Velocity is number of story points (user stories) completed in each sprint. Once a team has calculated the average velocity it can use the number of story points to plan future sprints. It typically takes 6 sprints to make it stable for the Scrum team.

Velocity Of The Scrum Team

2. Capacity: Estimated total amount of Scrum team time available for the sprint.

3. Burn down charts: See next question for answer

QUES: What is a burn down chart?
ANS: A burn down chart shows the amount of work that has been completed in an epic or sprint and the total work remaining based on the days remaining. In the product burn-down chart, the sprints are shown on the x-axis. In the sprint burn-down chart, the days of the sprint are shown on the x-axis. You can create one on Microsoft Excel. In simple words, it shows work left vs. time left.

The team refers to this as their sprint burndown and typically utilizes it to gauge progress toward the sprint commitment. The progress line at the top of the graph will move downward as work is finished to indicate the decreasing quantity of committed work that has to be finished. The graph uses the number of hours of work left to measure progress on the Y axis. Using a burndown that includes hours is unpopular with many teams. The Y axis of this chart, where points are represented, is preferred by most teams since they estimate in points rather than effort. This, in their opinion, more accurately reflects their development.

Burn Down Chart

Release BurnDown Chart

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QUES: Why Scrum instead of traditional waterfall management style?
ANS: In a very volatile world and ever changing landscape of the software development world, Scrum is the answer to address uncertainty. Scrum is a new way of addressing age old project management problems. Scrum is a framework for creating complex products in complex environments. It increases the opportunity to control risk and optimizes the predictability of progress. Short iterations called sprints help us ensure project progress while releasing small increments of product deliverables.

QUES: What are process groups in Project Management?
ANS: Typically projects require five process groups — initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. These are known as the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) process groups.

QUES: How will you prioritize the tasks in your project?
ANS: There are many ways to decide on what tasks are more urgent than others to create product value to the customer.
1. Pareto principle
2. Priority matrix
3. Relative prioritization
4. MITs (Most important tasks)

QUES: What are the kind of questions you must ask your interviewer?
ANS: When given a chance, please do not say that you don’t have any questions. It is important to show you care about the company and the role. Here are few sample questions that you can ask your interviewer.
1. How does change look like in your company?
2. Are you comfortable with telling me why you like your position in this company?
3. Am I inheriting a team or am I joining a newly formed team?
4. What is the career path for project managers in your organization?

QUES: What is the most difficult part about being a scrum master?
ANS: Changing the mindset of the team to adopt scrum or Agile.

QUES: What are the responsibilities of a PMP (Project Management Professional)?
ANS: Their responsibilities span across three areas:
PEOPLE – emphasizing the skills and activities associated with effectively leading a project team
PROCESS – reinforcing the technical aspects of managing a project
BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT – highlighting the connection between projects and organization strategy

QUES: What are the different events / ceremonies of a Sprint?
ANS: Backlog grooming meetings, when everyone attends to review new or modified items in the backlog, are key activity for all Scrum teams. meetings for sprint planning where everyone gathers to talk about the work commitments for a next sprint. Every team member reports on what they accomplished the day before, what they will do today, and asks for assistance when they run into problems at the daily scrum or standup meeting. The development team, the PO, and the scrum master convene for a sprint review meeting to demonstrate what has been completed during the previous sprint.

During the sprint retrospective meeting, the team evaluates its own Scrum methods for effectiveness and efficiency. They also make decisions about what should and should not be changed to serve the group as a whole. The same physical papers are produced by all Scrum teams and are used to direct the team as they work on the project.

These are the Sprint backlog, which is a subset of the product backlog and, whenever possible, reflects the highest value items first, and the Product backlog, which is a defined set of the work items needed to be done to produce the whole, valued product. A product increment, which can be issued independently to give clients more value, is a subset of the complete product in development.

QUES: What are the Empiricism AND Lean Thinking principles.
ANS: This is as described in the theory of Scrum. Scrum is a combination of Empiricism and lean principles. Empiricism is that knowledge comes from actual real experience, and making decisions based on what is observed. -> It stands for transparency, inspection and adaptation. Lean thinking reduces waste and focuses on the Essentials.

QUES: What is the typical size for Scrum team?
ANS: 10 or fewer

QUES: Who creates the product backlog?
ANS: Product Owner

QUES: Who writes user stories?
ANS: Think of this acronym when thinking of how to write good user stories:
INVEST:
Independent
Negotiable
Valuable
Estimable
Small
Testable
And think the 3C’s:
Engage your team in:
Card, Conversation and Confirmation

QUES: How to write good user stories? 
ANS: Product Owner

QUES: What does the Product Vision Board have?
ANS: The Product vision board by Roman Pichler is very popular, it has:
Target group
Needs of the customer
Product description
Business goals

QUES: What is Project portfolio management?
ANS: The management and selection of projects that support an organization’s
vision and mission. It is the balance of project priority, risk, reward, and return on investment. This is a senior management process.

QUES: What are the different kinds of Agile Framework Flavors?
ANS: Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming, Crystal

QUES: What are the five values of scrum?
ANS: Known by the Acronym FROCC: Focus, respect, openness, courage and commitment.

QUES: Describe the roles in a scrum team?
ANS: Product owner: Maximizes the value delivered in sprints
Scrum master: Manages team processes and facilitates the methodology
Dev. Team: Members working toward achieving the project’s goal

QUES: Who has the final say on order of product backlog?
ANS: Product Owner

QUES: What is time box for daily scrum meeting?
ANS: Maximum 15 minutes

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Finding The Velocity Before Project Starts:

Here’s a way to find the team Velocity before the Project starts.
Check it out.

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QUES: What are four agile values four agile values or what is the Agile Manifesto?
ANS: a. individuals and interactions over processes and tools
b. working software over comprehensive documentation
c. customer collaboration over contract negotiation
d. responding to change over following a plan

QUES: Who has authority to cancel the sprint?
ANS: Product Owner

QUES: What is the main reason for the scrum master to be at the daily scrum?
ANS: This is a trick question. The Scrum master is not needed in the daily standups, they just have to ensure the developers attend it.

QUES: What are the triple constraints of Project Management?
ANS: Time, Cost and Scope. It is also known as the Iron Triangle. This theory states that time, cost, and scope are three constraints that every project has.

QUES: What does it mean to say that an event has a time boxed?
ANS: This means the event can take no more than a maximum amount of time

QUES: What is the typical duration of a sprint?
ANS: One week to four weeks

QUES: What is Dev Ops?
ANS: DevOps is the practice of partnership between software development and operations engineers.

QUES: When might a sprint be abnormally cancelled?
ANS: When the split goal becomes obsolete.

QUES: What is Progressive elaboration?
ANS: The process of gathering project details. This process uses deductive reasoning, logic, and a series of information gathering techniques to identify details about a project, product, or solution. Progressive elaboration is how you apply the new info into the replanning, to reprioritize.

QUES: What are the three Scrum Artifacts?
ANS: Scrum’s artifacts represent work or value. They are designed to maximize transparency of key information. Thus, everyone them has the same basis for adaptation. Each artifact contains a commitment to ensure it provides information that enhances transparency and against which can be measured:
a. For the Product Backlog it is the Goal.
b. For the Sprint Backlog it is the Sprint Goal.
c. For the Increment it is the Definition of Done.

QUES: What is the Project Management Institute (PMI)?
ANS: An organization of project management professionals from around the world, supporting and promoting the careers, values, and concerns of project managers.

QUES: What is the Project management office (PMO)?
ANS: A central office that oversees all projects within an organization or within a functional department. A PMO supports the project manager through software, training, templates, policies, communication, dispute resolution, and other services.

QUES: What are the problems for a new Scrum Master?
ANS: Complexity, uncertainty and risk: So starts with trying to understand people, process, product.

QUES: What is an MVP?
ANS: A minimum viable product is a product that has just the bare minimum required feature which can be demonstrated and shipped to the stakeholders in each sprint.

QUES: What is a Gantt chart?
ANS: The waterfall methodology of project management is often visualized in the form of a flow chart or a Gantt chart. This methodology is called waterfall because each task cascades into the next step. In a Gantt chart, you can see the previous phase “fall” into the next phase.

QUES: What are the most important metrics for measuring a project success?
ANS: The important metrics for measuring project success include completion rate, budget and cost performance, customer satisfaction, and quality of the end product.

QUES: 5 Stages of Project management or project life cycle?
ANS: Initiation: What is the purpose, what needs to be achieved?
Planning: How can I achieve the goal
Execution: Who is going to do what within a time frame
Monitoring and Controlling: Autonomy of team members, remove impediments, monitor performances
Closing: Assess if project has met acceptance criteria.

QUES: What are the different kinds of Agile Estimation techniques?
ANS: There are about 7 AGILE ESTIMATION TECHNIQUES. They are:
1. Planning Poker
2. T-Shirt Sizes
3. Dot Voting
4. The Bucket System
5. Large/Uncertain/Small
6. Affinity Mapping
7. Ordering method
8. Fibonacci sequence: Scoring scale

QUES: What are the metrics tracked by any project manager?
ANS: KPIs: Tracked by agile teams.
Rate of progress: Number of stories completed and accepted for release.
Remaining work: What is left in the backlog. (shown in story points)
Completion Data: Remaining stories
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Rate of progress
Likely costs remaining: Salary burn rate multiplied by weeks remaining

QUES: What are WIP Limits in Project management?
ANS: WIP limits or work in progress limits is a project management strategy to prevent any bottlenecks in the project’s progress. By setting a limit on the total workflow verified and facilitated by the team, it makes sure that the resources are not overburdened.

QUES: What Are JAD Sessions?
ANS: JAD stands for: Joint application design. You’ll need to satisfy a wide range of stakeholders during software improvement projects. While this is true for all projects, improvement initiatives can often provide unique challenges. How can you guarantee that every voice is heard? You should consider holding a joint application design, or JAD, session to address that issue. Let’s examine a JAD session’s operation and potential benefits for you. A JAD is a collaborative technique to collect requirements from a range of people and groups, first. It puts an emphasis on discovering everyone’s requirements and fostering a sense of ownership among your users. You are gathering all of the stakeholder groups together rather than scheduling time to meet with each one individually. When their needs collide, they can listen to one another and negotiate.

QUES: How can you help mitigate and resolve conflicts in your team?
ANS: Disagreements occur in all teams, its the way of life. In fact, by assisting each individual in understanding various points of view, conflict may be constructive and advantageous for teams. As an Agile coach or a Scrum master, you don’t need to mediate team disputes. You must empower the team to self organize towards a common goal.
Encourage the team to have more constructive interactions when disputes become stuck. Three good encounters should be the minimum target for every bad contact. The group will develop improved communication skills and mutual respect as a result of this.
Help your team identify the core issue. Sharing different perspectives is beneficial to arrive at the best product definition. Finally, assist the group in contrasting the current dispute with their shared goal. Show them that coming together for a greater cause is the most important thing for the company.

QUES: What is a Spike Story in Agile?
ANS: A spike is a user story for which the team cannot estimate the effort needed. It is because this user story needs more information in order to estimate how long it will take to complete.

QUES: The purpose of a Sprint is to produce a valuable and useful increment of a working product. True or False?
ANS: TRUE

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QUES: The Product Backlog is ordered by: (choose the best answer)
A. Least valuable items at the top to most valuable at the bottom.
B. Items are randomly arranged.
C. Size, where small items are at the top and large items are at the bottom.
D. Risk, where safer items are at the top, and riskier items are at the bottom.
E. Whatever is deemed most appropriate by the Product Owner.
ANS: E

QUES: In self-managing teams, the work is divided between individual team members. Each team member takes accountability for the progress of only their work. True Or False?
ANS: FALSE

QUES: Who writes acceptance criteria?
ANS: Product owner

QUES: In scrum, the ‘servant leader’ is the new name for the traditional role called ‘project manager’. True Or False?
ANS: FALSE

QUES: The scrum master is the manager of the Scrum team. True Or False?
ANS: FALSE, he is just a facilitator.

QUES: In a traditional approach, organizes and is manages the team members’ work, and their management style.
ANS: Project manager, command and control

QUES: What are the different kinds of frameworks that fall under the Agile and Lean type of methodologies that SCALE Agile?
ANS: For projects to be scalable, they have to meet three criteria. Availability, Performance, Reliability. Here are some Scaled Agile frameworks. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), NEXUS Scaled Agile, Large Scale Scrum (LESS), Scrum of Scrums, Dynamic Systems Development Method etc. Read more about the comparisons HERE.

QUES: In waterfall methodology, the duration of the activities, like development, testing, etc. are
a) Planned to be fixed irrespective of any calculation (time-boxed).
b) Predicted using some calculations based on ‘today’s weather.”
c) Never decided upfront
ANS: B

QUES: According to Empiricism, what is knowledge acquired through?
ANS: By experience.

QUES: How much work must the Developers in the Scrum team complete from the Product backlog item they select for a Sprint?
ANS: Enough so that each Product Backlog item they have selected for the Sprint meets the Definition of Done.

QUES: What is the typical size of the Scrum team?
ANS: 10 or fewer including the PO and the Scrum master.

QUES: Who creates the Definition of Done?
ANS: If it is not an organizational standard, the Scrum team must create a Definition of Done appropriate for the product.

QUES: When should a Developer on a Scrum Team be replaced?
ANS: As needed, wnile taking into account a short-term reduction in productivity.

QUES: During a Sprint, a Developer determines that the Scrum Team will not be able to complete the items in their forecast. Who should be present to review and adjust the Product Backlog items selected?
ANS: The Product Owner and the Developers

QUES: Who is responsible for managing the progress of a work during a Sprint?
ANS: The Developers

QUES: When does a Developer become accountable for the value Of a Product Backlog item selected for the Sprint?
ANS: Never. The entire Scrum Team is accountable for creating value every Sprint.

QUES: The most common n-tier architectural pattern for Software projects consists of which layers?
ANS: There are three layers of architecture, or three vertical slices.
The UI LAYER, LOGIC LAYER and the DB LAYER. Also known as the Presentation, Application and the Data layers.

QUES: The Scrum team must choose at least one high priority process improvement item, identified during the Sprint Retrospective, and place it in the Sprint Backlog. True Or False?
ANS: FALSE

QUES: It is required to use User Stories in Scrum. True Or False?
ANS: FALSE

QUES: How much work must be done to each Sprint Backlog item in a Sprint?
(choose the best answer)
A) Analyze. design. implement. test, document and approval.
B) All the work needed to deliver a ‘Done• increment.
C) All development tasks.
D) All the work that has been defined during Sprint Planning.
ANS: B

QUES: What happens if work is finished early in a Sprint?
ANS: It is not good, because the team might be under committing. And if there are no working agreements to take on more things, it is ok to just work on clearing the Tech Debt. Or try to do cross functional training, or who knows something might come up in testing in the current sprint.

QUES: What are the three things that Developers in Sprints are responsible for?
(choose the best three answers)
A) Create a plan the Sprint Backlog.
B) Sizing Product Backlog items.
C) Pulling Product backlog items for the Sprint.
D) Ensuring the Product backlog is ordered properly.
E) Reporting progress to the stakeholders.
F) Creating and adding User Stories to the Product Backlog.
ANS: A, B, C

QUES: What must the Product owner do to the product backlog before setting up a meeting with the Scrum master and the Dev team to refine the product backlog.
ANS: At the product backlog meeting, the Scrum team must estimate and refine the work items. But before that, the Product Owner must work on prioritizing the work items before bringing to the team.

QUES: When should a new Sprint be started?
1. As soon as an increment is done
2. When the Product Owner decides so
3. As soon as the timebox of the previous Sprint expires
4. Every month
ANS: 3

QUES: The length of the Sprint should be:
a. Short enough to keep the business risk acceptable to the Product Owner.
b. Short enough to be able to synchronize the development work with other business events.
c. No more than one calendar month.
d. All of the above.
ANS: D

QUES: Who is accountable for the Scrum team’s effectiveness?
ANS: The Scrum Master

QUES: When do Development team members take ownership of a Sprint backlog item?
ANS: This is a trick question. The answer is NEVER. All sprint backlog items are “owned” by the entire Dev team, even though each one may be done by an individual Dev team member.

QUES: The Sprint Review is mainly an inspect and adapt opportunity for which group?
ANS: The Scrum team and stakeholders

QUES: Who creates the work plan necessary to create an Increment?
ANS: The Developers

QUES: When many Scrum teams are working on the same product, should all of their increments be integrated every Sprint?
ANS: Yes, otherwise the PO and the Stakeholders may not be able to accurately inspect what is done.

QUES: Which of the Scrum ceremonies is essentially designed for the Developers?
ANS: The Daily Scrum

QUES: What is Extreme programming?
ANS: XP or Extreme programming is a type of Agile methodology that is known for embracing change in 5 essential ways, using Communication, simplicity, feedback, respect and courage.
It uses a technique called yesterday’s weather to give the right sized commitment to stakeholders. XP is a test driven development area where continue integration is planned iteratively as the product increments keep getting worked on.

QUES: Who creates the definition of done if it doesn’t exist?
ANS: The Scrum Team itself

QUES: Who is responsible to size the Product Backlog items?
ANS: The Developers

QUES: Who defines the Sprint goal?
ANS: The Scrum Team itself

QUES: During a sprint, when is new work or further decomposition of work added to the Sprint backlog?
ANS: Anytime, as soon as possible after they are identified.

QUES: What is the role of management in scrum?
ANS: Support the product owner management supports the product owner with insights and information into high value product and system capabilities. support the scrum master to cause organizational change that fosters empiricism, self-management, bottom-up intelligence and intelligent product delivery. Their role is to facilitate the Scrum team with insights and resources that help them improve.

QUES: Who can cancel a Sprint?
ANS: The Product Owner

QUES: Your project involves a commercial off-the-shelf system. How can you best reduce the risk associated with purchasing this new solution in the integration phase of your project?
A. Request for integration to be preinstalled.
B. Ask your vendor to perform integration.
C. Have your IT team perform integration.
D. Perform integration before the software is installed.
ANS: B

QUES: Who writes definition of done?
ANS: The entire scrum team writes the definition of done.

QUES: What is Value Stream mapping?
ANS: Value Stream Map is heavily used in Lean manufacturing project management. However, it can be used in non-manufacturing settings as well.
Value Stream map is a snapshot of how a product or a service is delivered to the customer. It begins at the true start, when a customer puts an order in, and all the processes that it has to follow in order to fulfil the task of delivering the goods to the customer.
Before beginning to get an idea of a value stream of your company, consider this starting question.
If a customer makes a phone call for an order, or request first service, where’s the first place does that happen in the company? Is it at customer service or any other department?
Let’s begin mapping. There are specific icons that are used for a quality value stream map. There are icons for Customers, suppliers, shipment trucks, inventory, manual processes etc. There is also what is known as a Kanban burst, which is to indicate opportunities of improvement. Remember, in a value stream map, information flows from right to left from the end user to the supplier and process flow is from left to right.

Value Stream Map © Wikipedia

QUES: Which two ways of creating Dev teams are consistent with Scrum’s values. Choose two.
A. Existing teams propose how they would like to go about organizing into the new structure.
B. Managers personally re-assign current subordinates to new teams.
C. Managers collaborate to assign individuals to specific teams.
D. Bring all the developers together and let them self-organize into Dev teams.
E. The Chief Product Owner determines the new team structures and assignments.
ANS: A and D

QUES: Why is the definition of done important to the product owner?
ANS: Because it creates transparency regarding the progress within the scrum team and it stabilizes the expected quality of the increment reviewed at the sprint review.

QUES: What can the Scrum team do when unplanned work shows up?
ANS: There are many ways to approach this.
1. So, the first step is to inform the Product owner and ask him to discuss the priority of the work that the Stakeholders are asking for.
2. Absorption: If the unplanned work is valuable or urgent and doesn’t endanger the sprint goal, then it can be quickly added to the sprint backlog. This is called easy absorption but only if the sprint goal is not compromised. Example, a bug has cropped or a regulatory requirement has been missed.
3. Buffer: It always helps to add a buffer to the timeline in terms of additional story point, like 10 extra story points to address these kinds of issues like tech debt and bug fixes etc. So, in this case we can add a virtual backlog item worth 10 points as the buffer.

QUES: Who should make sure everyone on the Dev team does his or her tasks for the Sprint?
ANS: The Dev team itself

QUES: What is the Product Backlog and what is DEEP in its management?
ANS: The product backlog is one of the three main Scrum Artifacts which consists of all the features, functions, requirements, enhancements, and fixes that needs to be developed for the product release.
Product Backlog items have the attributes of a description (Detailed appropriately), Story points (Estimated), order (Prioritized) and they are continuously to be added, removed and updated (Emergent) in the backlog to reflected to understanding of the backlog of the team in just-in-time and just-enough manner.

QUES: What is a sprint 0?
ANS: Sprint 0 happens when the team is new to scrum it usually takes place before the formal start of the project to create a skeleton of the project. In sprint 0 scrum master helps the team in getting good its infrastructure and getting required KT from SME.

QUES: Which Scrum value is affected by a lack of trust in the Scrum team?
A. Focus
B. Respect
C. Openness
D. Courage
E. Commitment
ANS: E

QUES: An organization has decided to adopt a scrum but management wants to change the terminology to fit with terminology already used. What will likely to happen if this is done?
ANS: Without a new vocabulary as a reminder of the change very little change may actually happen. The organization may not understand what has changed with scrum and benefits of scrum may be lost management may feel less anxious.

QUES: For the purpose of transperancy, when does Scrum say a new increment of working software must be available?
A. After the user acceptance testing
B. Before the release Sprint
C. Every 3 Sprints
D. At the end of every Sprint
E. When the Product Owner asks to create one.
ANS: D

QUES: What is time box for a sprint PLANNING meeting?
ANS: Eight hours or less for one month sprint
4 hours if it is a 2 week sprint

QUES: How do you estimate a story point?
ANS: A story point estimation is calculated by taking into consideration the development effort plus testing effort plus resolving dependencies and other factors that would require to complete a story.

QUES: What is the Scrum Methodology?
ANS: The scrum methodology is that of Empiricism. Empiricism is that knowledge comes from actual real experience, and making decisions based on what is observed. -> It stands for transparency, inspection and adaptation.

QUES: Which statement best describes a Product Owner’s responsibility? (Choose the best answer)
A. Managing the project and ensuring that the work meets the commitments to the
stakeholders.
B. Optimizing tne value of tne work tne Scrum Team does.
C. Keep stakeholders from distracting the Developers.
D. Directing the Developers.
ANS: B

QUES: Who should know the most about the progress toward a business Objective or a release, and be able to explain the alternatives most clearly? The PO or the Scrum Master?
ANS: The Product Owner

QUES: When does a Developer become the sole owner Of an item on the Sprint Backlog?
ANS: This is a trick question. The Answer is Never. All Sprint Backlog items are “owned” by the Developers on the Scrum Team.

QUES: What is the function or purpose Of Management in Scrum?
ANS: To support the Product Owner witn insights and information into nigh value product and system capabilities. Support the Scrum Master to encourage organizational change that fosters empiricism, self-management, bottom-up intelligence, and intelligent product delivery.

QUES: When many Scrum Teams are working on a single product, how can they manage the Defintion of Done?
ANS: All Scrum teams must have a definition of done that makes their combined increment, valuable and useful.

QUES: What are the 5 Scrum Events or Ceremonies?
ANS: The Sprint itself, Sprint Planning, Standup Or Daily Scrum, Showcase Or Review, Retrospective. These are the formal opportunities for the team to INSPECT and ADAPT.

QUES: What is time box for a sprint REVIEW meeting?
ANS: Eight hours or less for one month sprint
4 hours if it is a 2 week sprint

QUES: What does the Scrum framework consist of?
ANS: The scrum framework consists of the Scrum teams, their roles, events, artifacts and the rules associated with the teams.

QUES: What are the three artifacts of scrum?
ANS: Product backlog, sprint backlog and product increment document.

QUES: Which project management frameworks are most suitable for complex projects in a fast-changing environment?
A. PRINCE2 or Waterfall
B. Scrum or Kanban
C. Waterfall or Scrum
D. Kanban or PRINCE2
ANS: B

QUES: What are the different steps involved in building a COTS project, Commercial Off the Shelf Project?
ANS: 1. Requirements
2. Evaluation and selection using RFPs
3. Finalization of terms
4. Implementation
5. Maintenance and upgrades
6. License maintenance

QUES: What is the INVEST criteria for good user stories?
ANS: A good user story should be:
“I” ndependent (of all others)
“N” egotiable (not a specific contract for features)
“V” aluable (or vertical)
“E” stimable (to a good approximation)
“S” mall (so as to fit within an iteration)
“T” estable (in principle, even if there isn’t a test for it yet)

QUES: What is a good process to keep multiple teams in sync?
ANS: Scrum of Scrums

QUES: What factors will increase complexity? Select all that apply.
a) Larger number of people on the project
b) Longer duration of the project
c) Batching of a large number of features into one big release
ANS: A, B, C

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NOTE: This is a living document, and I will keep adding questions and answers occasionally, so please keep checking this space.

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