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Introduction
Most businesses have recently adopted a particular management style, Agile management. This collaborative methodology employs short development cycles known as sprints. The main objective of Agile management is to implement flexibility and continuous improvement that results in a better end product. This style of management puts more emphasis on team collaboration rather than hierarchical leadership.
Every member of an Agile team plays an important role and interviewers always hire candidates with rich domain knowledge and ample experience. So, it is always best to be prepared from all fronts possible for an Agile interview. If you want to crack the Agile interview questions, then you have come to the right place. Here is a list of top Agile interview questions and answers to help you confirm your position in an Agile company.
Important Agile Interview Questions for Securing A Job
Basic level Agile interview questions
What is Agile?
In the simplest terms, Agile is a methodology that enables us to change and manage IT development teams and projects or products.
Agile primarily focuses on iterative development or building the software in pieces. Agile methodology mainly focuses on delivering customer requirements through cross-functional and self-organising teams. This process allows the team to receive regular feedback and take corrective measures as required.
What are the powerful Agile metrics?
Some of the examples of powerful Agile metrics include:
- Agile velocity
- Agile vorticity
- Control chart
- Work category allocation
- Cumulative flow diagram
- Recidivism
- Deliver business value
- Story point completion ratio
- Code coverage
How is Agile methodology unique from the traditional waterfall method?
| Agile Methodology | Waterfall Technique |
| All project development phases are repeated at every iteration | Incorporates a step-wise approach to project management |
| Changes are acceptable at every phase of the project | Requirements should be finalised before initiating the project |
| Greater visibility | Poor visibility |
| Testing is done concurrently with the development phase | The testing phase comes after the build phase |
| Complete transparency | Lack of transparency |
What types of projects are suitable for Agile methodology?
There are certain projects where Agile works the best.
For example:
- When you are working on complex and bigger projects
- Unclear requirements
- Need to launch the product in the market on an urgent basis
- When clients do not have a fixed timeline or budget
- Regular changes throughout the development phase
- When there is no need to develop fully functional software at a time
When is it not suitable to use Agile methodology?
There are certain situations where it is not suitable to use Agile methodology. Therefore before implementing Agile, you need to be clear with the following aspects:
- Are the requirements clear and flexible?
- Is there any time constraint?
- Is the team skilled enough?
- Are customers available?
What is the Agile Manifesto?
Agile manifesto is a document that outlines 4 values and 12 principles of Agile methodology. It helps to differentiate between the Agile methodology and the traditional waterfall technique.
Mention four values of Agile software development as stated in the Agile Manifesto.
- Individuals and interaction over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change by following a plan
State 12 principles of Agile project management as stated in the Agile manifesto.
- Customer Satisfaction – Our highest priority is to satisfy the customers through early and continuous software delivery.
- Welcome Changes – Welcome changes even late in the development phase.
- Continuous feedback – It is essential to keep receiving feedback from your clients.
- Good Teamwork – Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project
- Focus on active processes
- Face-to-face communication – Information can be relayed to or within a development team most efficiently and effectively through face-to-face conversation.
- Motivate the people – Engage motivated people and create your projects based on motivated people. Provide them with the setting and the right encouragement and watch them deliver the results.
- Sustainable Development – The sponsors, developers and users must be able to maintain the constant rate of provision indefinitely in order to realize on the intended objectives.
- Technical Excellence – Focus on technical design also promotes agility when it is constantly maintained.
- Be simple
- Self-organised – The best architectures, requirements and designs are aggregated from self-organising teams.
- Optimise Strategies – Whenever a team has time to think about it, they should think about how they can work more efficiently, then calibrate and fine-tune their assigned tasks and plans.
What is a sprint burnt-up chart?
A sprint burnt-up chart gives a look at what has been accomplished during a specific sprint cycle as progress is made toward the sprint objectives. It updates one on the progress of the team and can easily pinpoint where the team might be stuck.
What are the challenges that you come across in the Agile Process?
Common challenges include:
- Resistance to Change: People in teams or stakeholders who are working under the classical systems may experience a disruption under Agile.
- Poor Training: One of the main challenges of implementing Agile is the problem of ignorance of Agile principles.
- Unclear Roles: Role conflict and ambiguity result in high costs or inefficiencies.
- Inconsistent Stakeholder Engagement: They include delays in the kind of feedback they provide which compromises the loop nature of the process.
- Tool Overload: One negative is there’s an excess of tools instead of the Agile principles which leads to confusion.
Explain Pair Programming and its benefits.
Pair Programming is a software development that is done by two people working together in line with the same task.
Roles:
- Driver: Writes the code.
- Navigator: This page briefly describes the code in real-time and provides amendments as required.
Benefits:
- Enhanced code quality: Errors are caught early.
- Knowledge sharing: Team members can build their knowledge from that of their colleagues.
Explain velocity.
Velocity refers to the average amount of work an Agile team completes during a sprint, which measures in either story points, user stories, or engine hours. It measures the rate at which a given amount of problem statements are turned into tested software. It doesn’t measure effectiveness, efficiency, competitiveness or anything else.
Is Scrum an Agile framework? List a few different types of Agile methodologies.
Yes, Scrum is an Agile framework that can be used to understand and then organize iterative work.
Types of Agile Methodologies:
- Scrum
- Kanban
- Extreme Programming (XP)
- Lean Software Development
- Crystal
- Feature Driven Development (FDD)
Explain the principles of Agile testing.
Agile testing focuses on feedback regularly and on the integration of testing with the development teams and customers.
Principles:
- It starts at a very early stage of product development and continues until the later stage as well.
- Interactivity is important as well as integrative processes.
- Testing incorporates alterations into its program due to changed requirements.
- The customer always has an influence when it comes to testing needs and expectations.
Intermediate-level Agile Interview Questions
Briefly explain ‘zero sprint’.
Zero sprint refers to the initial developmental stage of an Agile framework other than the first sprint.
Purpose:
- Create or strengthen the organisational infrastructure and application tools.
- Create the product backlog.
- Outline goals and priorities.
List some of the important Agile tools.
Key Agile tools include:
- JIRA: Responsible for Sprints and keeping abreast with the progress of development.
- Trello: Builds work visualizations using Kanban boards.
- Azure DevOps: Connects continuous integration and continuous delivery with project management.
- Rally: Music to portfolio management, and explicitly excludes innovative projects.
- Slack: Enhances team communication.
What are the qualities of a skilled Agile tester?
Key qualities include:
- Adaptability: Scrum testers cannot dislike change since they do Scrum testing.
- Collaboration: There must be an efficient flow of information with developers and stakeholders.
- Analytical Skills: Solving problems at least on the same level as counterparts within and across organizations.
- Technical Knowledge: In addition, existing awareness of automation and Agile tools.
How is Agile testing methodology different from other methodologies?
Traditional Testing: It is usually performed after the development has been completed.
Agile Testing: Recurring, cyclical and cannot be conducted independently of the development phase.
Key Differences:
Based on the requirement changes, agile testing is malleable.
Is deliberately teamwork-oriented throughout the Product Development lifecycle.
State the differences between iterative and incremental development.
| Features | Iterative Development | Incremental development |
| Definition | Revisits and improves the system. | Builds usable parts. |
| Goal | Deliver complete systems over time. | Deliver functionality progressively. |
| Focus | Refinement | Delivery |
What is a user story? What is the structure to be followed while choosing a user story? Explain with an example.
A user story is a brief and uncomplicated account of a feature from the viewpoint of the user of the system. Thus, it helps the team to comprehend the user’s necessity and demand. The standard structure is:
As a [type of user], I want [a specific goal] so that [reason/benefit].
Example:
To guarantee that a customer receives her/his order details, the user needs to receive order confirmation via email.
User stories should incorporate the following characteristics to be clear; they should be independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small and testable.
What is Scrum? How is it different from Agile?
Scrum as a part of the Agile method is for implementing and completing large-scale projects. It recognizes work done in a series of small cycles known as sprints.
Agile is a framework that consists of some frameworks of work such as Scrum, Kanban, and XP. Whereas, Agile has all the values and principles more focused, Scrum has defined roles, artefacts & events.
What are the benefits of implementing Scrum?
- Increased efficiency and enhanced clarity in inter-group, as well as inter-organizational, communication.
- High speed of value delivery to customers.
- Ability to respond to change.
- The ability to work in a more efficient team.
- Breaking the chain of waste through ongoing reflection.
What are the different roles in Scrum?
- Product Owner: Controls the Product Backlog and determines which of them needs to be implemented first.
- Scrum Master: It makes sure that all the working team practices scrum and eliminates any obstacles making their way.
- Development Team: Gets done during the sprint to increase the product increment.
What are the responsibilities of a Scrum Master?
- Helping the Scrum team how to conduct such sessions as daily meetings and retrospectives.
- Clearing all barriers to the team’s process of operation.
- Educating the team about Agile and how its processes would work on a day-to-day basis.
- Managing so that there is positive health between team members.
- Minimizing distractions from outside the team.
Being a Scrum Master, how will you identify your area of improvement?
- As part of the retrospectives get feedback from the team.
- Evaluate the output of a sprint such as velocity as well as burndown charts.
- Turn to quality tutorial assistance in the form of specialists with Agile expertise.
- Closely monitor and adjust your effective multiparty communication and facilitation approach according to the team’s requirements.
Define Scrum sprint. What is the length or the ideal duration of a Scrum sprint?
The daily stand-up meeting ensures team alignment by answering three key questions:
What was done yesterday?
What will you work on today?
Are there any impediments?
They foster transparency and accountability and ensure that collaboration is enhanced at all times.
What is Scrumban?
A Scrum sprint is a time frame of 1-4 weeks during which the Scrum team collaborates to produce a potentially releasable Scrum increment. It usually varies depending on the project and the teams’ experience but may range up to 2 weeks.
What is Test-driven development?
In Test-Driven Development, a tester develops the test cases before code implementation in software development. It makes sure that the code is compliant and boats efficiency through early tests as compared to when developers write tests after delivering the code.
Define re-factoring. What are its benefits?
The process of restructuring the code or changing the application’s code altering the structure but not behaviour is known as re-factoring. Benefits include:
- Reduced technical debt.
- Improved performance.
- Easier code maintenance.
Define Spike.
A spike in Agile is a time-boxed activity used to investigate a specific problem or a technical concern to make more adequate decisions.
Advanced-level Agile Interview Questions
What is a Tracer Bullet?
A tracer bullet is a slim, full-length version of a feature used to check the practicality and layout of a system. It has the advantage of checking assumptions at the start of development.
Briefly explain the ‘Definition of Ready’ and ‘Definition of Done’.
Definition of Ready (DoR): There are certain criteria that a user story has to satisfy before it’s picked up for a sprint.
Definition of Done (DoD): Checkpoints of when a task is considered finished from Establishing, Developing, Testing and Documentation.
When can you use the waterfall model over Scrum?
The Waterfall model is well suited for projects that can have no change requirement, especially when the phases are quite distinct and similar to construction or manufacturing.
Why does Scrum encourage automated testing?
Automated testing assists in providing feedback quickly, improves quality, and makes it possible to release the codes frequently without requiring setting up a new testing environment.
Explain the features of cross-functional teams.
- Diverse Skill Set:
Self-organising teams can comprise people with different experiences in development, testing, design as well as business analysis. It is important to point out that the presence of diversely skilled specialists guarantees the team will be able to address all possible and necessary aspects of a project.
- Enhanced Collaboration:
Integration of the members of a team ensures that there is good communication within the team, quicker decision making and good problem-solving skills.
- Focus on Delivering Value:
This team addresses the creation of a value proposition for the customer in each iteration, which leads to a shorter time to market.
- Adaptability:
Multifunctional teams can respond more effectively to fluctuating goals or expectations and retain the Agile concept of flexibility
What is fail fast approach in Agile? What are its pros and cons?
The fail-fast strategy focuses its attention on issues in question at the early stages of development.
Pros of the Fail-Fast Approach:
- Cost Efficiency:
This is important because using the wrong problem-solving strategies leads to the use of time and resources inappropriately.
- Faster Innovation:
Rapid prototyping and post-failure learning promotes creativity and innovation.
Cons of the Fail-Fast Approach:
- High Initial Costs:
This is mainly because rapid prototyping and testing may involve various resources which some of these teams may not afford to buy.
- Psychological Stress:
This makes them feel pressed and if often done it can lead to the burning out of teams involved in iterations and failures
Explain the ‘Planning Poker’ technique.
Planning Poker is one of the estimation techniques where a card is used to assign a particular story point to the backlog item. It maintains the agreement and consistent forecasts.
Share your experience as an Agile team member or Scrum master. What were your responsibilities?
It is one of the most asked Interview questions for Agile roles. For this question, you will need to highlight project details wherein you have worked as a Scrum Master or a team member defining your roles and responsibilities clearly.
This is one of the tricky Agile interview questions wherein you have to describe your self-organising and self-motivational capability.
What was the length of the sprint/ iteration you worked on?
This question is mainly asked to analyze your previous working environment. It may also be accompanied by a follow-up question like was this duration of sprint fixed in the initial phase of the project?
Do you hold any Agile certifications?
Agile certifications are popular certifications that an organisation expects its candidates to hold. Some of the popular certifications are:
- Agility in HR (ICP-AHR)
- Agility in Marketing (ICP-MKG)
- Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
- Leading SAFe, and many more
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Conclusion
The way to crack Agile interview questions is by becoming well acquainted with the fundamentals, techniques, and best practices of Agile methodologies. Thus, the answers to frequently asked questions, including those related to Agile principles, testing approaches, and Scrum, will help candidates look like experts ready to enhance Agile teams.
When thinking about these Agile interview questions and modifying the answers according to the experience, it will be easier to prepare for the interviews. Remember your Agile career is not a test of technical prowess but proving that you are a team player, and have an appetite to change for the better.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q. What are the common Agile interview questions for beginners?
Ans. Basic Agile interview questions include:
What is Agile?
What makes Agile different from the Waterfall model?
Which values and principles the Agile Manifesto presupposes and promotes?
Q. How to explain the Agile process in an interview?
Ans. Agile is an unconventional and integrated approach to software development that embraces customer involvement and is more adaptive. This breaks work up into segments known as sprints, which can be improved upon one at a time.
That is why agility encourages communication, delivery of a valuable product as soon as possible, and reactivity to alterations for the maximum benefit of the customer.
Q. What are some Agile interview questions for testers?
Ans. Some Agile interview questions for testers are:
- What is the responsibility of a tester in an Agile development environment?
- What measures would you take in terms of continuity integration/continuous deployment to guarantee quality?
- Exploratory testing is the process of testing while exploring the problem space and designing the solution to the problem.
- How does exploratory testing fit in Agile?
Q. What are some Agile interview questions for business analysts?
Ans. Some Agile interview questions for business analysts are:
- How do you prioritize the product backlog in Agile?
- Explain how you collect requirements in an Agile team.
- How do you engage your stakeholders?
Q. What is the best way to explain Agile?
Ans. Agile is a customer-oriented methodology for software development that focuses on the values of flexibility, cooperation and incremental process. It concentrates on deploying tiny workable increments of a product in acceptable timelines and swiftly modifying from the feedback.
