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Questions Courses
1. Tell me about yourself
2. What is the Scrum framework, and why is it used?
3. Mention some of the cases where Scrum is not suggested
4. Explain the difference between incremental and iterative development.
5. How does your day start as a Scrum Master?
6. What is DOD?
7. How do you handle technical debt?
8. What is user story? What criteria need to say that it is a good user story?
9. What is Sprint 0 and Spike?
10. What is Empirical Process Control in Scrum?
11. What steps do you take to build trust within your team?
12. What are the five steps of Risk Management?
13. How do you motivate a team that is consistently underperforming?
14. What is CI/CD pipeline?
15. What does the Scrum Master do to enhance the productivity of the development team?
16. What is refactoring?
17. How would you manage scope creep during a sprint?
18. How is a Scrum Master a servant leader?
19. What is the distinction between epics, stories, and tasks?
20. What strategies do you use to remove impediments for your team?
21. How do you motivate a team that is consistently underperforming?
22. During the retrospective few of the team members are not speaking and adding the points. What is your take on this to make them with active participation?
23. Acceptance criteria How would you handle a situation where a team consistently fails to meet its Sprint commitments?
24. As a Scrum Master, How Are You Going to Handle Daily Scrum Meetings with Remote Teams?
25. Let’s Say You Have Received a Story on the Last Day of the Sprint and You Find That There Are Defects in the Story. Will You Mark It as “done”?
26. Should velocity be increased for optimum productivity?
27. What techniques do you use for team building?
28. What techniques do you use for conflict resolution in Scrum?
29. JQL 10 commonly asked queries
30. How do you ensure visibility and transparency using JIRA?
Scrum Master Interview Questions
Are you preparing for a Scrum Master interview? Here are essential questions to help you succeed in your interview and demonstrate your mastery of Scrum.
Top Scrum Master Interview Topics
1. Tell me about yourself
Hi, Myself is “mention your name.” I have a total of 7 years of IT experience. I have started my career as a QA and based on my management skills organization moved me into the scrum master role. From the past 3.5 years, I am purely working as a Scrum Master and worked on 3 projects handling 2 teams (each of 10 members, excluding Product Owner and Scrum Master).
- I have closely worked with the Product Owner to help prioritize the Product Backlog using prioritization techniques.
- I facilitate all Scrum ceremonies including Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-ups, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective, as well as Backlog Refinement which, while not an official Scrum ceremony, is crucial for smooth delivery.
- Whenever team members face impediments or blockers, I step in as the Scrum Master to help resolve them and keep the team on track to meet the Sprint Goal.
- I ensure that Scrum rules and practices are consistently followed by the team.
- I act as a Servant Leader, serving as a bridge between the Product Owner and the development team.
- I closely monitor team progress at the end of each Sprint to ensure alignment with project goals.
- I create and submit reports to management detailing Sprint completion and team performance.
- As a Scrum Master, I ensure my team is cross-functional and self-organized to maximize productivity.
- I motivate the team by recognizing their performance and providing awards such as KUDOS.
- I am responsible for ensuring transparency of the team’s progress to all stakeholders.
- I protect team members from external distractions and interruptions to maintain focus.
- My role also involves managing and maintaining the product lifecycle from requirements gathering to the maintenance phase.
- I encourage continuous improvement to foster better collaboration and deliver high-quality products.
2. What is the Scrum framework, and why is it used?
Scrum is a lightweight framework where people, teams, organizations used to generate the values through adapting the solutions for complex problems.
- Scrum is used to ensure faster delivery with regular iterations and improves team collaboration and transparency.
- Scrum adapts quickly to changing requirements and enhances customer satisfaction through continuous feedback.
3. Mention some of the cases where Scrum is not suggested
Certain situations where it is not suggested to use scrum:
- When people have had bad experiences using Scrum previously.
- When an organization is not ready to adopt Agile values and practices.
- When you are looking for a one-stop solution for all problems.
- When the requirements are not allowed to evolve.
4. Explain the difference between incremental and iterative development.
- Incremental development focuses on building a product in stages, where each increment is a fully functional and usable part of the final product.
- Iterative development focuses on building a working product early and then repeatedly refining it based on feedback.
- In essence, incremental development delivers complete, independent chunks, while iterative development delivers a complete, refined product through repeated cycles.
5. How does your day start as a Scrum Master?
As a Scrum Master,
- I start by checking emails, Slack, and other communication platforms for any urgent updates, follow-ups from the Product Owner, or blockers reported by team members.
- I review the agenda for the Daily Scrum, gather information about the previous days progress, and prepare for addressing any concerns or questions that may arise.
- I facilitate the Daily Scrum, ensuring it stays within the 15-minute timebox and focuses on the key elements: what was done yesterday, what is being done today, and what roadblocks are being encountered.
- After the Daily Scrum, I engage with team members to address any identified impediments, potentially involving coaching, consulting, or problem-solving.
- Based on the insights from the Daily Scrum and communication reviews, I plan my day, allocating time for coaching, facilitating, and supporting the team.
- I may have scheduled one-on-one coaching conversations with team members, focusing on skill development, personal growth, and addressing specific challenges.
- I may have meetings with the Product Owner, leadership, or other stakeholders to discuss the teams progress, goals, or any relevant issues.
- Throughout the day, I reflect on my actions and the teams progress, identifying opportunities for improvement and learning from both successes and challenges.
- I may also spend time preparing for upcoming Scrum events or training sessions.
6. What is DOD?
Definition of Done (DoD) is a checklist of items that need to be completed before declaring to declare a project or task as ‘Done.’ The checklist includes written codes, comments on coding, unit tests, integration testing, design documents, and release notes.
- No critical defects will be accepted.
- Acceptance criteria must be met.
- Tests against the acceptance criteria should be passed.
- The code must be unit tested.
- Code coverage must be at least 80%.
- Code is merged whether with the correct branch or not.
- Review comments have been addressed.
- User documentation must be complete.
- Approved by the Product Owner.
- Peer review has been completed successfully.
- Non-functional requirements should be captured.
- Code has been reviewed by the testers.
7. How do you handle technical debt?
- Technical debt is often caused when an ad hoc requirement is introduced mid-sprint, and the Product Owner forcibly prioritizes it.
- When the team is overloaded beyond its capacity, it rushes to complete the work, which may lead to code being committed with errors and technical debt.
- As a Scrum Master, I work to reduce this by involving stakeholders during the sprint planning call or by deprioritizing an equivalent work item and moving it to the backlog.
- We also ensure that any technical debt is logged into the Product Backlog.
- Based on its priority, we later pull technical debt items into the Sprint Backlog for resolution.
8. What is user story? What criteria need to say that it is a good user story?
It is a small piece of the requirement which is having proper description and Acceptance criteria and same has explained by the Product owner from the user’s point of view.
- Based on the INVEST criteria, we can say that it is a good user story.
- I – Independent: The story should be self-contained, without dependencies.
- N – Negotiable: It should be flexible for discussion and refinement.
- V – Valuable: It must deliver clear value to the user or business.
- E – Estimable: The team should be able to estimate its effort.
- S – Small: It should be small enough to complete within a Sprint.
- T – Testable: It should have clear acceptance criteria to validate completion.
9. What is Sprint 0 and Spike?
Sprint Zero: It is used to describe pre-sprint operations. It is used to create a rough skeleton of the product backlog.
- Key Objectives of Sprint 0 include: Planning and Preparation, Environment Setup, Product Backlog Creation, Team Organization, and Research and Exploration.
- The Product Manager and administration must be transparent during the Sprint 0 process.
- They must evaluate whether the team needs any additional training to ensure the projects success.
- A Spike is created when a user story or task cannot be estimated well enough until the team performs a time-boxed investigation.
- The output of a Spike is an estimate for the original user story, allowing the sprint to move forward with clarity.
- The purpose of a Spike is to reduce the risks of the technical approach, gain knowledge, better understand requirements, and improve solution reliability.
10. What is Empirical Process Control in Scrum?
Empirical process control is a core principle of Scrum that helps teams improve their product development and management practices. It is a way of managing work based on experience and observation, rather than detailed planning and defined processes.
- Empirical process control works with the help of three main pillars: Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation.
11. What steps do you take to build trust within your team?
To build trust in my team I encourage Open communication about each team member’s strengths & Concerns.
- Ensures collaboration and transparency within the team throughout the project.
- Regularly acknowledges team members contributions, celebrates milestones, and shows vulnerability while maintaining credibility.
12. What are the five steps of Risk Management?
The 5 phases of risk management are as follows-
- Risk identification: The primary step is to identify the organizations risks in its routine operating environment, including regulation, environmental, legal, and market risks.
- Risk analysis: After identifying risks, it is critical to evaluate the potential damage they can cause. It is important to study the association between the risk and the intrinsic components. Identifying the danger and its effect on business operations is mandatory.
- Risk in order of severity: Risks should be ranked from high to low, as risks that are ranked can be more easily neutralized. Risk management solutions cater to these risks accordingly.
- Solving the risk: A risk remains a threat until it is solved and eliminated. Risk specialists are consulted to eliminate the risk, often requiring regular meetings with concerned stakeholders until the threat is mitigated.
- Risk review: The risk is reviewed to ensure that it has been completely removed and that the solution is effective.
13. How do you motivate a team that is consistently underperforming?
As a Scrum master First, I will try to know their pain points by scheduling a call, If needed one on one.so that as a SM I can help /Support the team members to perform well from the next sprints.
- Are they unclear with the requirements and Sprint Goal?
- Do they need more technical knowledge?
- Are we not doing the planning properly?
- I will boost my team even for small achievements, so the team members stay motivated and develop a positive mindset for future sprints.
14. What is CI/CD pipeline?
A Continuous Integration (CI)/Continuous Deployment (CD) pipeline is a series of automated steps that help software development teams streamline the process of creating, testing, and deploying applications
15. What does the Scrum Master do to enhance the productivity of the development team?
The Scrum Master facilitates their decisions and eliminates hurdles of the development. Take note, the Scrum Master does not manage the development team as they are responsible for their own management. The Scrum Master shields them from extrinsic troubles.
- Make sure the teams with cross functionality working, no conflicts, encourage open discussion, by helping in removing the Impediments of the development.
16. What is refactoring?
Refactoring is the process of improving the internal structure of existing code without changing its external behavior. The goal is to make the code cleaner, more efficient, and easier to understand or maintain. Why Refactor?
- Improve readability.
- Reduce complexity.
- Make it easier to add new features.
- Eliminate code duplication.
- Fix hidden bugs or design flaws.
17. How would you manage scope creep during a sprint?
By Involving the stakeholders to avoid last minute surprises.
- If the client is not participating in the project and not involved in its progress, they might come with changes after the project has begun, which leads to scope creep.
- Scope creep can be managed through transparency and effective communication with stakeholders.
18. How is a Scrum Master a servant leader?
Yes, a Scrum Master is a servant leader because their role is to support and facilitate their team members:
- Coach: Scrum Masters coach team members on Agile and Scrum best practices and help them grow and improve.
- Remove impediments: Scrum Masters remove obstacles that are blocking the teams progress.
- Create a safe environment: Scrum Masters create a psychologically safe environment for the team, allowing them to feel more autonomous and self-organized.
- Lead by example: Scrum Masters lead by example, demonstrating adherence to Scrum values.
- Respect rights: Scrum Masters respect the rights of developers to self-manage.
- Provide clarity: Scrum Masters provide clarity to the team about what is expected of them.
- Ensure ethics: Scrum Masters guide the team to deliver the product at the expected value and standard.
19. What is the distinction between epics, stories, and tasks?
In project management, epics, stories, and tasks are different in the following ways:
- Epics: The highest-level goal of a project, epics are large items that are broken down into smaller parts. They are often written in a user story format and are used to provide context and direction for planning the development process. Epics are usually developed by the customer or product owner.
- EPIC is a high-level requirement given by the client/customer, or it is a description of the clients needs with less functional detail.
- Stories: Stories are used to plan big projects or to-dos that are part of multiple sprints. They provide further detail on what each team member needs to do.
- A User Story (US) is a requirement explained by the Product Owner to developers from the user’s perspective, allowing developers to understand what needs to be done.
- Tasks: Tasks are single to-dos that are assigned to one employee and planned in a specific sprint. They are usually defined by the people doing the work, such as developers or QA. Tasks are often part of a story and cross-linked.
- A Task focuses on how something should be done and also defines how functionalities should be implemented.
20. What strategies do you use to remove impediments for your team?
- Identify & Prioritize: Regularly inspect blockers and impediments through Daily Scrum and Sprint Retrospectives.
- Empowering the team: Encourage self-organization and problem-solving within the team.
- Protecting the team: Safeguard the team from external distractions and interruptions.
- Transparency: Ensure early communication with stakeholders about impediments if they go beyond the teams control.
21. How do you motivate a team that is consistently underperforming?
As a SM First, I will try to know their pain points by scheduling a call, If needed one on one.so that as a SM I can help /Support the team members to perform well from the next sprints.
- Are they unclear with the requirements and Sprint Goal?
- Do they need more technical knowledge?
- Are we not doing the planning properly?
- I will boost my team even for small achievements, so the team members stay motivated and develop a positive mindset for future sprints.
22. During the retrospective few of the team members are not speaking and adding the points. What is your take on this to make them with active participation?
- Firstly, I conduct my retrospective in a way that avoids directly asking the questions: What went well and what didnt?
- As a Scrum Master, I have introduced an ice-breaking session, where team members share emojis reflecting their mood during the past iteration. The emojis can represent anything from happy, chill, angry, anxiety, to mouth locked, creating a friendly and open environment for the team.
- As a Scrum Master, I coach team members who are less vocal in retrospectives by having one-on-one discussions with them.
- I remind the team by sharing the retrospective board with them in the middle of the sprint, encouraging everyone to add their points, ensuring that everyone has a chance to speak and share their pain points.
23. Acceptance criteria How would you handle a situation where a team consistently fails to meet its Sprint commitments?
As a SM I will bring this point to discuss in the Retrospective by showing the Sprint End report.
- I will check with the team on the following points:
- Are you not clear on our sprint goal?
- Are we not doing the estimation correctly?
- Are you not clear on our requirements for the sprint?
- Are the dependency tickets not closed?
- Are we lacking any technical knowledge?
- Are we not clear with the Scrum process?
- Based on the outcome of the call, we will work together on prioritizing action items to ensure we don’t repeat these issues in the next upcoming sprints.
24. As a Scrum Master, How Are You Going to Handle Daily Scrum Meetings with Remote Teams?
As a Scrum Master handling remote teams, I would make the Daily Scrum:
- Consistent: Fix the same time every day, considering different time zones.
- Visual: Use tools like JIRA Board, Miro, or virtual Kanban boards for better visibility.
- Engaging: Encourage everyone to turn on their cameras to feel more connected.
- Time-boxed: Strictly keep it to 15 minutes.
- Supportive: If someone has blockers, I take it offline after the meeting to solve them quickly.
25. Let’s Say You Have Received a Story on the Last Day of the Sprint and You Find That There Are Defects in the Story. Will You Mark It as “done”?
Usually, a user story is marked done when the following criteria are met:
- The development process is complete.
- QA is complete.
- Acceptance criteria are met.
- When the product is eligible to ship into production
- When a user story has defects, we can mark it as partially done and move it to the next sprint.
26. Should velocity be increased for optimum productivity?
No, velocity should not be increased for optimum productivity. Velocity matters but it does not equal to productivity. Ideally, the higher a teams velocity, the more software functionality they are delivering, and the more value is created for customers. Sprint velocity can be used in sprint project management to evaluate and estimate team productivity.
27. What techniques do you use for team building?
Techniques include team outings, workshops, icebreaker activities, and promoting open communication to build trust and collaboration.
28. What techniques do you use for conflict resolution in Scrum?
Techniques include Encourage Self-Resolution First, active listening by having 1 on 1 call, unbiased facilitation, mediation, focusing on common goals, and fostering a collaborative environment.
29. JQL 10 commonly asked queries
- How do you find issues in the current sprint using JQL?
- JQL: sprint in openSprints() AND project = "YourProject"
- How can you identify unassigned or unplanned stories?
- JQL: issuetype = Story AND sprint is EMPTY AND project = "YourProject"
- Find all bugs created in the last 7 days
- JQL: issuetype = Bug AND created >= -7d
- Find user stories without story points
- JQL: issuetype = Story AND "Story Points" IS EMPTY
- How do you find overdue tasks?
- JQL: duedate < now() AND resolution = Unresolved
- How do you see all bugs raised in the current sprint?
- JQL: issuetype = Bug AND sprint in openSprints() AND project = "YourProject"
- To find issues that have been in "In Progress" status for more than 5 days, use this:
- JQL: status = "In Progress" AND status changed to "In Progress" BEFORE -5d
- Find all Epics that are not closed or done:
- JQL: issuetype = Epic AND status not in (Done, Closed)
- Find all Epics that have unfinished child issues (stories, tasks):
- JQL: issuetype = Epic AND issue in childIssuesOf("Epic Name")
- Find Completed Story Points in an Epic
- JQL Steps: Completed child issues: "Epic Link" = EPIC-123 AND status in (Done, Closed)
- Visible Story Points: Add "Story Points" column in search results
- Total Story Points: Manually sum or export to Excel
30. How do you ensure visibility and transparency using JIRA?
- Regularly update the board.
- Make sure statuses are clear.
- Encourage team ownership for updating their own tasks.
- Use dashboards and reports for team and stakeholder visibility.
🎓 Get 100 Scrum Questions & Answers for just ₹499/-
Website Offer: ₹499/- Only – Contact us on WhatsApp now.
