Agile Interview Question Part 2

What does the term increment mean?

When the sprint is finished by the team it is usually meant that all the tasks that they have planned have been completed. The term increment refers to the sum of all the backlog product items that were completed in a sprint. The new increment value will have the value of the last sprint value.

What do you mean by planning poker or scrum poker technique?

The technique which is a card-based estimation based on a general agreement is known as scrum poker or planning poker. Some features of it are:-

The first step is to the story of the agile user is read by the customer or owner. Then the estimator understands the features.
There are different planning cards with different numbers for each estimator. The different numbers are the story points.
Based on the estimation which is done by discussing features, the estimator will select a card.
When a common value is selected then it is considered to be an estimate otherwise there is a discussion on maximum and minimum estimation.
Until a general agreement is reached this process is repeated.

What is the right moment to use the agile model?

There are certain methodologies and developments which can use agile like lean software development feature drove development, dynamic development, and crystal methodologies.

Agile Interview Question

How do agile testing methods differ from other testing methods?

In the case of agile testing methodology, the code that is used is broken into smaller branches. At one particular time, each particular branch of code is tested. Also, continuous communication is done on that part of the code. The agile process is more flexible and focused.

Is it possible to apply agile methodology to another testing apart from software testing and development testing?

The methodology of file testing can be applied in the case of biophysics, biochemistry, biomedical, and those places that have insufficient data and the project needs to complete with a small team.

How to know that you are using agile development?

You will know that you are using agile development is when you are using a time-boxed task board, test-driven development, daily stand-up meetings, pair programming, and many more.

Advance Agile Interview Question

What do you mean by the X and Y-axis of the burndown chart?

In the burndown chart, the X-axis represents the working days and the Y-axis stands for showing the remaining efforts.

What does build breaker mean?

There are certain times when the developer accidentally commits a bug in the software. This bug might stop the process of compilation or generated warring. It is the cause of failure during the normal execution of testing. In such cases, it is said that the build is broken. The main priority of the tester now is to rectify the bug.

What are the places where Scrum and Kanban are used?

When there is a need for shifting towards an appropriate and prominent process then you use Scrum. When you need to improve the process that is running provided that there are not many changes then Kanban is used.

Agile Interview Question

What is your view on scrum master removing impediments for the scrum team?

The scrum master can remove impediments on behalf of the scrum team but he should not do that. The scrum master should not pamper nor overrule the scrum team. Also, the scrum team should be able to make their own decisions.

Can agile methodology also be applied other than software testing and development projects?

There are various places where agile methodology can be applied in the field of biophysics, biochemistry, biomedical, or at the place where there is insufficient data, where the project needs to be completed in a small team, where to work in unknown and there are several areas.

What are the major Agile components?

The major Agile components include:

Test-driven development, continuous deployment, pair programming, etc.
Class responsibilities and collaborators cards
Daily stand-up meetings

Advance Agile Interview Question

What is the process in which a master recommends following up on action items?

The best way to do this is by establishing a follow-up of the works that are to be done by the members of the team. The information is to be collected by the scrum master.

What are different types of Agile Methodology?

Different types of Agile methods or frameworks widely used in the world for software development and project development are listed below:

Scrum: It is used to establish hypotheses, test them, reflect on the experience, and also make adjustments. It heavily depends on feedback, self-management, small teams, and work broken out into sprints. It relies on incremental development.
FDD (Feature-Driven Development): It generally involves creating software models every two weeks and also needs development and design for each and every model feature. It is basically a lightweight iterative and incremental software development process whose main purpose is to deliver stable and working software on time.
Lean Software Development: It is basically a way of minimizing waste and maximizing value. It is more focused on process efficiency for optimum results in customer value. It is totally based on two guiding principles i.e., respect for people and continuous improvement.
XP (Extreme Programming): Its main purpose is to produce higher-quality software and higher quality of life for the development team. It is considered low-risk, flexible and a way to develop software and ensures that clients get what they require. In this methodology, the software is tested right from day one, collecting feedback so as to improve the development process.
DSDM (Dynamic Software Development Method): It generally focuses on the full project lifecycle and the main aim is to ensure good governance as the foundation for project management. It is user-driven and believes that modifications to the project are always expected. It also provides a full roadmap to deliver products on time and within budget.
ASD (Adaptive System Development): It represents the idea that projects should always be in a state of continuous adaptation, and has a cycle of three repeating series i.e., speculate, collaborate, and learn.
Crystal Methodology: It mainly focuses on individuals and their interactions rather than processes. It is considered one of the most lightweight and flexible approaches to developing software. It is a family of agile methodologies that include different variants such as crystal clear, crystal yellow, crystal orange, and crystal red.
Kanban: Kanban projects are generally managed through a board or table (Kanban Board). This Kanban board is a tool that helps team members to keep an eye on workflow for measuring its progress and includes all the information that is needed to be done on the product at each stage along with its path of completion. Its main purpose is flexibility in task management, continuous improvement, and enhanced workflow.

What are advantages and disadvantages of Agile Process.

Advantages

There are several advantages of using the Agile Process as given below:

Adapt well with changing requirements
Face-to-face conversation with team members and customers
Focuses on technical excellence and good design
Fast and continuous development
Enables collaboration and interaction between client and project team
Ensure and promote customer satisfaction
Faster feedback from customers or end-users
Quick identification and elimination of errors found in the code
Division of agile project into sprints or iterations i.e., short and repeatable phases typically 1-4 weeks long
Quick delivery of products
Easy to manage with more flexibility
The end goal can be unknown: Agile is beneficial for projects where the goal is not defined and as the project progresses, the goal becomes more evident.

Disadvantages

There are several disadvantages of using Agile Process as given below:

Lack of formal documentation and designing
Difficult to estimate resource requirement and effort
Not good for small development projects
Costly as compared to other development methodologies
Requires more time and energy from everyone
Risk of ever-lasting project
Difficult to scale large projects
Difficulty in testing and test construction.

Agile Interview Question

What good qualities an Agile Tester should have?

There are several good qualities an Agile tester should have. Some of them are listed below:

Positive attitude and solution-oriented
Focused towards goal
Excellent communication skills
Understand and fulfill customer requirements
Basic knowledge about the Agile process and its principles
Critical and creative thinking
Share ideas effectively
Plan and prioritize work on the basis of requirements
Cope up with change

What is Spike and Zero Sprint in Agile?

Spike: It generally refers to a too large and complex user story in software development that cannot be estimated until the development team runs a timeboxed investigation. These stories can be used for various activities like research, design, exploration, prototyping, etc. Spikes are usually created to resolve some technical issues and design problems in the project.

Zero Sprint: It generally refers to the first step or pre-preparation step that comes just before the first sprint. It includes all activities such as setting a development environment, preparing backlog, etc.

What do you mean by Daily Stand-Up meeting?

A daily stand-up meeting is a day-to-day meeting among all the members of the agile team. Its main purpose is to know the current progress and performance of every team member that works on Scrum tasks. The meetings take place mostly in the morning and usually involves product owners, developers, and the scrum master.

These meetings usually take place for the following reasons:

To know what was done yesterday and what is the plan for today.
To provide a better understanding of goals.
To make sure that every team member is working toward the same goal.
To bring problems of team members into focus so that problems can be addressed quickly.
To bring everyone up to date on the information and help the team to stay organized.

Advance Interview Question

What is Incremental and Iterative Development?

Iterative Development: It is basically a software development process where software development cycles (sprint and releases) are repeated until the final product is obtained. On the basis of feedback from customers or users, the product is again developed in cycles or releases and sprints i.e., adding new functionality in a repetitive manner.
Incremental Development: It is basically a software development process where development works are sliced into increments or pieces or portions. In this, the software is developed and delivered in pieces or increments and each piece has a complete set of functionalities. The increment can either be small or large, and each increment is coded and tested fully. After testing each increment, they all are integrated so that they work as a whole.

What is a Product Roadmap?

A product roadmap, as the name suggests, is a powerful tool that describes how a product is likely to grow over time. It is a holistic view of product features that create the product vision. It also indicates what development is building, business goals that the new product will achieve, problems that the product will solve, etc. A product roadmap is owned by the product manager. It also encourages the development team to work together to achieve the desired goal for the successful delivery of the product.

What is the difference between Agile and Scrum?

Agile: It is an approach mainly used for software development. In this methodology, complex projects are broken down into smaller units that are achievable in a specific time frame. It always involves customers in the development process.
Scrum: There are different agile methodologies, and Scrum is one of them. It promotes accountability, function, and teamwork similar to Agile. In simple words, it is an improved way of Agile methodology and shares the same principles and values of Agile with adding some of its own unique features.
Agile vs Scrum
Agile and Scrum, both provide a flawless experience to customers in the software development cycle and share similar methods like collaborative iterations. But still, both of them cannot be substituted for each other. It mainly depends upon the type of project, budget, time, and feasibility to choose any one of them for project development. There are several differences between them as given below:

Agile	Scrum
It is a methodology that is used for software management and project management.	It is just a form of Agile that fully describes the process and its steps.
It emphasizes the incremental and iterative model known as sprints.	It is basically an approach or implementation of agile methodology.
It is best suited for projects that usually involve a small team of experts.	It is best suited for projects that require constant handling of changing requirements.
It is a long-term process.	It is a slow-term process.
It requires simple and straightforward design and execution.	It requires innovation, creating design, and execution.
In this, all tasks are handled and managed by the project head.	In this, all tasks and issues are addressed and handled by entire team members.
It emphasizes face-to-face communication to achieve desired goals.	It focuses on delivering maximum business value.
It is a less rigid method with more flexibility for change.	It is a more rigid method with less flexibility for change.

Agile Interview Question

What is Agile Manifesto? What are its values and principles?

The agile manifesto is basically a document consisting of values and principles that are expressed in Agile. It was created in early 2001. It simply consists of 4 values and 12 key principles. This manifesto helps the development team to work more efficiently and provides a clear and measurable structure that promotes team collaboration, iterative development, etc. It is specially designed to improve development methodologies.
The 4 Agile Values

Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools: It focuses on giving more attention and importance to communication with clients.
Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation: It focuses on the completion of the project and making sure that the project is completing the final deliverables.
Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation: It focuses on involving customers in all phases of the project so that the final product doesn’t lack any requirement that the client needs. It is done to ensure 100% customer satisfaction.
Responding to Change over Following a Plan: It focuses on changes and motivates the team to adopt the change quickly so that higher quality products can be delivered. Therefore, agile works in short sprints so that changes can be utilized for good.

The 12 Agile Principles

Customer Satisfaction: First priority is to fulfill customer demands to ensure 100% customer satisfaction.
Welcome Change: Changes are important for improvement therefore even late in the development process, changes can be introduced and addressed throughout the development period.
Deliver Frequently: Products have to be delivered as soon as possible therefore focus on a shorter timescale.
Work Together: Both business stakeholders and team members work together through the development process for better collaboration.
Motivated Team: For delivering high-quality products, team members are motivated and encouraged. Team members are given the environment and support they need to perform effectively.
Face-to-Face: Agile emphasizes Face-to-face communication which is the most effective and efficient way of conveying information. It helps the team to communicate simple and complex information in an effective way.
Working Software: Delivering working software to the customer is the major concern of Agile. Working software or product is the primary measure of progress towards the final product.
Constant Pace: Agile promotes sustainable development. All teams, sponsors, developers, and users that are involved in the agile process should maintain a constant speed to deliver working software in a short timescale.
Good Design: Focuses on good design and technical details to improve quality and agility (quick and graceful).
Simplicity: Team focuses on tasks and features that are essential and reduces the amount of work and time spent on complex features and tasks that are not essential. It is done to keep things simple.
Self-Organization: Agile team should be cross-functional and self-organized. It should not depend on the manager to assign work, instead should find their own work and manage the responsibilities and timelines. Such teams not only help to deliver good quality software but also provide the best designs, requirements, and architectures.
Reflect and Adjust: To improve the effectiveness of a team, the team reflects on how to become more effective and assess their working style at regular intervals. This is done so that one can learn from their mistakes and take some steps to improve their performance in the next iterations.

What are Burn-up and Burn-down charts in Agile?

Burn-up Chart: It is a type of chart that is used to display or represent the amount of work that has been completed and the total amount of work for a sprint or iteration.
Burn-down Chart: It is a type of chart that is used to display or represent the amount of work that is remaining to be completed in the project. These charts are very simple and easy to understand.

What are different types of Burn-Down charts?

Different types of Burn-Down charts are listed below:

Product Burndown Chart: It is a type of chart that is used to show story points of each completed sprint so that it depicts the completion of requirements over time. It mainly shows how many of the product goals are being achieved by the team and how much work is remaining.
Sprint Burndown Chart: It is a type of chart that is used to show the remaining works for the scrum team of a particular sprint. It makes the work of the team visible and shows the rate at which work is completed and how much is remaining to be completed.
Release Burndown Chart: It is a type of chart that is used to show how a team is progressing against the work for a release. This chart is updated by the scrum team at the end of each sprint. It is very essential to see what process is being made during each sprint.
Defect Burndown Chart: It is a type of chart that is used to show the total number of defects that are being identified and fixed or removed.

Advance Agile Interview Question

Name three main Agile frameworks other than Scrum for product development.

Three main Agile Frameworks other than Scrum are:

Kanban
Test-Driven Development (TDD)
Feature Driven Development (FDD)

What is “Planning Poker” technique?

Planning Poker, also known as Scrum Poker, is a consensus-based technique that not only helps agile teams to estimate the time and effort that is required to complete each initiative on their product backlog but also identifies issues before time and within the course of a user story. It makes the meeting more short, productive and creates estimates with the involvement of the whole team. It is mainly used to avoid the influence of other participants, and force each person to think independently and give their opinion.

What do you mean by the term “increment”?

The increment is simply the sum or total of all the product backlog items that were completed during a sprint and the value of increments of all previous sprints. It is the total work completed within the current and previous sprints.

Agile Interview Question

What are standard or common metrics for Agile? Explain.

Agile Metrics are basically standard metrics that are used to measure the work of the team. These metrics are used to determine the quality of work, productivity, progress, team health, etc. Its main focus is on value delivered to customers and how much end-users were impacted by it.
Standard Metrics for the Agile project

Velocity: It measures the amount of work done by the development team during a sprint. It gives ideas about progress, capacity, etc.
Cumulative Flow Diagram: It is a flow diagram used to measure the current status of work in progress of the team. It is simply used to track the progress of agile teams and manage flow stability.
Defect Removal Awareness: It is used to measure the ability of the development team to remove defects prior to release. It helps to maintain the quality of products by a working team.
Work Category Allocation: It is used to measure where we are spending or investing our time so that we can adjust our priorities.
Sprint Burndown Metric: It is used to measure the total number of sprints or tasks that are completed as compared to estimated scrum tasks. It usually tracks the progress being made on tasks during a Sprint.
Defect Resolution Time: It is used to measure the time taken by the team to identify and fix the defects or bugs in the software. There are several processes involved in fixing bugs.
Time Coverage or Code Coverage: It is used to measure the time that is given to code during testing. It helps one to understand how much code is tested and also helps in assessing the test performance.
Business Value Delivered: It is used to measure the efficiency of the working team.

What is Scrum? Write its advantages.

Scrum is a lightweight process framework that helps scrum teams to work together and manage product development to deliver products in the shortest time. The product provided by the scrum team in the shortest period is known as a print. Its main aim is to manage tasks within a team-based development environment. It is especially used to manage project development for software products and can also be used in business-related contexts.
Advantages of Scrum

Releases product quickly to users and customers
Ensures effective use of time and money and therefore saves cost
Best suited for fast-moving development projects
Emphasizes creativity and innovation to increase business value
Ability to incorporates changes as they occur
Large and complex projects are divided into small and easily manageable sprints

What are the important tools that are mostly used in a Scrum Project?

Tools mostly used in Scrum Projects are:

Version One
Sprintster
Atlassian JIRA
RTC Jazz, etc.

Advance Agile Interview Question

Explain the term “impediments” in Scrum.

Impediments are something that blocks or stops the progress of teamwork. It causes the team not able to perform their task in a better way and on time that in turn also slows down the velocity. It’s the responsibility of the Scrum master to remove or resolve impediments. Impediments can be anything as listed below:

Missing resource
Strict boss or team member
Technical or operational issue
Power outage
Lack of understanding about agile or scrum
External issues such as war, weather, etc.
Business problems

Explain the term “story point” in Scrum.

Story point is basically a unit to estimate total efforts that are required to complete or to do a particular task or user story. It gives more accurate measures, reduces planning time, predicts releases date more accurately.

What is Agile Testing?

The first question of agile interview question tests your knowledge about the basic of agile testing. Agile testing is a practice based on the principles of agile software development. It includes all members of an agile team with specific skills and a certain expertise to ensure the timely delivery of a product with the release of additional features at frequent intervals.

Agile Interview Question

What kind of projects is suitable for the Agile Methodology?

The traditional methodology is suited for projects with predefined, clearly stated requirements while agile development methodology is suitable for projects with dynamic requirements where frequent changes in the product come up on a regular basis.

What are the different types of Agile Methodologies?

An agile interview question and answers guide will not complete without this question. There are several types of agile development methodology. Scrum is one of the most popular and widely used agile methods. Other types of agile development methodology are; development like Crystal Methodology, DSDM(Dynamic Software Development Method), Feature-driven development(FDD), Lean software development and Extreme Programming(XP).

Can you explain the lean methodology in detail?

Lean software development method follows the principle of “Just in time production”. It aims at increasing the speed of software development and decreasing cost.
The basic idea of lean is to reduce non-value-added activities (known as “wastes”) in order to increase customer value. The agile process itself is a lean method for software development lifecycle. However, activities like backlog grooming (when team review items on the backlog to ensure the appropriate items are in the backlog, that they are prioritized well, and that the items at the top of the backlog are ready for delivery) code refactoring (process of restructuring existing computer code – changing the factoring — without changing its external behavior) fits agile methodology more in tune with lean principles.

Advance Agile Interview Question

What is Kanban?

It is one of the common agile interview questions. Kanban is a tool which helps the team to keep a close eye the work i.e., to measure its progress. Apart from the progress, the status of a development story can be seamlessly described with the help of ‘kanban board’.
Kanban board aids in writing the whole scenario of a project at a single place to give a perfect picture of the bottleneck, a task done, workflow progress. It helps in the continuous delivery of the product without overburdening the team

Is there any difference between incremental and iterative development?

Yes, the iterative methodology is a process of software development without any interruption. In this method, software development cycles consisting of sprint and release are repeated until the final product is obtained. Whereas, the incremental model is a process of software development where the product is designed, implemented and tested incrementally until the product is finished. It involves both development and maintenance.

What are burndown and burn-up charts in agile methodology?

To track the progress of an ongoing project, these charts are used. Burn-up charts indicate the work that has been completed while Burn-down chart shows the amount of remaining work in a project.

Agile Interview Question

Can you explain pair programming and its benefits?

It is one of the general agile interview questions and answers guide. The combined effort in the team where one programmer writes the code and the other one reviews it is called pair programming. There are several benefits of pair programming, it not only improves the quality of code but also facilitates the knowledge transfer. It reduces the chance of mistakes as two people are simultaneously working on a code.

Do you know what is the scrum of scrums?

The term “Scrum of Scrums” is used when there are multiple teams involved in a project. It refers to the scaling of the daily Scrum meeting. In this scenario, each team is responsible for conducting and leading its separate scrum meeting. However, to maintain coordination and communication among all the different teams, a separate meeting must be conducted wherein all the teams participate. This is known as the “Scrum of Scrums.”

In this meeting, one team leader from every team (known as the “ambassador”), will represent their team. The main idea behind this is to encourage Agile teams to collaborate and coordinate their work with each other.

What is the velocity of a sprint and how it is measured?

Velocity is one of the planning tool used to estimate the speed of the work and time of completion of the project. The calculation of velocity is done by reviewing the work team has successfully completed during earlier sprints; for example, if the team completed 5 stories during a two-week sprint and each story was worth 3 story points, then the team’s velocity is 15 story points per sprint.

Advance Agile Interview Question

According to you what are some qualities that a good agile tester must have?

A competent agile tester must possess the following qualities:

They should be capable of understanding the requirements quickly.
An agile tester should be aware of all the agile principles and concepts and values as listed down in an agile manifesto.
They should be able to prioritize the work based on the requirements.
They should have excellent communication skills as continuous communication between business associates, developers and tester is a backbone of the agile development process.

Can you list some responsibilities that a scrum team have to undertake?

This is one of the important agile interview questions. Major responsibilities that a scrum team has to include:

Breaking down the requirements, creating tasks, estimating and distributing the created tasks. To put simply they are in charge of creating sprint backlogs.
They have to arrange daily sprint meeting.
It is a responsibility of the team to ensure that every functional feature is delivered on time. They have to create a sprint burndown diagram to know to get the exact estimate of work done and the work that needs to be done.

Differentiate between Agile and Scrum.

A critical agile interview question you need to be aware of. Agile and Scrum have their fair share of similarities and differences. Since Scrum is a part of the Agile Methodology, both of them promote the completion of projects incrementally in small fragments. Also, both methodologies are iterative in nature.

However, the main difference between Agile and Scrum is that the former has a broader spectrum. While Agile Methodology is used for project management, Scrum is ideal for projects where the requirements change rapidly. In the Agile Methodology, leadership holds the most pivotal position, whereas Scrum encourages the creation of a self-organizing and cross-functional team.

Agile Interview Question

What kind of project is suitable for this Methodology?

Agile methodology is best for projects that involve dynamic requirements with frequent product changes needed regularly.

Differentiate between extreme programming and Scrum?

Scrum teams work with iterations called sprints that last between two weeks and one month, while extreme programming teams work with one to two weeks long iterations. In addition, their iterations can change, while the former’s team iterations don’t change.

What is test-driven development?

In test-driven development, developers create small codes to pass an automated test instance describing your new function then refactors the encryption later to meet required standards.

Advance Agile Interview Question

Explain the roles of a Scrum Master.

A master is a leader of a team. They are responsible for ensuring the principles and values are observed and that processes agreed upon are followed.

Challenges involved while developing Software?

Some challenges include;

• Completion of each feature before moving on

• Numerous tests and client involvement

• A lot of preparation is required

• Ensuring all codes work fine to have a working application

Where are the Scrum and Kanban methodologies used?

Kanban is used to improve the running process with lesser changes, while you use the former when shifting to a prominent and appropriate process needed.

Agile Interview Question

Primary tools used in a project?

The primary tools include; JIRA, Version one ad Rally.

What is safe agile?

The Scaled Framework collects workflow patterns and preparation with practices on a business scale.

Which popular tool used in software development?

Atlassian Jira is a popular tool for software development.

Advance Agile Interview Question

Name the most important components of agile?

Test driven development, pair programming, continuous deployment, etc.
Class responsibilities and collaborators cards
Daily stand-up meetings

Explain a test stub?

A test stub is a code that simulates behavior of software components or modules. It also mimics a component in the system and replaces it. Its output is same as the component replaced by it.

What is Test Driven Development (TDD)?

TDD is a programming practice that instructs developers to write error-free and simpler codes in case an automated test has failed.

Agile Interview Question

How will you define storyboard in Agile?

Storyboard is a graphic organizer or visual representation of the progress of a software project. This has four columns –

To do
In Progress
Test
Done

This project insight helps the developer understand the work flow and complete the work or rework in case of any misses or issues.

What are Prototypes and Wireframes used for?

Prototypes and Wireframes are essential components of website or mobile app design process. They are used to present the design concept and the basic functions of the website for the clients.

Which are the must have tools to be used in Agile projects?

Some important tools used in Agile projects are –

Active Collab
Agile Bench
Bonfire
Bug Digger
Bug Shooting
JIRA Agile
Lean Kit
Pivotal Tracker
Plan box
q Trace
Snagit
Telerik Team Pulse
User snap
Version One

Agile Interview Question

What is RC?

RC is the abbreviation of Release Candidate. It is an internally released build to check for any undetected critical issues left during the previous development period. RC is only for testing purposes.

Name different types of impediment?

Impediments can be of the following types:

Technical issues
Natural calamities
Organizational issues
Infrastructure issues
Stakeholder issues
Unskilled team members

Name the components in the user story?

Uses story has three components (3Cs)-

Card – It describes the whole user story in the basic form and written in a physical form on a card. The format used in the user story: As a [type of user], I want [goal] so that [some reason].
Conversation – It depicts the communication between product owner, consumer, other members to discuss details in the card.
Confirmation – It helps in finding acceptance criteria in the user story so that the story can be used.

Advance Agile Interview Question


Agile Part 1		Agile Part 3