Agile Interview Questions and Answers
Earlier software projects used to be delivered late or under high pressure. Many customers did not use the features earlier thought necessary. This resulted in a waste of money and time. Many software developers thought about this problem and looked at delivering higher customer satisfaction as a primary requirement. This is why agile is born. Rather than lengthy documents agile focuses on face to face customer interactions and “usable” software approach. The Agile Interview questions and answers we are mentioning below will help you to gain enough of the knowledge about Agile.
Advantages
- Usable software delivered early.
- Higher focus on customer satisfaction.
- Flexible delivery module
- Agile involves customers earlier
Most Frequently Asked Agile Interview Questions
- Agile is a software development method.
- Agile is a lightweight method to develop software.
- Agile focuses on iterative development, so clients get faster usable software.
- Faster development and usable software.
- Higher focus on customer satisfaction
- Flexible delivery module than the traditional waterfall model
- Agile methodology gives a faster return on investment in waterfall model the software is delivered at the end of the project total completion date. In agile software is usable in parts from the first iteration.
- Agile involves customers earlier in the development stage, so errors in final delivery are less.
- Agile also gives higher quality as testing is done a lot earlier and more frequently.
- Agiles gives flexibility in developing software.
Scrum is one of the frameworks of Agile. This framework is used to create a capable team on the complex products. There are three pillars of scrum:-Adaptation, Inspection, and Transparency.Scrum can be applied to any project.
S.no | Agile | Scrum |
---|---|---|
1. | Agile is methodology which is based on an incremental and iterative approach | Scrum is one of the frameworks of agile |
2. | Design and the execution must be simple | Design and implementation is experimental and also innovative |
3. | Working software is the measure of the progress | Working software is not the measure of the progress |
Point to be noted: Go through this Q&A very thoroughly as this is one of the essential Agile scrum interview questions.
The scrum team consists of those individuals who work in sync to accomplish the best results for any task given to them
Scrum Master:-
- Scrum Master is accountable to coach the Development Team and The Product Owner so that they can work on the day to day activities. Scrum Master acts as a communicator between the product owner and the development team.
- Scrum Master makes sure that the team understands the Scrum principles and values and also team practices them.
- Scrum Master supports the team in a way that they become self-organized
- Scrum Master protects the unit from any interference from the outside so that there is no distraction
- The highest priority of the agile is to satisfy the customer requirement by continuous delivering of the valuable software.
- Agile accepts the changing requirements, even late in development.
- Agile delivers the working software frequently.
- The business people and the developers should work together regularly throughout the project.
- Agile builds the projects around motivated individuals.
- The most efficient and effective way of conveying the information is a face-to-face conversation.
- Working software is the first measure of performance or progress.
- Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, the developers and also the users should be able to maintain a constant pace.
- Agile provides continuous attention to technical excellence.
- Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work which is not done--is essential.
- The best architectures and designs are created from the self-organizing teams.
- The team conducts the retrospective meeting at regular intervals to identify the learnings helpful for the delivery of the project then the team alters their operating practices to incorporate the teaching.
Key Performance Indicators provide guidance for the evaluation, strategic planning and for the improving operational processes. One of the essential indicators in agile is “Burn-down” chart. This KPI provides information related to the speed of delivery and is used to estimate if the project is on schedule. Velocity is determined by a number of story points delivered in a time box (or cycle or sprint etc.).
- Spring Backlog is the most crucial part of an Agile Project. It is created during the preparation stage of the sprint.
- Sprint Backlog is basically for the Team members so that they are able to align themselves during the Sprint. The team performs better with the assigned tasks that have to be done in a specific time.
- The sprint backlog is tracked on an information radiator which provides a visual signal of the team progress, and it also points the scope of the ongoing sprint. As a result, the team is free from creating the burndown and burn up charts, and they know the current status of their work every time
S.no | Sprint Backlog | Product Backlog |
---|---|---|
1. | List of tasks that has to be performed within a sprint | List of functions that has to be completed within a project. |
2. | Owned by the development team | Owned by the product owner |
This is a very critical question in Agile interview questions.
Daily standup meeting is the routine meeting of 15 minutes that happens daily at the same time among the team members. This meeting helps each team member remain up to date and supports the team in staying organized and it also helps to set the tone of the entire day work.
- Scrum Master is accountable to coach the Development Team and The Product Owner so that they can work on the day to day activities. Scrum Master acts as a communicator between the product owner and the development team.
- Scrum Master makes sure that the team understands the Scrum principles and values and also team practices them.
- Scrum Master supports the team in a way that they become self-organized
- Scrum Master protects the unit from any interference from the outside so that there is no distraction
This is one of the most asked agile scrum master interview questions
There are 7 agile frameworks:-
- Scrum
- Kanban
- Extreme Programming
- Feature driven development
- Lean Software Development
- Dynamic system Development
- Crystal Development Framework
velocity is the calculation of the amount of work the team has done in a specific time. Velocity in agile is calculated by adding up the total estimates, i.e. story points, days, ideal days or ideal hours of the user stories, requirements or the backlog items which were delivered within a previous iteration or previous Sprint.
Story points represent the level of difficulty in developing and deploying a used story. This gives a range of estimates based on how clear the user story is defined. Sometimes more massive points simply indicate lack of clarity in information and sometimes they suggest that user story is huge and needs to be broken in smaller units for delivery.
The burn-down chart is an indicator of a team’s progress towards entire project delivery. Each scrum backlog is plotted against the days in the sprint. The idea is to start with 100% work pending and end on 0% work pending. This gives the team a sense of direction.
S.no | Waterfall | Agile |
---|---|---|
1. | Testing is done along with the development activity | Testing is done after the development activity |
2. | It prefers that customer is available throughout the project | It favors the customer only at the milestones |
3. | The Project is driven by the self-organized and self-motivated teams | The Project is inspired by the project manager. |
The methodology which I am going to prefer depends on the type of the project and the other factors like the complexity of the project, the size of the project, clients, etc.
This is a very critical question in Agile interview questions and answers.
There are 6 scrum principles which are used for applying on the Scrum framework. These principles are to be used in all the Scrum projects
- Empirical Process Control
- Self-organization
- Collaboration
- Value-based Prioritization
- Time-boxing
- Iterative Development
Between the sprints, spikes are created to resolve the design issues or the technical issues on priority in the ongoing coding projects.
There are two types of spikes:-
The functions spikes and the Technical spikes. Functional spikes are changes related to business use cases. Technical spikes are related to changes in executable code. Spikes needs attention as it is a disruption in standard delivery.
Sprint Zero in agile can be defined as the step before the first sprint. Sprint Zero includes the activities like setting up the development environment, preparing the backlogs that need to be complete before starting of the sprint.
This is the favorite interviewer question in Agile interview questions.
Refactoring of the code is a process in which the structure of the existing code is improved without changing the functional behavior of the code.
Purpose of refactoring the code:-
Refactoring of the code is essential while extending the code from iteration to iteration. If the code refactoring is not done, then the performance of the code deteriorate. This condition is called Software rot or code rot. As a result, the time and cost both are wasted.
Sizing is a way to manage the capacity of the deliverables promised. In order to deliver a program, we must first estimate how much complex it is Different types of sizings are used by different teams.
Most popular sizings are :-
- T-Shirt Sizing.
- Fibonacci series
Development History
Agile is a set of guidelines that evolved with time. In 2001, the agile manifesto was developed by 17 software developers. Agile came into existence as a lightweight development methodology. Now agile is adopted in all companies.
All your questions related to Agile will be answered in the Agile interview questions mentioned below.