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[The following is an interview format that I created for a client of mine for interviewing potential
ScrumMaster candidates. The interview includes basic Agile questions, Agile experience, and 3 core
exercises to see facilitation techniques and ability.]
***Make sure to view these questions in tandem with the ScrumMaster Characteristics!***
The outline isn’t perfect, and many questions come up ad hoc through the conversations with the
candidate. Some of the questions are hard, but not unreasonable. I would believe that a well
versed, seasoned ScrumMaster would intuitively know the answer to most of the questions. I
may be wrong, feedback is welcome!
Experience – General
In an Agile organization, explain to me what you do without using the words “Scrum,” “Agile,”
“Iteration” or any other Agile buzzwords. How does what you do add value to an
organization?
Organizational transformation leveraging Agile – What role did you play?
How was the organization setup to support development efforts to use Agile?
What challenges did you face while working with an Agile methodology? How did you
overcome those challenges?
What has been your biggest mistake as a ScrumMaster or Agile project Manager in your
current position? How would you think back and fix it?
Where did you help a team’s process mature using Scrum? Do you believe this is part of the
job of a ScrumMaster? Why?
How would you scale product ownership to an enterprise beyond just product ownership for
a team?
What other development techniques have you used with your Agile teams? What made them
effective?
Exercises
3 example burndown charts (printed out) – Tell me what you see. / Will the sprint end on
time?
Give me an outline of a retrospective – What does it look like? Take me through the steps. /
How do you keep a retrospective valuable to a team, sprint after sprint?
Give me an example of a story card. What are included in the story?
“We’re going back to a waterfall process and Agile has “failed.” – Tell me how you’d
approach this situation with management. How would you approach this at the team level?
Show me what it looks like to break down a theme to tasks – [Theme] -> [Backlog, Backlog
Features], -> [Release Plan, Sprints with Stories and Story Points] -> [Stories, and Tasks
with Hours]
1. 3-4 developers who have been coached to be certain roles during these mock-exercises
2. 1 Product Owner who has been coached to be a certain role
3. You – Facilitator to keep conversation moving in the right direction as needed
Mock Demonstrations
Sprint Planning [Demo] – “Atlanta Snow Day” – Our job is to clean out an entire parking lot of
snow.
o I am our Product Owner and I can give you direction about this requirement.
o The only requirement I have is that we need to shovel out all of the snow from a
Costco parking lot
o [Candidate performs a sprint planning meeting based on this requirement alone]
o **I am looking for facilitation techniques – Breaking the requirement into
stories, breaking the stories into tasks, estimating the stories, estimating the
tasks, asking the Product Owner for guidance and direction, asking the
attending developers for information and facilitating the discussion
Daily Scrum [Demo] – “Atlanta Snow Day” – Hold a daily standup with the attending
developers
o Developer 1: “I’m currently working on item 1234SD…”
o Developer 2: “It seems like the shovels have broken, I can’t do anything until they are
fixed…”
o Developer 3: [ME] “I was working with Developer 2 and it seemed like she/he could
add a feature here…”
o **I am looking for correct facilitation of a daily standup
Sprint Retrospective [Demo] – “Atlanta Snow Day” – Hold a retrospective with the attending
developers
o We have completed our 2 week sprint of cleaning the snow, but not everything went
as planned.
o Developer 1: “[Tool] wasn’t available until 3 days into the sprint.”
o Developer 2: “An added requirement was added halfway through the sprint.”
o Developer 1: “A key QA individual was out sick for 4 days.”
o Developer 2: “The UI/UX lead continued to drop by my desk for updates so they
could prepare use cases.”
o **I am looking for facilitation of a retrospective – How does the candidate deal
with issues? How to create a retrospective plan. How does he set up the
meeting. How does he create actionable items.