A curated list of commonly asked Agile Project Management questions that you can expect in your interviews.
What Are The Best Agile Metrics?
- Velocity
It refers to the average points one can achieve from the last 3 to 4 sprints. It can be measured by summarizing all the estimates approved for the stories. It explains the progress, capacity, etc.
- Work Category Allocation
It is a vital factor that gives quick details about investing time. It explains which task should be prioritized and where time is invested as a time factor.
- Cumulative Flow Graph
This way, an inspection is performed on the specific workflow. The x-axis describes time, and the y-axis shows the number of attempts.
- Delivering Business Value
It explains the efficiency of a team. The numerical values are assigned with business objectives according to complexity, priority, and ROI.
- Defect Removal Awareness
This factor has come in handy for the team to deliver the best product. It is very important to identify active defects, be aware and remove them. It is very vital to deliver a top-quality product.
- Time Coverage
During the testing process, time is given to the code. It is calculated in the form of percentage as a factor of several codes called by the total relative codes and the test suite.
- Defect Resolution Time
In this process, team members detect the bugs or defects and set a time to resolve defects. The process of bug fixes or defect resolution consists of several processes like scheduling to fix defects, clearing the defect, generation, finalizing to fix defects, and handling reports of resolution.
- Sprint Burn Down
It is a graph that represents several implemented or non-implemented sprints on the Scrum cycle. You can keep an eye on the work finished using Sprint.
What is the difference between Waterfall and Agile Methodology?
Whenever you get interview questions on agile methodology, this one is bound to come up. Waterfall is a more traditional process of project management where the solution is first planned out with detailed requirements defined for the entire solution (or at least a large majority of it) before the actual work of developing the solution is started.
The steps of the *waterfall process happen in a sequence* and once a step is completed it can’t be done again without breaking the process. In Waterfall, the users generally don’t get a working product or any significant benefit from the product until the project or a major phase of the project is completed.
Agile is a more modern approach that focuses on developing complex solutions that have changing requirements; it leverages *incremental* delivery with each increment producing a usable product or functionality. Agile also leverages *just-in-time documentation* which focuses on limiting the wasted effort of documenting requirements for features that may change.
The major difference between the two methodologies is the amount of documentation that is done upfront before the actual work of development is started. In Waterfall, the up-front documentation is significant and attempts to be as complete as possible for the entire solution. Agile focuses on only documenting the initial part of that solution that will be worked on.
What are the advantages of Agile Methodologies over Waterfall Methodologies?
Agile project management interview questions will often come in the form of an advantage/disadvantage tradeoff. For example, “Agile methods mostly focus on which of the following options and what are their advantages and disadvantages as opposed to Waterfall Methods?”
The main thing you want to focus on in this question is the *adaptability to change* and *improved ability to deal with uncertainty* of the Agile methods.
If the full set of requirements for a project can’t be determined at the beginning of a project or if the solution may have to quickly be adjusted based on the actions of competitors. The incremental structure of the Agile methods provides a much more flexible format which allows opportunities to pivot while still providing useful features throughout the project’s development.
What are the different agile methodologies?
A common question in agile-related interviews, its purpose is usually to test your basic knowledge of agile methodologies. You can mention a few that you know and explain one or two.
- One of the best-known ones is scrum.
It is a framework within which you can work to find adaptive solutions for various complex problems and deliver high-quality products. Another popular agile methodology is the crystal method. It is a framework that you can use for short-term projects. It takes a flexible and adaptive approach to projects and tries to optimize the workflow with unique and dynamic methods. It generally does not require much documentation.
- Other types of agile methodologies are Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), Feature-driven Development (FDD), Dynamic Software Development Method (DSDM), Lean Software Development, DevOps and Disciplined Agile (DA). There are more than 50 agile methodologies, and the list may continue to grow.
What are the four agile values?
- The first states that it is more important to consider the requirements of individuals and their interactions than to stay fixated on following due process and using specific tools.
- According to the second agile value, creating working software is more important than creating comprehensive documentation.
- The third agile value states that it is more important to achieve customer collaboration than to struggle with contract negotiation.
- The fourth and final agile value states that it is more important to respond swiftly and efficiently to change than to follow a plan.
What are the characteristics of effective user stories?
- Independent:
Ideally, our goal is to be able to reprioritize and develop our user stories in any order. And this can be achieved, though hard, by creating independent user stories that can be selected on merit, rather than dragging into the release because other user stories depend on it.
- Negotiable:
The team should be able to discuss user stories with the product owner and make trade-offs based on cost and function. Negotiating user stories leads to an improved understanding of the true requirements, costs, and acceptable compromises.
- Valuable:
User stories without clearly understood business benefits will be difficult to prioritize, since backlogs are usually ranked in business value. And if we cannot determine the value of a requirement, then we should question why it is a part of the project.
- Estimable:
Estimation is required to prioritize work based on its cost-benefit trade-off.
- Small:
Small user stories are easier to estimate and test than large user stories.
- Testable:
Having testable user stories is important for tracking progress because agile teams often measure their progress based upon the number of stories that have been successfully accepted.
What are the principles of Agile Testing?
- Testing is continuous and sustainable to ensure there is continuous progress of the product.
- Continuous feedback is essential and is provided on how a given product is meeting the business needs and customer satisfaction.
- Testing is performed by a self-organized team, unlike in a traditional software development life cycle where only the test team is responsible for testing.
- Face to face communication with the business team involved in each iteration in Agile testing for continuous feedback and successive improvement.
- Simplified & clean code by ensuring all the defects which are raised by the Agile team are fixed within the same iteration.
- Test Driven Agile methods, testing is performed at the time of implementation unlike after implementation as in the case of the traditional process.
Can Scrum be applied to all types of projects?
The expectation of the interviewer is that you should have a clear understanding of Waterfall and Agile. The obvious answer is “NO”. Both approaches have their own strengths and weakness, so it all depends on the type of project and its environment. Both have effective planning, execution and controlling.
SCRUM is generally used when the scope is not clearly defined and the requirements change frequently. These projects are generally quite complex but have the advantage of having customer feedback as the product is being used.
Waterfall is generally opposite of Scrum and everything is clearly defined and the scope does not change. The product is not generally shipped unless the development is complete.
What is SAFe? In what scenarios should it be used?
SAFe (Scaled Agile framework) helps businesses address the significant challenges of developing and delivering enterprise-class software and systems in the shortest sustainable lead time.
When to use SAFe:
- When we want to implement an agile approach consistently across larger, multi-team program and portfolios.
- Project having 5-10 Scrum teams distributed across various geographical locations.
- When a team wants to work independently.
- When an organization wants to improve its product development lead time.
- When you want to implement Agile across an organization and you are not sure of various roles and responsibilities and how they align and coordinate with each other.
- When multiple teams are running Agile, but regularly facing delays, no collaboration, and failures.
- Decentralized decision making.
What are the various planning stages in Agile?
- Product Vision - Detailing what the product is, who will and why use it, and how the product supports the company’s overall strategy
- Product Roadmap - Provide a visual overview of the high-level product requirements, timeframes for deliverables, prioritization and estimations details of all releases over time
- Release Plan - Describe the high-level timeline for product releases
- Sprint Plan - Describe sprint goals and requirements and how those requirements will be completed
- Daily Scrum - Discuss on what was completed yesterday, what will be done today and any roadblocks found
- Sprint Review - Demonstrate the working product/deliverable to stakeholders for feedback/acceptance
- Sprint Retrospective - Discuss on product and process improvements and picking on at least one area to focus on continuous improvement
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