Conquer Your Agile Interview: 60+ Questions and Answers to Impress

Landing your dream Agile developer role just got easier! This comprehensive guide equips you with the knowledge and insights to ace your interview with confidence Dive deep into 60+ crucial Agile interview questions, covering everything from fundamental concepts to advanced methodologies.

Boost Your Agile Expertise

• Master the Basics: Solidify your understanding of Agile principles, methodologies like Scrum and Kanban, and key terms like user stories, sprints, and burndown charts.
• Tackle Advanced Concepts: Explore intricate topics like Agile testing, Scrum ceremonies, and scaling Agile frameworks.
• Sharpen Your Skills: Hone your Agile development skills with practical insights on pair programming, continuous integration, and test-driven development.
• Gain Confidence: Practice answering common Agile interview questions with sample responses, ensuring you’re prepared for any scenario.

Unlock Your Agile Potential:

• Impress Interviewers: Demonstrate your in-depth knowledge and practical application of Agile principles, showcasing your expertise and passion.
• Stand Out from the Crowd: Differentiate yourself from other candidates by showcasing your problem-solving skills and ability to adapt to diverse Agile environments.
• Land Your Dream Job: Increase your chances of securing the Agile developer position you’ve been aiming for.

Let’s Dive In!

1 What is Agile?

Agile is a set of iterative and incremental methodologies focused on delivering value to customers through continuous feedback and collaboration. It emphasizes flexibility adaptability, and rapid response to changing requirements.

2. Explain the difference between Agile and Waterfall

Agile:

• Iterative and incremental
• Focuses on delivering value early and often
• Adapts to changing requirements
• Emphasizes collaboration and communication

Waterfall:

• Linear and sequential
• Focuses on delivering a complete product at the end
• Less adaptable to changing requirements
• Emphasizes planning and documentation

3. What are some important principles of Agile?

• Customer satisfaction
• Welcoming change
• Delivering value frequently
• Working collaboratively
• Motivated individuals
• Face-to-face communication
• Working software
• Constant pace
• Good design
• Simplicity
• Self-organization
• Reflecting and adjusting

4. Explain Iterative and Incremental Development in Agile.

Iterative Development:

• Develops a system in repeated cycles or iterations.
• Incorporates changes based on results from the most recent iteration.
• Enables the project to evolve over time.

Incremental Development:

• Divides the process into small, workable increments.
• Each increment builds on the work completed in the previous increment.
• Over time, functionalities are added based on everything already created.

5. What are the different types of Agile methodologies?

• Extreme Programming (XP): Focuses on high-quality software development and improved quality of life for developers.
• Kanban: Visualizes workflow and limits work in progress.
• Lean: Focuses on identifying and removing waste to speed up development.
• Scrum: Employs sprints to establish a hypothesis, test it, reflect on the experience, and make adjustments.
• Crystal: Focuses on people and interactions rather than tools and processes.

6. What Are the Principles of Agile Testing?

• Continuous testing for product improvement
• Continuous feedback for meeting business requirements
• Active involvement of testing and development teams
• Active involvement of the business team and user representatives
• Clean and simplified code
• Limited documentation to a particular iteration
• Testing alongside development and implementation

7. What are some Agile metrics that need to be focused on?

• Burndown charts
• Velocity
• Lead time
• Cycle time
• Code quality
• Code covered in unit test
• Deployment success rate
• Net promoter score

8. What Is Kanban?

Kanban is a visual system that manages work as it progresses through the process. It visualizes workflow, provides transparency, and limits work in progress.

9. What are some popular Agile tools?

• Jira
• Trello
• Asana
• Confluence
• Slack

10. What are the obstacles to the Agile process?

• Lack of appropriate tools and technologies
• Lack of active customer involvement
• Lack of skilled team members
• Inability to design systems based on unseen requirements
• Difficulty in adopting Agile culture

11. Differentiate between Agile and Scrum.

Agile:

• Set of iterative and incremental principles
• Suited for projects involving small teams
• Project head manages all tasks
• Changes handled iteratively
• Requires frequent delivery to the end-user
• Face-to-face interactions

Scrum:

• Implementation of the Agile methodology
• Used in teams handling constant changing requirements
• No leader, issues handled by the scrum master and the team
• Teams can react to change quickly
• Provides workable builds of the final product to the user for feedback
• Daily stand-up meetings help with collaboration

12. What are some popular Agile certifications?

• PMI-ACP Certification
• Scrum Master Certification
• Certified Scrum Master Certification
• Prince 2 Agile Certification
• Scrum Product Owner Certification

13. Discuss the differences between Agile and traditional Project Management (Waterfall).

Agile emphasizes iterative project implementation, while traditional methodologies include different project life cycle phases.

14. What are Agile frameworks?

Other than Scrum, there are various alternative frameworks, including Test-Driven Development, Feature-Driven Development, and Kanban.

15. When should you use Waterfall over Scrum?

Typically, Waterfall is employed when the requirements are straightforward, completely specified, predictable, understandable, and permanent.

16. How long does the scrum cycle last?

The length of the Scrum cycle is determined by the size of the team and the project; it typically takes 3 to 4 weeks to complete.

17. What is the scrum of scrums?

A separate meeting, known as a Scrum of Scrums, must be planned to coordinate among several teams. In the scrum of scrums, an ambassador speaks on behalf of their squad.

18. Define epic, user stories, and tasks?

• Epic: Large user stories that are broken down into smaller user stories.
• User Stories: Delivered throughout a specific sprint, user stories are created based on the client’s perspective, such as project or business functions.
• Tasks: Smallest units of work that are assigned to team members to complete within a sprint.

19. What is test-driven development?

This approach involves a developer writing an automated test case that describes the new function, writing little code to pass the test, and then re-factoring the new code to comply with the required standards.

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

Scrum poker or planning poker is a general agreement-based card-based estimation method. Its characteristics include:

• The client must read the agile user’s story as the first step.
• The estimator then comprehends the features.
• Each estimator has a distinct planning card with a different set of numbers on it. The various numbers represent the plot points.
• This procedure is carried out repeatedly until a consensus is obtained.

21. What do you mean by the disadvantages of the Agile Model?

The disadvantages are:

• Difficulty in calculating the effort needed for a large project.
• Less focus on documentation and design.

22. What is the right moment to use the agile model?

Lean software development, feature-driven development, dynamic development, and crystal approaches are a few methodologies and innovations that can employ agile.

23. What do you mean by release candidate?

A code, version, or build—known as a release candidate—is released to guarantee that no significant issues remain during the final development stage. This is used for testing and is the same as the finished build.

24. Differentiate between agile testing methods and other testing methods?

The code is broken into smaller pieces in the main agile testing cases. Each code branch is tested at one particular time. On that section of the code, the communication is ongoing.

25. What is Zero sprint in Agile?

The first sprint’s pre-step is known as a zero sprint.

26. What does story point mean in the scrum?

A story point is the scrum term for the unit used to estimate the time needed to complete or implement a backlog.

27. Why are user stories not estimated in working hours?

It is not required to estimate user stories in terms of man hours because doing so would indicate a subpar product being supplied to the client. However, the budget and administrative costs are given more consideration regarding working hours.

28. In which process a Scrum master recommends follow-up action items?

Establishing a follow-up of the work that needs to be done by the team members is the best way to follow up on action items. Additionally, the scrum master will compile this data.

29. What are the most critical agile Matrices?

The most important agile matrices are listed below:

• Velocity
• Work category allocation
• Defect removal awareness
• The cumulative flow diagram

30. What are the essential qualities a good Agile tester should have?

A qualified Agile tester must possess the following qualities:

• Should swiftly comprehend the requirements
• Must be well-versed