Top Scrum Master Interview Questions for Freshers, Intermediate, and Experienced Candidates

Going over some Scrum Master questions and answers is important when preparing for your Scrum Master interview. This will enable you to answer difficult interview questions confidently and ace your interview.

Scrum is an agile project management method with tools, roles, and meetings that structures teams and oversee their work. A Scrum framework allows collaboration with such agile teams, and a Scrum Master is a facilitator for the agile development team.

Scrum is based on the test process control theory. It is an Empirical Process based on the three pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Due to its versatility in both front-end and back-end applications, it is widely popular in tech and other industries. So, answering fresher and experienced Scrum Master interview questions can get quite technical in the top tech companies without professional guidance.

A great Scrum Master possesses excellent abilities to communicate the business values of the leaders to the team member and helps the team remove those impediments that they can’t get rid of themselves. It is also essential for a Scrum Master to improve team performance by making them happier as this, in turn, could drive their productivity.

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In this article, we’ll look at some of the top Scrum Master interview questions for freshers, intermediate and experienced candidates.

Table of Contents

• Scrum Master Interview Questions for Freshers
• Scrum Master Interview Questions for Intermediates
• Scrum Master Interview Questions for Experienced
• Most Popular Scrum Master Interview Questions
• FAQs on Scrum Master Interview Questions

Scrum Master Interview Questions for Freshers

Some Scrum Master interview questions for freshers or beginners are given below:

1. How can you define the roles in Scrum?
2. Name the responsibilities of a Scrum team.
3. Mention the differences between Agile and Scrum.
4. What transpires in Daily Stand-up sessions?
5. What are the artifacts of the Scrum process?
6. What is Scrum-ban?
7. What is Scrum of Scrums?
8. Explain Empirical Process Control in Scrum.
9. What is a User Story?
10. What is a Sprint?
11. What is Velocity?
12. Name the responsibilities of a Product Owner.
13. Tell us about Burnup and Burndown Chart.
14. How is ‘Estimation Done’ in a Scrum Project?
15. What are some risks in Scrum, and how can you handle them?
16. As a Scrum Master, how will you track Sprint progress?
17. What are MVP and MMP?
18. What is the meaning of DoD?
19. How can you coordinate between different teams?
20. Why will you not estimate User Stories in manhours?
21. Who writes a User Story?
22. As a facilitator, how will you prepare for the workshop?
23. How do you make the stakeholders attend Scrum daily?
24. What is your recommended approach for following up on action items?
25. What will be the structure of a good User Story?
26. How is the role of a Scrum Master different from that of a Product Owner?
27. How do you think it is possible to increase self-discipline in a Scrum team?
28. Is it possible to compare the Velocity of different teams?

Scrum Master Interview Questions for Intermediates

Some frequently asked questions for intermediate professionals to boost your Scrum Master interview prep are listed below:

1. What events must be the developers of your team present in?
2. What is the Product Goal?
3. What is the outcome of a Sprint?
4. What is the timebox of a Daily Scrum?
5. Who attends the Sprint Review?
6. What are the five values of Scrum?
7. Who owns the Scrum Backlog?
8. What is an increment?
9. How many people manage the Product Backlog?
10. Who can write Product Backlog items?
11. Who can cancel the Sprint?
12. What is Backlog Refinement?
13. What are the responsibilities of Product Owners?
14. What work can the Product owner delegate?
15. Mention the outcomes of Scrum Retrospective.
16. Who creates the plan in Sprint?
17. What do you think is the best way to order a Product Backlog?
18. How can you control Risk through Sprint?
19. In which events is the presence of the Product Owner mandatory?
20. Which events are compulsory for Developers to be present in?
21. Name the pillars of Scrum and their importance.
22. How can you ensure that the User Stories meet the requirements?
23. Mention the five steps of risk management.
24. What do you mean by Sprint 0 and Spike?
25. Explain Confidence Vote in Scrum. What is its importance?
26. What are the three C’s in a User Story?
27. Is it possible for the Scrum team to be involved in the product discovery process? If yes, how?
28. Why is the Agile method necessary?
29. Mention the main tools used in a Scrum project.
30. What does INVEST stand for?

Scrum Master Interview Questions for Experienced Candidates

Here is a list of common Scrum Master interview questions for experienced candidates. Practice these questions if you’re applying for positions like Scrum Master Lead, Senior Scrum Master, etc., at top tech companies.

1. How would you approach Stand-ups with distributed teams?
2. Is it ideal to recommend stand-ups for all teams regardless of their size and experience level?
3. How can you prevent extreme weariness at retrospectives?
4. Do you believe checking team health in a retrospective is necessary? If yes, what would be your approach?
5. How can you prevent extreme weariness at retrospectives?
6. How can one ensure that the team delivers the action items timely?
7. Ideally, what should a Definition of Ready consist of?
8. One component of the Agile Manifesto mentions ‘People over process.’ Is it not the Scrum Master’s role that enforces ‘the process’ a contradiction?
9. Are there any specific metrics involved that one can track? If yes, which are the metrics that are necessary for this purpose?
10. Your team is consistently failing to meet commitments along with a very unstable Velocity. Why does this occur, and how can you solve the situation?
11. The product owner of Scrum tends to add all kinds of ideas to the backlog to continue working at the next stage. Meanwhile, the number of tickets is over 200 at different stages. What will be your approach in such a situation? Can the Scrum team work on 200 tickets?
12. As a Scrum Master, you have a list of impediments, which is growing without requisite resolutions. Is consulting the Development Team the right course of action?
13. How can a Scrum Master enhance the productivity of the Development team?
14. Do you think Scrum Master is a management position?
15. Is it an ideal practice for a Scrum team to choose a Development Team to be the Scrum Master?
16. Is the Product Owner the only one to communicate with the stakeholders?
17. What should be the ideal personality trait of a Scrum Master?
18. When a Development team identifies a technical issue that requires them to work together, who should facilitate this?
19. When a Scrum Master finds an organization or team member is breaking one or more Agile principles, what should they do?
20. How can you ensure your team implements the Scrum pillars – Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation?’
21. What is the meaning of frames of reference, and what are the challenges Scrum Master face while integrating multiple ones?
22. A Scrum team is in the process of defining product backlog items. The Scrum master sees that the team is not using the User Story format to capture Backlog items. What is the ideal course of action for a Scrum Master?
23. Do you think that conducting the Daily Scrum at the same place and time every day makes it easier for Scrum Master and Product Owner to participate?
24. As a Scrum Master, what factors do you need to take care of while handling remote teams?
25. The Product Owner is a bottleneck by design. How can you support them as a Scrum Master to maximize value?
26. Walk me through your Scrum Demo Session.
27. How can you identify your areas of improvement as a Scrum Master?
28. What are some common challenges you have encountered as a Scrum Master, and how did you approach them?

Most Popular Scrum Master Interview Questions

Here is a list of some tough Scrum Master interview questions, along with Scrum Master behavioral interview questions.

1. Define success factors of Agile.
2. What should be the approach of Scrum Master while communicating with the product owner?
3. Name other Agile frameworks.
4. When should you automate testing in Agile?
5. How can you overcome Stakeholder Resistance?
6. How to create a team in Scrum?
7. What should be the approach to defuse any discord in the team?
8. Define the term ‘Cherry-Picking.’
9. What are Epics and Tasks?
10. How can you help your team work with the most important User Stories first?
11. How to handle a Scrum transition in an organization that used to rely on Waterfall before?
12. Have you managed more than one Scrum team at a time? Tell us about your modus operandi.
13. Consider a scenario where someone takes a leave early without notifying anyone. How will you handle such a situation?
14. What is the build-breaker?
15. Name the skills of a tester adept at Agile.
16. What are the parameters to determine the number of resources necessary for your Scrum team?
17. What should be the ideal size of a Scrum team?
18. Define ‘Ready.’
19. What do you know about the Agile Manifesto? Mention the four values.
20. In which cases is Scrum not applicable?
21. What are the anti-patterns that a Scrum Master may fall during a Scrum session?
22. Is it possible for a team to reach a stage where the Velocity will not fluctuate much?
23. Do you believe the Velocity of a team can assist you in assessing the value delivered by the development team?
24. Does SAP experience of a Scrum Master helps the team work better and improve deliverables?
25. What are the purpose and use of Scrum teams to have working agreements?
26. What challenges have you observed compared to teams using web-based or other latest technologies?
27. What is technical debt? How can a team identify the technical debt in a product?
28. What is the feature usage index? How can it help to identify waste?
29. Define ‘work item age’ metric. Also, mention how it is helpful to identify work items that require attention?
30. What are liberating structures? As a Scrum Master, did you use any of the models?
31. Mention the differences between Done (Shippable) and Done (Releasable)?
32. What do you mean by Nexus Sprint Goal?
33. What is a cumulative flow diagram?
34. Who creates the increment in a Scrum Team?
35. What is the PULL system? How is it essential in enhancing value to the business?
36. What is the Time to Learn metric?
37. What is the Current Value of a product, and how do you measure it?
38. How can you measure the predictability of teams as a Scrum Master?
39. Is Velocity a valid metric to determine how a team will deliver in the future?
40. What is Hypothesis Driven Development?
41. What is DevOps? Do you think it is easy for DevOps teams to transition to an Agile framework?
42. What is Behavior Driven Development?
43. Define WIP limit.
44. As an experienced Scrum Master, did you come across any team working with one day Sprint?
45. Have you worked with any Agile team developing mobile apps? Walk us through the experience.

Most big tech companies now hire Scrum Masters to implement agile principles. Scrum implements an iterative, incremental approach to optimizing future predictions, managing risk, thereby creating the ability of an organization to respond to changes and achieve better results. Therefore, brushing up your conceptual and technical skills and preparing these Scrum Master interview questions will help prepare your technical interview.

FAQs on Scrum Master Interview Questions

Q1. What is the average salary of Scrum Masters in the US?

The average salary for Scrum Masters in the US ranges between $85,000 and $120,000.

Q2. What is the minimum eligibility to become a Scrum Master?

Typically, a Scrum Master needs to possess a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field. Moreover, it is also beneficial and preferable to have relevant experience as an Agile developer.

Q3. How to prepare for a Scrum Master interview?

Know the basics of being a Scrum Master and the Scrum framework. Be ready to answer some questions on Test Driven Development (TDD), Pairing Programming, or Continuous Integration. Have a good knowledge of metrics or tools used for tracking progress. Don’t be afraid to answer challenging questions; take your time and explain your ideas to the interviewer. Also, don’t be shy to ask questions to the interviewer about their Scrum framework. Going through some Scrum Master interview questions and answers is a must.

Q4. What type of Scrum Master interview questions will I face?

Based on your level, you can expect various types of questions in a Scrum master interview. If you’re a fresher, the questions you will face could be: What is Scrum? Define the roles of Scrum? What is a Sprint? What is Velocity? Who is a Scrum Master? If you’re an experienced professional, you can expect questions such as: Walk me through your Scrum Demo Session. How would you approach stand-ups with distributed teams?

Q5. How to answer the “Why should we hire you as Scrum Master” question?

The answer to this question lies in how you tell the interviewer about your experience and ideas as a Scrum Master. Explain what you understand about the role and your unique capabilities for it. Talk about your ability to communicate to the teams and adaptable methods to deliver the organization’s business value.

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