Top 50 Agile Interview Questions and Answers in 2024

The agile methodology is grabbing the eyeballs of many organizations and companies. It has become the gold standard for software development and project management in this modern world. Today, various organizations employ agile methodology to deliver value products to their customers in the shortest span possible.

But what does this agile methodology actually mean? The agile methodology is an iterative and incremental approach to software development and project management, where large and complex projects are split into smaller, manageable tasks. Each task is then accomplished in short iterations. Organizations employing this approach are able to:

• Deliver a product faster,
• Adapt to changing requirements, and
• Optimize their workflow.

The agile methodology has gained massive popularity in recent years, and consequently, companies have introduced it in their organizational structure. As a result, professionals with expertise in the agile domain are in great demand. Thus, you can have a promising career in this domain.

If you are planning to appear for an agile interview and are preparing for the same, these interview questions are ideal for you.

Through this article, we intend to make you familiar with some of the most frequently asked agile interview questions and their answers. These agile interview questions will help you increase your chances of getting through your upcoming interview.

So, let us get started.

Top 50 Agile Interview Questions and Answers

Here, we have a curated list of the top 50 commonly asked agile interview questions and answers. Also, we have divided this list into three types of questions:

1. Beginner-level Agile Interview Questions
2. Intermediate-level Agile Interview Questions
3. Advanced-level Agile Interview Questions

Moreover, we have mentioned a few scenario-based agile interview questions at the end.

Beginner-level Agile Interview Questions and Answers

1. Define agile methodology.

An agile methodology is an approach to software development that centers around incremental and iterative development. The primary idea behind the agile approach is to deliver a product in small functional increments or builds. Every software build is a more enhanced and improved version of its previous build. There is a constant collaboration between the development team and stakeholders for improvements or changes in requirements.

Alternatively, we can define the agile methodology as the process of ensuring customer satisfaction by continuously delivering functional software with constant communication with the stakeholders.

2. Enumerate the different types of agile methodologies.

There are seven types of agile methodologies, as listed below:

1. Scrum
2. Kanban
3. Extreme Programming
4. Feature-Driven Development (FDD)
5. Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
6. Lean
7. Crystal

3. Enlist the pros and cons of the agile methodology.

Following are the notable advantages of the agile methodology:

• Agile is one of the most rapid and flexible approaches to software development.
• Customers can change their requirements at any time throughout the development process.
• It primarily focuses on the frequent delivery of the software product. Therefore, customers get to see the product at the early stages of development.
• Customers can provide feedback on every working deliverable they receive.
• This approach ensures customer satisfaction because the development team works on delivering the product that meets their requirements.
• It majorly concentrates on the good design of the product.
• There is no communication gap since agile involves constant communication between team members and stakeholders.
• Early identification and fixing of bugs or errors.
• This approach is ideal for projects whose requirements are unclear and not defined.

Here are some major disadvantages of the agile methodology:

• Documentation is poor since there is constant change in requirements.
• As the requirements are unclear initially, it becomes challenging to determine the time required to develop the complete product.
• In the agile approach, it is difficult to predict the end results.
• Estimating the resources and effort required to develop a particular project is challenging.
• It is not ideal for developing small and simple projects.
• The agile approach is more expensive than other software development approaches.
• There is a risk of an ever-lasting project.

4. Do you know what the Agile Manifesto is?

The Agile Manifesto is a document containing four core values and 12 principles that development teams should follow to carry out the development process efficiently. It was developed in response to the shortcomings of the traditional software development approach. Moreover, the agile manifesto promotes the development process that concentrates on creating and delivering high-quality products that meet customer requirements.

5. Can you explain the core values of the agile methodology?

The following are the four core values of the agile methodology mentioned in the agile manifesto:

1. Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools: This agile value primarily concentrates on constant communication with clients rather than focusing on processes and tools.
2. Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation: This value states that the agile methodology focuses on delivering working software rather than maintaining comprehensive documentation.
3. Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation: The central focus of the agile approach is customer satisfaction by involving them throughout the development process. It ensures that the end product meets the customers’ requirements.
4. Responding to Change Over Following a Plan: The agile approach is about adapting to customers’ changing requirements rather than following a definite plan for software development.

6. Enumerate 12 principles of the agile methodology.

The following are the 12 principles of the agile methodology that are featured in the agile manifesto:

1. Customer satisfaction through constant collaboration and frequent releases of software.
2. Welcome changes even at the later stages of development.
3. Deliver software frequently after a regular time interval, i.e., a few weeks or a month.
4. Team members and stakeholders constantly collaborate and work together throughout the project.
5. Motivated and encouraged team members to ensure the development of high-quality software.
6. Face-to-face communication is one of the most effective ways to share information within the team.
7. The final product is the primary progress of measure.
8. Everyone involved in the project - stakeholders, team members, and sponsors - should maintain a constant pace to deliver working software with a short software development life cycle .
9. Focus on good design and continuous attention to technical details.
10. Simplicity is essential.
11. Agile teams should be self-organized, which results in the best architecture, design, and requirements.
12. Teams think of becoming more effective after a regular time interval and then adjust themselves accordingly.

7. Can you state the differences between agile and traditional software development?

The following table highlights the differences between agile and traditional software development:

8. What do you understand about incremental and iterative development in agile?

Agile is an iterative and incremental approach to software development and project management.

Incremental Development

In incremental development, the large project is split into smaller tasks or increments. Next, the development team builds each increment with the specific features, tests it, and delivers it to customers. They build each iteration based on the previous iteration. Later, the team integrates all the tested increments to form a complete product.

Iterative Development

In iterative development, the development team builds a working product in repeated cycles, called iterations. Initially, the development team releases a build with a few basic requirements and releases it to customers. Later, new requirements are added to that build in the subsequent iterations. The cycle goes on until the final product is developed.

9. What do you understand about agile testing?

Agile testing is a software testing process that follows the values and principles of agile software development to test software products and identify bugs and defects. It starts as soon as the development of software begins. This is because development and testing go hand in hand with agile development. Development and testing processes are not sequential in the agile approach.

10. What qualities, according to you, should an agile tester possess?

An agile tester must possess the following qualities:

• Completely focused on the goal of delivering high-quality software.
• Good communication skills.
• A positive attitude.
• Creative and critical thinking.
• The ability to understand the customers’ requirements.
• Easily adaptable to changes.
• Should be able to plan and prioritize tasks depending on the requirements.

11. State the principles of agile testing.

The following are the 8 principles of agile testing:

1. Continuous Testing: Agile involves simultaneous development and testing. After the development of every feature, Agile testers test it immediately.
2. Continuous Feedback: Agile testers continuously provide feedback to developers regarding the quality of the product. Also, they help developers to ensure that the product meets the customers’ requirements.
3. Involvement of the Whole Team: Along with testers, developers and business analysts also carry out testing. Thus, agile testing involves the active participation of the whole team.
4. Clean Code: Agile testers immediately fix any defect or error found in the product, which results in clean code.
5. Software Quality: Agile testers ensure the high quality of the product by maintaining clean code. Also, frequent testing helps in identifying vulnerabilities and issues that can be fixed as soon as detected.
6. Less Documentation: One of the core values of the agile methodology is working software over documentation. The same also applies here. Also, agile testing leverages reusable checklists rather than lengthy documentation.
7. Test-Driven: Agile testing is test-driven since development and testing take place at the same time.
8. Customer Satisfaction: Agile testing allows customers to view the development process and provide feedback and changes, which ensures customer satisfaction.

12. List out some agile quality strategies.

Here are some major agile quality strategies:

• Dynamic code analysis
• Iteration
• Refactoring
• Short feedback cycles
• Standards and guidelines
• Reviews and inspection
• Milestone reviews

13. What do you understand by refactoring?

Refactoring in agile is the process of modifying or optimizing a software product’s internal structure without changing its external behavior or functionality. Generally, developers tweak the source code of the product to improve or enhance its internal structure. The primary purpose of refactoring is to make more code clean, understandable, and readable. Moreover, the practice of refactoring makes it easier to maintain code.

14. Can you tell me something about dynamic code analysis?

Dynamic code analysis in agile is the process consisting of various steps, which include preparing input data, running the test program, and analyzing the output. It automates various test processes. We just need to define project-related rules and standards for test processes.

Moreover, dynamic code analysis helps in identifying errors or bugs in the product at the early stages. It improves the quality of the product’s source code and security.

15. What do you know about the term ‘sprint’?

In agile development, a sprint is a specific time period during which the development team completes a particular task and makes it ready for review. Each sprint in agile starts with a planning meeting. In this meeting, the product owner and the development team decide what task has to be accomplished in that particular sprint.

16. Can you explain the terms product backlog and sprint backlog?

Sprint Backlog: A sprint backlog consists of features and requirements associated with a specific sprint. In other words, it consists of everything that needs to be accomplished in a specific sprint. It is the subset of the product backlog, and the development team is responsible for maintaining it.

Product Backlog: Unlike the sprint backlog, a product backlog comprises features and requirements associated with the entire product. It includes everything that needs to be achieved throughout the product development. Moreover, it divides items into various tasks. It is the superset of the sprint backlog, and the project manager owns it.

17. What do you know about the spike and zero sprints in agile?

Spike: A spike in agile is usually a user story (the smallest unit of work) for which developers cannot estimate the effort needed. In such a case, the development team can run the timeboxed investigation or exploration to identify and understand issues and come up with possible solutions. The development team can leverage such user stories or spikes in research, designing, exploration, and prototyping.

Zero Sprint: The zero sprint, also known as inception sprint or iteration zero, is the first step or pre-preparation step involved before the first sprint takes place. This sprint does not require any guidelines or content. However, it has some defined goals, such as:

• Listing out all the prioritized user stories and features.
• Aligning features and stories to a sprint.
• Setting up the development environment.
• Preparing product backlog.

18. Explain the term ‘velocity’ in the context of agile.

The term ‘velocity’ in agile development is the measuring unit to calculate the time the development team takes to accomplish a particular task in a single sprint or the time they take to finish the final product. It helps the development teams to create accurate and efficient timelines. Moreover, it helps to detect problems and gauge the improvements that occur with time.

19. Can you tell me something about a product roadmap?

As its name indicates, a product roadmap is the plan of action that the agile team needs to take for a product to evolve over time. It outlines product vision, direction, priorities, and progress over time. In other terms, a product roadmap is the plan of action that aligns the development team with a product’s short and long-term goals. It is owned by the product owner.

20. What is pair programming? List out its benefits.

In pair programming, two people work together to develop high-quality and clean code. Since there are two programmers in pair programming, one is responsible for writing the code and the other for reviewing the code. More interestingly, both programmers can switch their roles. Following are the benefits of pair programming:

• Development of high-quality, defect-free, and maintainable code.
• Reduced risk of errors or defects.
• Improved productivity.
• Improved team collaboration.
• It facilitates knowledge sharing.

Intermediate-Level Agile Interview Questions and Answers

21. Can you explain the Scrum methodology?

Scrum is one of the popular agile methodologies for software development that follows both incremental and iterative processes. It is a flexible, adaptable, and effective agile framework that delivers value to customers throughout project development. Scrum is a lightweight framework whose primary objective is to satisfy customers’ requirements and deliver a product in the shortest time.

The scrum methodology follows all the 12 principles of agile. In this methodology, the scrum team executes a project in blocks, which are short and periodic. These blocks are called sprints, which usually range from two to four weeks. Moreover, each sprint provides a complete result, which is the variation of the final product and is delivered to the client.

22. What are the different roles in scrum?

There are three different roles in the scrum team, namely Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Team.

1. Scrum Master: A scrum master is a person responsible for managing the scrum team and guiding them to comply with the rules and principles of the scrum methodology. They ensure that the team works properly and executes the committed tasks on time.
2. Product Owner: A product owner is a stakeholder responsible for managing the product backlog. They are responsible for defining the vision of the product for the team.
3. Team: A team is a group of professionals with the technical expertise required for developing a high-quality project. They work together to deliver the project to the product owner in increments.

23. Can you state the responsibilities of a scrum master?

A scrum master is a professional responsible for managing and monitoring the scrum team and making sure that the team follows the Scrum framework. The scrum master is also responsible for guiding team members so that they can work better and achieve the best results.

The following are the responsibilities of a Scrum Master:

• Creating and onboarding project teams, integrating them into an organization, and making them familiar with a product’s goals and vision.
• Facilitating communication and information exchange between the project team and stakeholders.
• Arranging meetings with the scrum team every day to keep track of the progress of the project and ensure that it is on track.
• Hosting frequent sessions with stakeholders to share the project’s status and updates.
• Motivating and encouraging the team members to work effectively and achieve the project goals.
• Ensuring that the team delivers the expected value within the given deadline or in every sprint.
• Managing internal roadblocks and eliminating external blockers.

24. Can you state the advantages and disadvantages of scrum?

The following are the advantages of the scrum methodology:

• Scrum is ideal to use for projects with unclear and undefined requirements at the onset of the development.
• It splits the project into small and manageable sprints.
• It requires less documentation and control, and hence, it is cost-effective.
• Every team member works to fulfill their responsibilities, which results in a high-quality product.
• It demands customer involvement throughout the development process. Therefore, changes in requirements are accepted at any stage of the development.
• The scrum team develops a product that meets customers’ requirements. This ensures customer satisfaction.

Here are the disadvantages of the scrum methodology:

• The scrum team requires highly skilled and experienced members.
• It requires a small team consisting of at least 3 and an utmost 10 people.
• Daily meetings may frustrate team members.
• If any team member leaves in between, it may have a huge negative impact on the project.

25. Do you know about the major artifacts of the scrum methodology?

The scrum methodology has three significant artifacts, as explained below:

1. Product Backlog: It consists of all the requirements from the clients and stakeholders that they expect in a project, and the team should accomplish them by the end of the project.
2. Sprint Backlog: It comprises the list of all finalized user stories, work items, bug fixes, and so on that the team has to achieve in a particular sprint.
3. Product Increment: It consists of the vision of the end product derived from the completion of each sprint.

26. Can you explain the terms user story, epic, and task in scrum?

User Story: A user story is the list of items or the smallest unit of work that the scrum team needs to complete in a particular sprint. The product owner of the project owns user stories. Each user story can be further split into multiple tasks.

Epic: Epic is usually a large story that cannot be accomplished in a single sprint. It may take months to accomplish a single epic. Since the scrum team cannot accomplish an epic in a single sprint, it is divided into multiple, smaller user stories.

Task: A task in scrum is a detailed piece of work. The scrum team has to finish all the tasks under a particular user story to convert it into a workable component. Unless the team does not finish all the tasks under a user story, it is considered incomplete.

27. Differentiate between agile and scrum.

Scrum is one of the methodologies of agile. Both these methodologies ensure customer satisfaction with constant collaboration and frequent release of the project. The following table highlights some of the major differences between agile and scrum:

28. What are the types of agile metrics?

There are three types of agile metrics:

1. Kanban Metrics: Kanban metrics primarily concentrate on measuring the total time invested and the results achieved.
2. Scrum Metrics: Scrum metrics focus on measuring the amount of work done in the given time period.
3. Lean Metrics: These metrics majorly focus on calculating the production efficiency and product quality by testing various features, foreseeing negative effects, and detecting possible errors.

29. Do you know about standard metrics for agile?

Agile metrics are standard metrics for measuring the productivity of a team throughout the development process. These metrics measure the team’s productivity, quality of work, health, progress, and so forth. Following are some common standard metrics for agile:

• Agile Velocity: This metric measures the number of story points the team has accomplished in the past few sprints.
• Sprint Burndown: This metric measures the number of story points the team has finished and is unable to finish in a particular sprint. It helps to determine whether the team will complete the remaining story points on time.
• Epic and Release Burndown: It is analogous to Sprint burndown. Also, it calculates the efficiency of team members before and after every sprint.
• Lead Time: The lead time is the total time from the moment a particular task is created until it gets accomplished.
• Cycle Time: Cycle time is the subset of lead time. It is the total time between the start of a task and its completion.
• Code Coverage: This metric measures the percentage of your code the unit tests cover.
• Escaped Defects: Escaped defects are defects that are detected after the build or release of a product enters production. Ideally, escaped defects should be zero.
• Control Chart: This chart is associated with the cycle time. It represents the cycle time of each issue, which helps team members to improve their efficiency.

30. What do you know about burn-up and burn-down charts in agile?

Burn-up Chart: The burn-up chart represents the amount of work the team has completed. It also represents the total amount of work for each iteration or sprint.

Burn-down Chart: The burn-down chart represents the amount of work left that the team has to complete in the project.

31. Can you explain the different types of burn-down charts?

There are four types of burn-down charts, as listed below:

1. Project Burn-down Chart: This burn-down chart highlights the story points of each completed sprint. It offers an overview of requirements that have been fulfilled over time. In short, it represents the project goals that have been achieved and the ones that are yet to be achieved.
2. Sprint Burn-down Chart: The sprint burn-down chart represents the remaining work that the team has to complete in a particular sprint. This chart makes the work of every team member visible and highlights the rate at which the work is being completed.
3. Release Burn-down Chart: This type of chart displays the progress of the current release of the product. The scrum master is responsible for updating the release burn-down chart after every sprint. In addition, this chart helps to determine the progress made in each sprint.
4. Defect Burn-down Chart: The defect burn-down chart displays all the defects that are identified and fixed.

32. List different project management tools used in agile.

The following are some common project management tools used in agile:

• Agilo
• X-planner
• Version One
• Rally Software
• Icescrum
• Agilent

33. What do you understand about agile estimation? List out different agile estimation techniques.

Agile estimation is the process of estimating the effort required to finish a prioritized task in the product backlog. Moreover, this effort is gauged with respect to the time required to finish that task. The following are some popular agile estimation techniques:

• Planning Poker
• Analogy
• T-Shirt Size Estimation
• Dot Voting
• Affinity Mapping
• Bucket System Estimation
• Three-Point Method
• Fibonacci Sequence for Story Point Estimation

Advanced-Level Agile Interview Questions and Answers

Explain the various meetings that take place in Scrum.

Ans : Generally, there are five different meetings that take place in every sprint of a project. They are as follows:

1. Sprint Planning Meeting: It is a weekly meeting where the product owner, scrum master, and scrum team have a discussion before the beginning of a sprint. In this meeting, they discuss what features or requirements the team has to accomplish in the current sprint. Moreover, it is one of the longest meetings that last for 2 to 3 hours.
2. Daily Standup Meeting: As its name suggests, the daily standup meeting takes place every day before starting the work. In this meeting, team members will be assigned what they need to accomplish for a particular day. Generally, daily standup meetings last for 15 to 20 minutes.
3. Sprint Review Meeting: The sprint review meeting takes place at the end of each sprint. The primary purpose of this meeting is to gather feedback from stakeholders on features and functionalities accomplished in a sprint.
4. Sprint Retrospective Meeting: This meeting also takes place after every sprint. The main goal of this meeting is to discuss what strategies worked, what went wrong, and what to do and what not to do in the next sprint. In a nutshell, this meeting helps to boost the development process.
5. Product Backlog Refinement Meeting: In the product backlog refinement meeting, the scrum team and the product owner discuss significant items of the product backlog. It takes place after every sprint to make sure that the backlog for the next sprint is ready.

35. What do you know about timeboxing in scrum?

Timeboxing in scrum is the process of allocating the fixed time to a specific event or activity. There is a fixed unit of time for every task or activity. This unit is referred to as a time box. In the scrum methodology, all the activities are time-boxed. This means that each activity is allotted a fixed unit of time. The primary goal of timeboxing is to improve productivity and split the project into fixed periods or time boxes.

The following are some significant events that are time-boxed in scrum:

• Sprint: The timebox for each sprint is one week.
• Sprint Planning: The timebox for sprint planning should not exceed 2 hours.
• Daily Scrum: The timebox for daily scrum is 15 minutes.
• Sprint Review: The timebox for sprint review is 1 hour.
• Sprint Retrospective: The timebox for sprint retrospective is 1 hour.

36. Explain the term ‘impediments’ in Scrum.

The term ‘impediment’ refers to anything that keeps the team from getting things done, which in turn, slows down velocity. In other words, an impediment is something that blocks or stops the progress of the team. The team may experience impediments in several ways, such as a sick team member, missing resources, lack of management support, technical or operational issues, or power outages.

Moreover, it is the responsibility of the scrum master to resolve all impediments that the scrum team may face.

37. Can you explain the role of Sashimi in scrum?

Basically, the term ‘Sashimi’ is a Japanese word meaning pierced body. It is a Japanese dish consisting of thin pieces of meat or fish. In the scrum methodology, Sashimi is a technique to ensure whether the software product has undergone all the phases of the software development life cycle.

38. What is the story point in scrum?

A story point is an agile metric that helps in estimating the difficulty of implementing the user story. In simple terms, a story point is a number that helps team members to determine the difficulty level of a user story.

39. Can you explain Scrum of Scrums (SoS)?

Scrum of Scrums in agile development is a technique in which one scrum team meets another scrum team working on the same project and integrates their work. In short, Scrum of Scrums is a meeting where the representatives of different scrum teams provide updates regarding their respective team’s work. It helps multiple teams to develop and deliver complex solutions with coordination.

40. What do you understand about the team SAFe?

SAFe stands for Scaled Agile Framework. It is a set of organizational and workflow patterns that guide enterprises in scaling agile practices. In other words, we can define SAFe as the set of best practices, principles, and methods that guide organizations and enterprises to adopt various agile methodologies, like Lean, Kanban, and Scrum, to deliver high-quality products. When there is a large and complex project which involves large teams, the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is ideal to use.

41. State the principles of SAFe.

Following are the principles of SAFe:

• Delivering a high-quality and best product to customers within a short lead time requires a basic understanding of the economics of building systems.
• SAFe encourages people to use a framework that applies systems thinking to three primary areas: the solution or product, the organization building the system, and the value streams.
• It is better to maintain multiple design options and requirements for a more extended period in the development cycle.
• Developing products incrementally in short iterations mitigates potential risks and enables faster customer feedback.
• It is a shared responsibility of a business owner, developers, and customers to ensure that the investment in the product under development results in good economic value.
• Visualize and limit the work in progress (WIP), reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths.
• Applying development cadence and synchronization, along with periodic cross-domain planning, provides the mechanism to carry out development effectively, reduces complexity, and enhances product quality.
• Motivate knowledge workers.
• Decentralized decision-making results in fast value delivery. Moreover, it reduces delays, improves product development flows, and enables faster feedback from customers.
• Organize around principles and values.

42. Enumerate the benefits of SAFe.

Here are some notable benefits of SAFe:

• SAFe aligns cross-functional agile teams around values and principles that help enterprises quickly meet their customers’ needs.
• It ensures high product quality since quality is one of the core values of SAFe.
• SAFe boosts productivity by eliminating unnecessary work, removing impediments, and motivating members to reach the project goals soon.
• It increases employee engagement. Moreover, it assists organizations in reducing burnout and improving employees’ satisfaction.

43. Can you explain the agile inverted triangle?

The agile inverted triangle is the opposite of the traditional triangle. In the traditional triangle, time and cost are variable, and the scope is fixed. On the other hand, the time and cost are fixed, and the scope is variable in the agile inverted triangle.

44. When do you use the waterfall model over scrum?

We can use the waterfall model over scrum when the customer requirements are simple, predictable, well-defined, understandable, and unable to change until the completion of the project.

Scenario-Based Agile Interview Questions

45. Which agile methodology is your favorite? Which one do you use?

46. Can you share your experience working as a scrum master or product owner, or agile team member?

47. What was the length of sprints in your previous project?

48. What was your biggest challenge while working as an agile team member, product owner, or scrum master?

49. How do you prioritize user stories in your project?

50. How will you choose the resources required for the scrum team?

Conclusion

Here we reach the end of the commonly asked agile interview questions and answers. This article will surely help you get familiar with the type of questions that you can expect in an agile interview. We have divided the list of agile interview questions into three levels intended for beginners, intermediates, and professionals.

If you are an experienced professional, the interviewer may ask you scenario-based agile interview questions or questions based on your experience working with various projects.

So, we recommend preparing your answers to those questions as well. We hope you will find this article helpful to ace your upcoming agile interview. Good Luck!

People are also reading:

• What is Grey Box Testing?
• What is System Testing?
• Alpha Testing vs Beta Testing
• SDLC vs STLC
• What is Unit Testing?
• What is Functional Testing?
• Principles of Software Testing
• Manual Interview Questions
• What is Agile Methodology?
• What is Debugging?