45 Questions to Ask a Scrum Master (With Sample Answers)

45 Questions to Ask a Scrum Master (With Sample Answers)

The scrum method can help you keep track of what your team members are doing and make sure they meet their deadlines. As a scrum master, you can help organize the steps developers need to take to finish their work on time. You can also meet with clients to accept new projects. If you want to be a scrum manager or have an interview coming up, it’s a good idea to look over some of the most common interview questions. This article talks about 45 interview questions for a job as a scrum master and gives some examples of how to answer some of them.

15 Questions to Ask a Scrum Master in General

Most of the time, interviewers will ask you broad questions to find out why you want the job. They might also want to know more about you as a person to see if you would fit in with the culture of their team. At the start of an interview, people often ask general questions to learn more about you as a person before asking more specific questions about your background and work history. Here are some of the most common questions about the job of scrum master:

1. What do you do well and what do you do wrong?
2. How well can you do different things at the same time?
3. Tell me about yourself.
4. How would your former coworkers describe you?
5. What do you like to do outside of work?
6. What could you bring to our company that no one else could?
7. What do you know about our company?
8. Where do you see yourself in five years?
9. Describe a scrum.
10. How would you explain what you do at work?
11. How do you handle negative comments?
12. Do you like to keep things in order?
13. Are you willing to put in extra time when it’s needed?
14. Why do you want to work at this place?
15. Do you have a question for me?

13 questions about experience and background

Once the interviewer knows more about you as a person, they may ask you about your work history and experience. The person interviewing you can learn more about what you wrote on your resume by asking you these questions. You could also use these questions to talk about any important information that didn’t fit on your resume. When answering questions about your experience and background, it might help to say things in a way that shows how your past has prepared you for this new role.

Here are some questions you could ask about a scrum master’s background and experience:

1. Could you put something on your resume about this job?
2. What do you have to do at the job you have now?
3. Why do you want to leave your job and work for us instead?
4. Do you prefer to work alone or with a group?
5. Why did you send in an application for a job?
6. What would you say about how you run a business?
7. What was the most helpful job you had before this one?
8. How do you handle fights between people on your team?
9. Do you know how to work with different kinds of people?
10. Tell me about some of the problems you’ve had to solve so far in your career.
11. What is the most important thing you have done in your career?
12. What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you at work?
13. You might want to go back to school.

13 in-depth scrum master questions

When you are asked detailed questions, the interviewer can learn more about how qualified you are for the job. Most of the time, these questions are more technical than others and need more details and examples. When preparing for the interview, it’s helpful to practice your answers to some of the more in-depth questions that are often asked about the role. Here are some examples of in-depth questions:

1. Could you explain what each person does in a scrum?
2. What is the difference between scrum and sprint?
3. What is user story mapping?
4. What do your daily stand-up meetings usually involve?
5. How do you describe a storyboard in agile?
6. In a scrum, how do you figure out how fast a sprint is?
7. Can you define a release candidate?
8. What do you think a scrum master’s most important skills should be?
9. What is a “product backlog,” and how does it work?
10. What are the worst things about using scrum?
11. What are the main reasons for using scrum?
12. How long do you usually spend setting things up as a scrum master?
13. What’s the difference between a burnup chart and a burndown chart?

4 questions to ask a scrum master at an interview and some sample answers

When preparing for an interview, it can be helpful to write down your answers to common questions. Here are some answers that might help you think of your own:

How would scrum help our company?

If you apply for a job as a scrum master, you might take over the duties of a scrum master who has left the company, or you might help the company start its first scrum program. No matter what you’re doing, it can be helpful to be able to explain how the scrum method helps a company work better.

Example: “With the scrum method, your company can be more productive and managers won’t have to check on team members as often. Scrum makes sure that everyone on the team knows which projects are finished and which ones are still being worked on. If your team has trouble figuring out who is in charge of which projects, scrum can be a good way to assign tasks while still letting employees manage themselves.”

2.What would you do if your employees didn’t want to use scrum?

If the company you’re applying to isn’t used to using scrum to organize projects, you may find some resistance from employees. How you answer this question can show how good of a manager you are and how diplomatic you can be without getting mad at your employees.

Example: “I’ve worked with teams that didn’t know how to use scrum in the past. I’ve found that the best way to get everyone on board is to have a friendly competition. Team members can get excited about the chance to be the most productive worker on the team by making scrum a race to see who can finish the most tasks. It can also help to reward the person on the team who finishes the most tasks in a day with things like gift cards or a paid lunch. Most people can see how scrum can help them get more done after using it for a few weeks.”

How do you deal with team members who take on tasks but don’t get them done on time?

Scrum lets people start projects with the goal of finishing them by a certain date. The scrum system can fall apart if employees take on projects but don’t finish them on time. For continued success, it’s important that everyone finishes their work on time, so it’s important to have plans in place in case this doesn’t happen.

Example: “When projects don’t get done on time, it could be because the scrum stories weren’t broken up into small enough pieces. As part of the scrum process, it’s important to be able to deliver projects in small pieces so that employees can see how they’re coming along. If the scrum stories aren’t getting done on time, it might be a good idea to break each section into smaller pieces so that more than one person on the team can work on a more complicated project at the same time.”

4. What would you do if an old technology that not everyone on your team knows how to use needs to be used for a project?

When making software for old systems, your team might have to use old technology they don’t know how to use. This can be a problem because team members will have to learn a new system as they go, which will slow down work while they catch up. When asked how you would handle this situation, it helps to have a ready answer that shows you can solve problems.

Example: “When working on projects that require technology that no one knows how to use, it helps to set up the employees so that each team has a member who knows how to use the technology. It can also help to group the stories in a way that lets employees who don’t know much about the technology still have their say. If there is still confusion about how to use the technology, I would hire someone from outside the team to teach them how to use it most effectively.”