Phone Screen (if applicable)
1) How many years of experience do you have as a scrum master?
2) Why did you apply for this position?
3) Briefly tell me about your current position, responsibilities and day-to-day tasks.
4) What types of projects have you worked on?
5) How many teams and what were the sizes of each of the teams you have worked on simultaneously?
6) What Agile development methods have you used? (Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, KanBan, Crystal, Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Lean Development, and Feature-Driven Development (FDD))
7) What software and tools have you used to manage your teams in the past (TFS, JIRA, Version1, Trello)
8) Can you describe a project where you were a part of the entire project from inception to implementation?
9) What projects have you worked on in the past that required coordination across multiple departments and teams?
10) What do you know about Databases and/or Big Data?
11) Our team is using agile scrum – but are not yet mature. We have multiple teams with some, but not excellent, consistency of rituals and common terms and practices. What are you most excited for, and most concerned about when joining our team?
On-Site Interview - BASE
1. Tell me a little bit about your work-self? What are you passionate about and/or what motivates you?
2. What was the most rewarding or meaningful project that you have worked on?
3. Can you give an example of a time that when you have taken initiative and went beyond your individual role to ensure a projects success?
4. Can you give an example of a time that you have had to overcome an obstacle and be persistent to meet a goal or for a projects success?
5. What technology are you most interested in right now? What have you done to learn about it or apply it?
6. What do you like the most and the least about your current position?
a. Most:
b. Least:
7. I like to ask what are the key concepts or values of scrum. ? Which do you connect with the most and why?
a. Individuals and Interactions Over Processes and Tools
b. Working Software Over Comprehensive Documentation
c. Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation
d. Responding to Change Over Following a Plan
8. When do you think agile the wrong methodology to use?
9. What metrics do you find to be most useful and why when reporting for product owners and stakeholders? What metrics do you find most useful for your own Scrum Master duties and why?
10. Have you been a scrum master for a team where not all members are co-located? If so, what challenges did you encounter and how did you resolve them?
11. Can you give me an example of a time you had to balance multiple competing priorities between multiple product owners and how you went about addressing the issue?
12. What would you do in the following situation? The Epic for this project continues past the current Sprint and has been in progress for at least one prior sprint. The team has been having to roll stories, and it looks like based on current velocity and estimates your team will not be able to align with and deliver the entire epic before an external departments’ deadline for this large project.
OPTIONAL
13. What does a good user story look like? What is its structure?
14. What does the “Definition of Done” mean? Can you give an example?
15. How do you deal with a team member that turns standups into a report on all the nitty gritty details of what they are working on?
16. Retrospectives:
a. In Retros do you ever check the team's health? Is it necessary?
i. If so how do you talk to the team about it?
b. What formats of retros have you used in the past? How have you prevented boredom during retros?
c. How do you follow up on action items for retros?
17. Your scrum team's performance is consistently not meeting commitments AND you have a velocity that is volatile. What are the possible reasons for that? How would you address those issues?
18. We often have to wear multiple hats in our current team configuration. The Scrum Masters have to also perform a lot of the Product Owner roles; Such as driving the project, creating the stories, working with stakeholders, etc.
a. What do you believe will be the biggest obstacle of taking on these two roles at the same time, and how do you plan to overcome that?
b. What experience do you have with project management that you believe will allow you to serve in both roles?
c. How do you plan to keep organized having to take on both roles?
d. In some circumstances we have projects with little ownership, I. E. A project is in maintenance mode and being up kept by someone it was transitioned to, are you comfortable with this?
19. Why is the daily standup/Scrum valuable for the team? – How do you make an ineffective standup more effective?
20. In Agile, why do we estimate size, not duration in the beginning? What does this look like?
21. "On your very best day at work — the day you come home and think you have the best job in the world — what did you do that day
22. "What is your biggest career regret?"
23. The Agile Manifesto says "People over processes." Isn't the Scrum master – a role to enforce "the process" – therefore a contradiction?
24. How do you go about identifying waste? What kinds of waste are there? (incomplete work, unneeded features, relearning, handoffs, delays, context switching, defects)
1) How many years of experience do you have as a scrum master?
2) Why did you apply for this position?
3) Briefly tell me about your current position, responsibilities and day-to-day tasks.
4) What types of projects have you worked on?
5) How many teams and what were the sizes of each of the teams you have worked on simultaneously?
6) What Agile development methods have you used? (Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, KanBan, Crystal, Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Lean Development, and Feature-Driven Development (FDD))
7) What software and tools have you used to manage your teams in the past (TFS, JIRA, Version1, Trello)
8) Can you describe a project where you were a part of the entire project from inception to implementation?
9) What projects have you worked on in the past that required coordination across multiple departments and teams?
10) What do you know about Databases and/or Big Data?
11) Our team is using agile scrum – but are not yet mature. We have multiple teams with some, but not excellent, consistency of rituals and common terms and practices. What are you most excited for, and most concerned about when joining our team?
On-Site Interview - BASE
1. Tell me a little bit about your work-self? What are you passionate about and/or what motivates you?
2. What was the most rewarding or meaningful project that you have worked on?
3. Can you give an example of a time that when you have taken initiative and went beyond your individual role to ensure a projects success?
4. Can you give an example of a time that you have had to overcome an obstacle and be persistent to meet a goal or for a projects success?
5. What technology are you most interested in right now? What have you done to learn about it or apply it?
6. What do you like the most and the least about your current position?
a. Most:
b. Least:
7. I like to ask what are the key concepts or values of scrum. ? Which do you connect with the most and why?
a. Individuals and Interactions Over Processes and Tools
b. Working Software Over Comprehensive Documentation
c. Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation
d. Responding to Change Over Following a Plan
8. When do you think agile the wrong methodology to use?
9. What metrics do you find to be most useful and why when reporting for product owners and stakeholders? What metrics do you find most useful for your own Scrum Master duties and why?
10. Have you been a scrum master for a team where not all members are co-located? If so, what challenges did you encounter and how did you resolve them?
11. Can you give me an example of a time you had to balance multiple competing priorities between multiple product owners and how you went about addressing the issue?
12. What would you do in the following situation? The Epic for this project continues past the current Sprint and has been in progress for at least one prior sprint. The team has been having to roll stories, and it looks like based on current velocity and estimates your team will not be able to align with and deliver the entire epic before an external departments’ deadline for this large project.
OPTIONAL
13. What does a good user story look like? What is its structure?
14. What does the “Definition of Done” mean? Can you give an example?
15. How do you deal with a team member that turns standups into a report on all the nitty gritty details of what they are working on?
16. Retrospectives:
a. In Retros do you ever check the team's health? Is it necessary?
i. If so how do you talk to the team about it?
b. What formats of retros have you used in the past? How have you prevented boredom during retros?
c. How do you follow up on action items for retros?
17. Your scrum team's performance is consistently not meeting commitments AND you have a velocity that is volatile. What are the possible reasons for that? How would you address those issues?
18. We often have to wear multiple hats in our current team configuration. The Scrum Masters have to also perform a lot of the Product Owner roles; Such as driving the project, creating the stories, working with stakeholders, etc.
a. What do you believe will be the biggest obstacle of taking on these two roles at the same time, and how do you plan to overcome that?
b. What experience do you have with project management that you believe will allow you to serve in both roles?
c. How do you plan to keep organized having to take on both roles?
d. In some circumstances we have projects with little ownership, I. E. A project is in maintenance mode and being up kept by someone it was transitioned to, are you comfortable with this?
19. Why is the daily standup/Scrum valuable for the team? – How do you make an ineffective standup more effective?
20. In Agile, why do we estimate size, not duration in the beginning? What does this look like?
21. "On your very best day at work — the day you come home and think you have the best job in the world — what did you do that day
22. "What is your biggest career regret?"
23. The Agile Manifesto says "People over processes." Isn't the Scrum master – a role to enforce "the process" – therefore a contradiction?
24. How do you go about identifying waste? What kinds of waste are there? (incomplete work, unneeded features, relearning, handoffs, delays, context switching, defects)
Comments
Post a Comment