From describing your problem-solving from a scrum perspective to determining team velocity, here are 11 answers to the question, “Can you share commonly asked interview questions for scrum masters?
- Describe How You Used Scrum to Problem Solve
- What Are the Three Pillars of Scrum?
- What’s Your Experience With Managing Remote Teams?
- Have You Effectively Handled a Conflict Within a Scrum Team?
- How Do You Measure Success as a Scrum Master?
- How Do You Bring “Scrum Values” to the Team?
- How Do You Ensure a Successful Agile Project?
- Why Did You Choose Scrum Master as Your Career?
- What Are the Most Important Roles and Responsibilities?
- How Will You Help Us Adapt to Scrum Principles?
- How Do You Calculate the Velocity of Your Team?
Describe How You Used Scrum to Problem Solve
This question allows the interviewer to gain insight into how the candidate has applied their knowledge of Scrum in actual workplace scenarios.
It also gives them an understanding of how well the candidate is able to handle difficult team dynamics and solve problems. The ideal answer should demonstrate the candidate’s ability to lead a team while keeping everyone in the loop and promoting cooperation between all involved parties.
Aviad Faruz, CEO, FARUZO
What Are the Three Pillars of Scrum?
Scrum is the most common Agile environment designed to resolve complicated issues. When interviewing for a Scrum Master position, it’s essential to be familiar with the framework’s values and principles.
The best way to ensure that a candidate understands and will be able to work in line with Scrum’s empirical fundamentals is asking them about its three pillars and ways they would manage them in practice. The pillars, which are transparency, inspection, and adaptation, are what make the framework successful. That’s why a good understanding of them is crucial when applying for any Scrum Master job.
Maja Kowalska, Community Manager, Zety
What’s Your Experience With Managing Remote Teams?
Increasingly, Scrum Masters can expect to be asked about their experience with managing remote or hybrid teams. It seems quite out of the norm to ask this; however, the reality of the world of work is that they’re going to need this experience, particularly if they’re working with external teams or providers who only work in a remote fashion, and who may come under the umbrella of the Scrum Master’s management requirements.
Wendy Makinson, HR Manager, Joloda Hydraroll
Have You Effectively Handled a Conflict Within a Scrum Team?
As a Scrum Master, conflict is an inevitable aspect of the job, and it’s essential to have the skills and knowledge to handle it effectively. This question assesses the Scrum Master’s ability to manage conflicts and keep the team on track. When answering this question, it’s crucial to highlight an approach to effective conflict resolution.
Matt Artz, Business Anthropologist, Azimuth Labs
How Do You Measure Success as a Scrum Master?
This is an important question because it gives the Scrum Master an opportunity to talk about their duties and responsibilities. A good answer might be something like, “I measure my success as a Scrum Master by looking at how many issues have been resolved and how many meetings have been eliminated.”
Another good answer might be, “I measure my success as a Scrum Master by looking at how many projects have been completed on time and under budget.” It’s also important that the Scrum Master acknowledges that their team’s success is tied to their own success.
Luciano Colos, Founder & CEO, PitchGrade
How Do You Bring “Scrum Values” to the Team?
This can be a more abstract concept and not easily measurable, so an uncommon example of a question might be “Describe a situation where you have had to practice the principles of servant leadership in order to facilitate success within your team.”
This would help reference their understanding that it’s not just about using the methodology, but rather also enabling collaboration and motivating teamwork. Although they might not have been faced with such a scenario yet, this question gives an interviewee an opportunity to show their theoretical knowledge and thought process in their answer.
Grace He, People & Culture Director, teambuilding.com
How Do You Ensure a Successful Agile Project?
A successful Scrum Master should be able to explain the various roles and responsibilities of team members in an Agile project, including their own role as the Scrum Master. They should also be able to describe how to effectively plan and execute sprints, as well as how to ensure the team meets their goals. Furthermore, they should be able to explain how to best use the Agile methodology to ensure that the project is successful. With these skills and knowledge, a successful Scrum Master should be able to confidently answer this question during an interview.
Shaun Connell, Founder, Writing Tips Institute
Why Did You Choose Scrum Master as Your Career?
While not a technical question, one you should be ready to answer during an interview is: “Why did you choose Scrum Master as your career?” Consider sharing the top skills and strengths you have that align with those of successful Scrum Masters, and how you regularly exhibit those throughout your workday.
Kelli Anderson, Career Coach, Resume Seed
What Are the Most Important Roles and Responsibilities?
The role of a Scrum Master is to help the team embrace agility, continuously improve processes, facilitate activities, remove impediments, and act as the liaison between the team and stakeholders. Therefore, they must be highly organized, possess strong facilitation skills, and have excellent communication abilities.
As a Scrum Master, you must use your technical knowledge to help the team understand how their work fits into the overall big picture. You must also be able to coach the team on how to best use Scrum so they can increase their productivity and efficiency.
Yusuf Shurbaji, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Prismfly
How Will You Help Us Adapt to Scrum Principles?
The interviewer is looking to understand how you will ensure that the organization understands and follows Agile principles. Your answer should demonstrate how you plan to communicate and educate the entire organization, helping everyone transition seamlessly into Scrum processes.
Mark McShane, Marketing Director, Leeds First Aid Courses
How Do You Calculate the Velocity of Your Team?
This question is important because calculating the right velocity of the Scrum team makes planning easier. That is why most interviewers ask this question to clarify whether the Scrum Master has the capability to calculate the accurate capacity and velocity of the team or not.
Jeff Tse, Co-Founder, CrazeCosplay
