Conquer Your Career: Scrum Master, Agile Coach & PMP Exam Prep (Part III)

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Continued From Part II HERE

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Interview And Test Prep For Agile, Scrum And PMP Roles: 

QUES: What are the different sizing and estimation techniques in project management?
ANS: See it’s very difficult to estimate anything accurately, to tell exactly how long something will take to get done. So that is taken into account in traditional partial management. And that is why our estimates have a little buffer of hours, days or weeks, so that we can at least get our work done within that estimated time frame.
a. An agile methodology actually uses what is called relative estimation, because we are good at comparing two similar kind of projects so that we get an estimate of the timeline of a previously similar project. Story points are the most commonly used measurement. They’re based on the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, or some variation of it. It is a sequence of one, two, three, five, eight, 13, and so on. For example, if a golf ball sized project takes two days, then what is the amount of time it will take to do a soccer ball sized project? Relative sizing is the most common form of estimation for agile projects.
b. Next kind of estimation is affinity. This is where you group your stories into similar categories or affinities. If a story takes up size one, you put all of them together in one row. If some of them take two, you put them in the 2 row, and so on and so forth. That is how you get a total time estimate of the entire story points of a project.
c. Another technique is called the Wideband Delphi. This is a group-based estimation technique where a panel of experts, your team, anonymously submit their estimates. This method is great because it eliminates human biases. There’s a flavor of WD which is very common, called planning poker. The name from this gamified technique is planning poker because participants use physical cards to show their estimates on the table – for how long they think each task on the product backlog might take.
d. There’s also HPPO decision making. HPPO stands for highest paid person’s opinion, and, as you can guess, people tend to defer to them as being experts as well as superiors. And group think, where people make decisions to keep harmony instead of voicing their true opinions. These behaviors will skew the accuracy of the estimates and impede the progress of the team.

QUES: What are four agile values four agile values or what is the Agile Manifesto?
ANS: 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

QUES: Who has authority to cancel the sprint?
ANS: Product Owner

QUES: What is the main reason for the scrum master to be at the daily scrum?
ANS: This is a trick question. The Scrum master is not needed in the daily standups, they just have to ensure the developers attend it.

QUES: What are the triple constraints of Project Management?
ANS: Time, Cost and Scope. It is also known as the Iron Triangle. This theory states that time, cost, and scope are three constraints that every project has.

QUES: What does it mean to say that an event has a time boxed?
ANS: This means the event can take no more than a maximum amount of time

QUES: What is the typical duration of a sprint?
ANS: One week to four weeks

QUES: What is Dev Ops?
ANS: DevOps is the practice of partnership between software development and operations engineers.

QUES: When might a sprint be abnormally cancelled?
ANS: When the split goal becomes obsolete.

QUES: What is Progressive elaboration?
ANS: The process of gathering project details. This process uses deductive reasoning, logic, and a series of information gathering techniques to identify details about a project, product, or solution. Progressive elaboration is how you apply the new info into the replanning, to reprioritize.

QUES: What are the three Scrum Artifacts?
ANS: Scrum’s artifacts represent work or value. They are designed to maximize transparency of key information. Thus, everyone them has the same basis for adaptation. Each artifact contains a commitment to ensure it provides information that enhances transparency and against which can be measured:
a. For the Product Backlog it is the Goal.
b. For the Sprint Backlog it is the Sprint Goal.
c. For the Increment it is the Definition of Done.

QUES: What is the Project Management Institute (PMI)?
ANS: An organization of project management professionals from around the world, supporting and promoting the careers, values, and concerns of project managers.

QUES: What is the Project management office (PMO)?
ANS: A central office that oversees all projects within an organization or within a functional department. A PMO supports the project manager through software, training, templates, policies, communication, dispute resolution, and other services.

QUES: What are the problems for a new Scrum Master?
ANS: Complexity, uncertainty and risk: So starts with trying to understand people, process, product.

QUES: What is an MVP?
ANS: A minimum viable product is a product that has just the bare minimum required feature which can be demonstrated and shipped to the stakeholders in each sprint.

QUES: What is a Gantt chart?
ANS: The waterfall methodology of project management is often visualized in the form of a flow chart or a Gantt chart. This methodology is called waterfall because each task cascades into the next step. In a Gantt chart, you can see the previous phase “fall” into the next phase.

QUES: What are the most important metrics for measuring a project success?
ANS: The important metrics for measuring project success include completion rate, budget and cost performance, customer satisfaction, and quality of the end product.

QUES: 5 Stages of Project management or project life cycle?
ANS: Initiation: What is the purpose, what needs to be achieved?
Planning: How can I achieve the goal
Execution: Who is going to do what within a time frame
Monitoring and Controlling: Autonomy of team members, remove impediments, monitor performances
Closing: Assess if project has met acceptance criteria.

QUES: What are the different kinds of Agile Estimation techniques?
ANS: There are about 7 AGILE ESTIMATION TECHNIQUES. They are:
1. Planning Poker
2. T-Shirt Sizes
3. Dot Voting
4. The Bucket System
5. Large/Uncertain/Small
6. Affinity Mapping
7. Ordering method
8. Fibonacci sequence: Scoring scale

QUES: What are the metrics tracked by any project manager?
ANS: KPIs: Tracked by agile teams.
Rate of progress: Number of stories completed and accepted for release.
Remaining work: What is left in the backlog. (shown in story points)
Completion Data: Remaining stories
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Rate of progress
Likely costs remaining: Salary burn rate multiplied by weeks remaining

QUES: What are WIP Limits in Project management?
ANS: WIP limits or work in progress limits is a project management strategy to prevent any bottlenecks in the project’s progress. By setting a limit on the total workflow verified and facilitated by the team, it makes sure that the resources are not overburdened.

QUES: What Are JAD Sessions?
ANS: JAD stands for: Joint application design. You’ll need to satisfy a wide range of stakeholders during software improvement projects. While this is true for all projects, improvement initiatives can often provide unique challenges. How can you guarantee that every voice is heard? You should consider holding a joint application design, or JAD, session to address that issue. Let’s examine a JAD session’s operation and potential benefits for you. A JAD is a collaborative technique to collect requirements from a range of people and groups, first. It puts an emphasis on discovering everyone’s requirements and fostering a sense of ownership among your users. You are gathering all of the stakeholder groups together rather than scheduling time to meet with each one individually. When their needs collide, they can listen to one another and negotiate.

QUES: How can you help mitigate and resolve conflicts in your team?
ANS: Disagreements occur in all teams, its the way of life. In fact, by assisting each individual in understanding various points of view, conflict may be constructive and advantageous for teams. As an Agile coach or a Scrum master, you don’t need to mediate team disputes. You must empower the team to self organize towards a common goal.
Encourage the team to have more constructive interactions when disputes become stuck. Three good encounters should be the minimum target for every bad contact. The group will develop improved communication skills and mutual respect as a result of this.
Help your team identify the core issue. Sharing different perspectives is beneficial to arrive at the best product definition. Finally, assist the group in contrasting the current dispute with their shared goal. Show them that coming together for a greater cause is the most important thing for the company.

QUES: What is a Spike Story in Agile?
ANS: A spike is a user story for which the team cannot estimate the effort needed. It is because this user story needs more information in order to estimate how long it will take to complete.

QUES: The purpose of a Sprint is to produce a valuable and useful increment of a working product. True or False?
ANS: TRUE

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QUES: The Product Backlog is ordered by: (choose the best answer)
A. Least valuable items at the top to most valuable at the bottom.
B. Items are randomly arranged.
C. Size, where small items are at the top and large items are at the bottom.
D. Risk, where safer items are at the top, and riskier items are at the bottom.
E. Whatever is deemed most appropriate by the Product Owner.
ANS: E

QUES: In self-managing teams, the work is divided between individual team members. Each team member takes accountability for the progress of only their work. True Or False?
ANS: FALSE

QUES: Who writes acceptance criteria?
ANS: Product owner

QUES: In scrum, the ‘servant leader’ is the new name for the traditional role called ‘project manager’. True Or False?
ANS: FALSE

QUES: The scrum master is the manager of the Scrum team. True Or False?
ANS: FALSE, he is just a facilitator.

QUES: In a traditional approach, organizes and is manages the team members’ work, and their management style.
ANS: Project manager, command and control

QUES: What are the different kinds of frameworks that fall under the Agile and Lean type of methodologies that SCALE Agile?
ANS: For projects to be scalable, they have to meet three criteria. Availability, Performance, Reliability. Here are some Scaled Agile frameworks. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), NEXUS Scaled Agile, Large Scale Scrum (LESS), Scrum of Scrums, Dynamic Systems Development Method etc. Read more about the comparisons HERE.

QUES: In waterfall methodology, the duration of the activities, like development, testing, etc. are
a) Planned to be fixed irrespective of any calculation (time-boxed).
b) Predicted using some calculations based on ‘today’s weather.”
c) Never decided upfront
ANS: B

QUES: According to Empiricism, what is knowledge acquired through?
ANS: By experience.

QUES: How much work must the Developers in the Scrum team complete from the Product backlog item they select for a Sprint?
ANS: Enough so that each Product Backlog item they have selected for the Sprint meets the Definition of Done.

QUES: What is the typical size of the Scrum team?
ANS: 10 or fewer including the PO and the Scrum master.

QUES: Who creates the Definition of Done?
ANS: If it is not an organizational standard, the Scrum team must create a Definition of Done appropriate for the product.

QUES: When should a Developer on a Scrum Team be replaced?
ANS: As needed, wnile taking into account a short-term reduction in productivity.

QUES: During a Sprint, a Developer determines that the Scrum Team will not be able to complete the items in their forecast. Who should be present to review and adjust the Product Backlog items selected?
ANS: The Product Owner and the Developers

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Continued From Part IV HERE

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Free Assessments, Interview Prep and Exam Certification Study Guides:

Find the FREE resource HERE.

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NOTE: This is a living document, and I will keep adding questions and answers occasionally, so please keep checking this space.

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The Future Of Work Is Now

The Non-Cognitive Skills Needed For The Future, Our Hybrid Work Life And Much More

If you’re not careful you can follow your passion right into poverty. ~ Srini Rao

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