Agile & Scrum

About these Agile and Scrum questions

This is a practice topic, not a vendor exam. The questions are for people who work in, or are about to join, teams that use Scrum or Kanban: developers, testers, analysts and new Scrum Masters or Product Owners. They also help with interview questions about how you work in a team, and give useful grounding for an entry-level Scrum certification, although they are not modelled on any particular one.

The Scrum questions follow the current Scrum Guide, the 2020 edition, which describes three accountabilities (Product Owner, Scrum Master and Developers), five events and three artifacts, each artifact with its own commitment. Many teams still use older terms such as "roles" or "ceremonies", and some answer options use them on purpose. Most questions are short situations from a real team: a stakeholder asks for a change mid-sprint, work doesn't meet the Definition of Done, or a manager wants to compare teams by velocity.

What the questions cover

There is one 10-question test so far. It covers:

• Scrum events. What the Daily Scrum is for, and who can cancel a Sprint and when.
• Scrum accountabilities. Who decides what happens when a stakeholder brings new work during a Sprint.
• Scrum artifacts. The Product Goal, Sprint Goal and Definition of Done as commitments, what happens to work that doesn't meet the Definition of Done, and how refinement makes backlog items small enough.
• The Agile Manifesto. What the four values actually say, including that the items on the right still have value.
• Kanban. How limiting work in progress improves flow.
• User stories. The INVEST checklist, and why independent stories are easier to plan.
• Agile metrics. Why velocity is a planning aid for one team and goes wrong when used as a target or to compare teams.

How to use them

• Read the Scrum Guide first. It is short, free, and the source for every Scrum answer here. Most wrong options describe common practice that the guide doesn't actually require.
• Answer from the guide, not from your current team. Your team may do things differently, and that's fine, but the questions ask what Scrum itself says.
• Watch for who is accountable. Many Scrum questions turn on whether a decision belongs to the Product Owner, the Scrum Master or the Developers.
• Connect each practice to its purpose. If you can explain why a work-in-progress limit or a Sprint Goal exists, you can usually reason out a question you haven't seen.
• Use the scenarios as interview practice: say out loud how you would handle each situation and why.

These questions are original, written from the public Scrum Guide, the Agile Manifesto, the Kanban Guide and other open references. They are not real exam questions, and this site is not affiliated with Scrum.org, Scrum Alliance or any certification body.