scrum Masters are accountable for establishing
scrum in their organization and the effectiveness of the scrum team how do we test that you
are up for the job there are a few common interview questions that I like to ask when
I'm recruiting for the scrum Master job and I'd like to share those with you for potential
candidates this can remove some of the stress during preparation for your upcoming interview
and for recruiters this can help you find the right candidate that will bring the best results
for your teams watch the video to find out more hey it's Daria here welcome in this video I'd
like to share some common scrum Master interview questions with you I have an older video called
how to introduce scrum Masters where I share some insights into the interview process as well as
more from the point of view of a recruiter here I'd like to focus more on the candidate side of
things now an important disclaimer is there isn't really one way to answer those questions and I
won't be giving you a script to learn by heart really it's to give you a more structured approach
for preparing for the interview and the job which you won't be able to do if you don't know the
scrum Master role and scrum at all if you need guidance with exact action plans from day one on
the job check out my scrum Master startup guide for in-depth explanation of daily activities goals
and templates you can use right away I'll put the link in the description before we jump into the
actual questions let's talk about some overall knowledge skills and traits we are looking for in
the scrum Master interview knowledge skills and traits since the scrum Master is accountable for
establishing scrum in the organization of course the knowledge of scrum is essential just having
a certificate or having attended a class is not enough obviously it's more about how well you
understand the framework and its application in real life that will involve the understanding of
every element of scrum every role every event and artifact then since you will be working with teams
it's important that you have good communication and people skills it may relate to being able to
resolve conflict present and negotiate influence others and more often I also like to check the
knowledge and understanding of popular agile practices to see if the person will be able to
pick up the teams current implementation as is and gradually make improvements to it and then
of course depending on what the organization and team needs right now there might be some other
important elements to verify so some more specific questions for example if I'm hiring someone who
will need to work alone on a larger organizational transformation I'd be asking questions related to
Executive coaching stakeholder management larger scale training experience and more importantly
ability to work independently without guidance or if I have specific challenges in the team I
might be looking for someone who has experience with similar situations okay that's a brief
overview of skills and knowledge I would be looking for in a potential candidate in general
now let's jump into the exact interview questions I'll review five popular questions and give you
a general idea of how you would want to approach answering them without giving you the answer of
course stay until the end to hear my answer to the most popular interview question that I've gotten
one what is agile and what is Scrum I'd say that's an obvious one yes I usually would check for
certification on the resume if the person doesn't have scrum Master experience for example but even
if they do have either or even both I would want to check how well they actually know scrum and
their role for example a popular question would be something along the lines of could you describe
scrum to me briefly in a couple of minutes this is a very important question that you should be able
to answer without a second thought this is where you can show your ability to teach as well as your
knowledge of scrum of course I would recommend actually preparing a short explanation that you
can learn by heart and of like an elevator page that you can take with you in every interview that
way you won't be caught off guard by this question why should companies Implement agile what's the
point this is kind of an add-on to the previous question when I asked this question I'm trying to
see the overall understanding of agile values and principles do you know why companies Implement
agile does agile apply to every business what challenges agile helps overcome and are there any
drawbacks to implement in agile if you aren't sure how to answer these questions you need to do
some studying and it's not just about surface level understanding but about practical view on
the agile values and principles because in the end the scrum Master needs to teach others how to
become more effective using the scrum framework not just implement the process in itself think
of Concepts like customer value adaptability collaboration and more I talked a bit about this
in my video are agile and scrum the same thing so you can go and watch this one right after the the
video here to learn a bit more and if you'd like to have an expert understanding of agile and learn
how to implement these principles in practice check out my online course fundamentals of agile
it contains over five hours of video and over 170 pages of actionable worksheets designed to help
you build knowledge and confidence you need to coach others I put the link in the description as
always what you like and dislike about the role of a scrum master I use this question for two primary
reasons first it allows me to assess the person's knowledge and understanding of the role itself if
they talk about the work they love that is fully aligned with the role I know they understand it
really well but if they are sharing something that technically scrum Masters shouldn't be focusing
on unless absolutely necessary I will be concerned especially if they talk about something they love
to do that is not part of the role it means they will have tendency to go towards it which will
inevitably reduce the time and effort they spend on what's truly important for scrum Masters second
it shows the person's strengths and weaknesses let's be honest we are usually good at what we
love and not as good at what we dislike that way I can can see where this person might need some
training and coaching and whether it is lined with the needs of the team and what I can offer
to them if they come on board what are the common challenges that you have seen when a company is
going through an agile transformation that is a great question and I absolutely love it I don't
always ask it but it's a great one that I kind of have up my sleeve whenever I need to ask something
more challenging this question is a way to gauge how well the person is familiar with agile and
scrum and what kind of challenges they have seen previously it's also an opportunity to ask how
they address these kind of challenges however even if the person doesn't have a lot of experience
they should be able to recognize some of the most common issues they will most likely be facing
since change management is a big part of the scrum Master role another important detail that I
would pay attention to is how they talk about the challenges are they looking for someone to blame
or are they talking about collaboration patience and coaching scenario based questions this is a
big set of questions rather than a single question really and honestly usually scenarios take the
most time in a scrum Master interview the exact questions will depend on the organization and the
team and will usually be related to the practices and tools they're using as well as typical
challenges they face kind of challenges they want your help with most likely for example
once I was looking for a scrum Master for a team of Highly opinionated and very direct people
I myself appreciated this a lot and I knew how to deal with it but at the same time I knew that some
people might have trouble working with people like that so I would ask questions like what is your
experience working with very opinionated people with strong personalities or let's imagine there
is a conflict between a senior developer and a vpu of sales that is unfolding in a product planning
meeting how do you facilitate the discussion other examples of scenario based questions are for
example your team has been delivering 13 story points exactly for the past several sprints what
are your thoughts on this how would you facilitate a retrospective in a team after a particularly
difficult Sprint or the product owner has trouble keeping up with the product backlog it's often
empty and it takes a long time to get new tasks from the product owner when needed what do you
do these are just a few examples of course and I know you most likely want me to give you answers
to these questions here's the thing there is no right answer there might be some very very wrong
answers however that go against agile values and principles but when I ask those questions I'm not
expecting something in particular I just want to see how the person thinks their past experiences
dealing with similar situations or how they can draw from other experiences to approach the
scenario if they have never lived it themselves your questions okay we've covered some important
questions you might be asked during the interview but it's not only about the questions the employer
has for you but also about the questions that you should have for your potential employer I'd say
it would be a bit suspicious if the candidate doesn't have any questions but it's also a very
important part for you because this is how you can assess whether the company is the right fit
for you at least at a very minimum level think of questions that might help you understand the
situation and the challenges the team experiences as well as the management view on it for example
how many teams are they expecting you to support do they have a dedicated product owner what
are the common issues and challenges that the management sees or what is the biggest pain point
they would like you to get resolved for them ASAP if you didn't get a good introduction to the
team ask to give you a quick lay of the land at least and while you are listening to that
or view some new questions May pop up into your head where you'd want to get some clarifications
as well tools and practices one more thing I'd like to quickly add here is questions related
to tools you might need to be familiar with or popular agile practices I started sharing some
tutorials for useful tools for scrum Masters so stay tuned for those And subscribe to this
YouTube channel to get notified whenever I release a new video now as I promised I'd like
to give you my answer to one of the popular interview questions and I'm going to answer it
live without a script and the question is what do you like and dislike about the role of a scrum
master I personally really love the scrum Master role because it allows me to help people become
more effective to help teams and organizations deliver great products and I can see the results
of my work more in the long term but I don't need to be involved in every single step and instead
kind of setting people up for success and I think when the team achieves great results I feel really
good it just makes me feel good I really love this experience obviously this is not something that
just comes in and you often don't get praised for it actually because all of the things that you
implement as a scrum Master are indirect though it is fine with me I know that it might be kind of a
negative part of the scrum Master role but at the same time I'm totally okay with that as long as I
know that my team is being successful what I just like is I think the fact that there are lots of
people who believe they have a good knowledge and understand your vigilance scrum while they really
don't have it they have very little knowledge kind of not understanding where they are at and it's
okay obviously to not have that knowledge but a lot of people are not willing to listen especially
to a scrum master who technically doesn't have any Authority so I think that is kind of the part
that slows down progress for a lot of teams and I wish that was not an issue because then I would
be able to help teams much more effectively share in the comments below what you like and dislike
about the role it can give you Clarity on why you should or maybe shouldn't be a scrum master and
of course I'm always interested in hearing your thoughts I hope you learned something new and
if you did like this video leave a comment and subscribe for more content like this and I'll see
you in the next video cheers and scrum on foreign [Music]