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Give us a little intro about yourself
My name is CF. I started my career as a project coordinator & as a project manager assistant where I supervised projects & assisted with administrative needs. That is where I was introduced to Agile methodologies. I was able to shadow SMs & RTE's and decided to get certified & I've been a scrum master for almost 5 years now. I honestly just really fell in love with the idea of being a servant leader & a coach. I am extremely adaptable, and I have excellent problem solving skills. I pride myself in being a good communicator and someone who can maintain good working relationships with the team, as well as my external network.

I have experience facilitating all scrum ceremonies. Including Iteration planning DSU Iteration reviews, retrospectives as well as refinements. Have experience participating in PI Planning & SoSs. I've worked hand in hand with PO's in prioritizing backlogs writing user stories and so on. In my most recent position I assisted in their transition from waterfall to an agile environment. Even though I had been working in agile environments for some time I would say I learned a lot there. I saw how truly beneficial this methodology is. It createdd in me this strong passion for continuous improvement with all teams I work with. As well as in my personal life.

So yes that is me I love helping organizations reach their maximum business value & I look forward to doing the same with you guys!
Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
Senior SM or RTE
Assisting to help coach Jr Scrum masters & helping orient them to software tools like Jira & ADO.
Definition of ready
Sticky notes virtually software NOTION we all have access to
DOR;
creating a clear criteria for a user story to be considered ready to be pulled into an iteration. and shows that the user story is ready to be developed. This is a shared understanding across the team & the team will only commit to user stories that meet there DOR
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For instance
-Do we have enough information for the user story to be pulled developed & pulled into the iteration?
-Do we have an acceptance criteria?
-Do we have a good idea of what it will mean to Demon the user story?
-Do we have a business value?
-Have we done a sizing point assessment?
Definition of Done
The conditions for a user story to be considered done. This assesses wether the work us complete on a user story. It may include a list of their work processes to ensure all necessary task are completed. It helps promote transparency & eliminates any unverified assumptions. Incomplete work increases risk & diminishes value
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For instance a developer can say "This thing id not done until I add this to it".
Then we will add that to the definition of done.
-Has it been tested?
-Does it fulfill the business value?
-Does it fulfill the benefit hypothesis?
-Does it meet the acceptance criteria?
-Is it ready for a demo?
-Are we ready to submit this to our stakeholders?
How are we going to work together as a team?
Working Agreement
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Every person opinion matters, important to hear everyones viewpoint for our working agreement. When we all know the expectation there's no outliers.
Expectations; everyone will know what everyones role is on the team
-DOD DOR were all on the same page. Icebreakers; important to be comfortable with the people that youre working with you'll feel comfortable to ask for help be transparent. And you trust your team for a better output.
Whats the difference between scrum & kanban?
SCRUM workin Sprints with a set batch of stories
Daily Stand Up
Sprint Review
Sprint Retrospective
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KANBAN
No sprint, continuous process of pulling items from the back log into development and pushing finished product out
-more flexible as things can constantly be pulled in
Why scrum?
scrum encourages teams to learn through experiences, self-organize while working on a problem, and reflect on their wins and losses to continuously improve.
Impediment example
team suggested they dont need a WIP limit but after some struggles we needed one to control how many work were actively doing at one time so we can focus on completing work rather than starting so many things & creating bottlenecks.
-so instead of starting a new story you can be cross functional to see where you can help out
burnup burndown
up-completed stories
down-task to do
whats the first thing you doin iteration planning?
Calculate Capacity
PO shares prioritized backlog
Team works from top down, estimating or reestimating stories, getting clarification on the acceptance criteria making sure its clearly defined
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once right amount is planned for the next 2 weeks the team will self organize and break down the story into task aka they detail the story i.e front end dev back end dev test codes code review the team determines how to do their own work
---DRAFT AN ITERATION GOAL, summary of what the team hopes to achieve
Lastly COMMIT; team takes a confidence vote to commit to the plan. FIST OF 5

Everyday in stand up
-what did you so yesterday?
-what are you doing today?
-do you have any impediments?
Transparency
How do you choose the most valuable user story?The Product Owner is invested to conclude the value that the user story will deliver, enabling him or her to set the backlog as per the highest priority. When a user story is created, it carries some value (we have also learned about it in the INVEST model where V stands for Value). When the sprint is being planned, the team pulls up the highest priority item from the pile for commitment. If the team members are picking up tasks as per their comfort, the scrum master has to come in picture and coach the team. Even the product owner might pick up stories which are not adding value to the customers. Hence, the story time or the sprint planning meeting should be addressed in the true sense, the scrum master should facilitate these meetings in a way that they stick to the intent of the meeting and come out with the valid outcomes. Both the team and the product owner has to focus on value delivery rather than ease of work. If the teams are involved early during the product discussion, these types of challenges can be minimized.What is the agile manifesto?Client satisfaction through continuous delivery of early & valuable software incrementally.3 pillars of scrum1. Transparency 2. Inspection 3. AdaptionA Scrum master has a list of open impediments which is growing without proper resolutions. The sm consults with the team on the problem. is it right?Yes. The Scrum Master is one of the roles from the Scrum team which is responsible for ensuring the team is adhering to the Agile values and principles. The Scrum Master is the team facilitator. Along with that, the SM is responsible for clearing the obstacles, protecting the team from external interruptions and distractions that hinder the project goal.What is the main reason for the Scrum Master to be at the daily Scrum?A Scrum Master does not have to be there; he or she only has to ensure the Development Team has a Daily Scrum. The Scrum Master enforces the rule that only Development Team members participate in the Daily Scrum. Although the Scrum Master or Product Owner can attend this meeting to facilitate the Daily Scrum, this is certainly not required by Scrum. The Development Team members synchronize their work, monitor their progress toward the Sprint Goal and if required they adapt the Sprint Backlog and the plan for the next 24 hours during the Daily Scrum.What are the 2 primary ways a scrum master keeps a team working at its highest level of productivity?By facilitating Development Team decisions and by removing impediments that hinder the Development Team. A Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Development Team. Facilitation and removing impediments serves a team in achieving the best productivity possible. The Scrum Master within the Scrum Team facilitates the development of working software and help the development team in delivering the Product Increment. The Scrum Master does everything possible to help the development team to work at their highest level.What is the role of a Scrum Master in sprint retrospective?Peer team member. >Encourage dialogue around personal development. >inspect and adapt the progress for improvements. The teams are self-organized and open to making changes very quickly wherever needed.During the daily scrum, what exactly is the SCRUM Masters role?The Scrum Master arranges the Scrum meeting for the Development team. The Development team is the main player in the meeting. But, the Scrum Master guides the Development Team to keep the Daily Scrum within the 15-minute time-box. The Scrum Master enforces the rule that only the Development Team members participate in the Daily Scrum.Do you have experience working with any tracking tools?Jira & RallyWhy have you been working mostly as a contractor?I was open & most of my contracts were extended.Scrum of ScrumsA technique to operate Scrum at scale for multiple teams working on the same product, coordinating discussions of progress on their interdependencies, and focusing on how to integrate the delivery of software, especially in areas of overlap. Meetings used to organize large projects with scrum masters from different teams. Coordinate with other SMs & escalate issues/dependencies & riskwhats a good user story?Who are we building it for, who the user is? — As a <type of user> What are we building, what is the intention? — I want <some goal or objective > Why are we building it, what value it brings for the user.? — So that <benefit, value> Well-formed stories will meet the criteria of Bill Wake's INVEST acronym: Independent - Can the story stand-alone by itself? Negotiable - Avoid too much detail; keep them flexible so the team can adjust how much of the story to implement. Valuable - Users or customers get some value from the story. Estimable - The team must be able to use them for planning. Small - Large stories are harder to estimate and plan. By the time of iteration planning, the story should be able to be designed, coded, and tested within the iteration. Testable - Can this story be tested and verified? -minimizes technical debt (bugs, refactoring & research helps with that)-client satisfactionIf a team member asks why do we have to refine & plan isn't it the same thing?Theres no commitment in refinementWhat is your role in PI Planning?Alignment between teams on Release Trains -assist team in preparing for PI Planning i.e backlog refinement, go over stories make sure capacity is calculated THERE -Work with other scrum masters to coordinate dependencies/risks -facilitate conversations between teams -manage program board for team -facilitate breakout sessions -assist team in writing PI ObjectHow many people were on your team?4 developers 2 testers 1 data base analyst me POHow do you recommend following up on action items?Retrospectives don't finish when they're concluded. In fact, the toughest part has now been initiated: Following-up on your retrospective action plan. In a retrospective, one of the outcomes is the action items which the teams have identified to make their process or work environment much better (retrospective can touch base at different levels). If the action items identified during the last retrospective is not worked upon or gets lost during the course of the sprint, the team will start refraining from coming up with the points as they will not see any closure on the items. Hence, the Scrum Master should present the action items from the last retrospective and discuss the status of progress. AT THE NEXT RETRO PROVIDE UPDATE ON PREVIOUS ACTION ITEM This gives a sense of satisfaction to the team that they are getting heard and the items are being tracked to closure. There are several ways of following up, for example, Running the activity: Open the list of action items (and their respective owners) Update the status for each item on the list. Add newly identified items Each team can have a different tool for tracking their action items. Some examples: post-it on the team wall, a shared excel document, Trello, etc.Whats your favorite retrospective technique?mad sad glad & why 1 word technique; 1 word to describe the iteration 2 truths & a lie 2 truths & a wish STARFISH Start Doing Stop Doing More of Less of Keep DoingWhat do you look for in a story?Who is the user? What does the user want? function why does the user need it? purpose What the problem is? What the product should be able to do for them? --assign story points --acceptance criteria as a BOA customer I want to be able to filter my transaction so I can budget my financesThe PO of the team turns stakeholders requirement documents into tickets and ask to estimate them. Are you fine with that process?As a Scrum Master, I will not accept this process as it is its sugar coating Waterfall in the name of Agile. Just converting the requirements into tickets will not suffice for the entry criteria of the user stories. The requirements should be finely broken down into finer pieces so that it can be consumed in sprint time. The conversion of stakeholder requirement into tickets should also follow the best practices in the industry like INVEST, 3Cs, etc. to help teams gain confidence into what is to be built.The focus should always be on delivering value to the customers, which requires keeping a health prioritized backlog. The organization adopting Agile use tools like Rally, Version 1, etc. to manage the product backlog and sprint backlog. Hence the requirements should be entered in the tools for the teams to pick. Moreover, the scrum team should be involved early in the product discovery process so that all the parties involved have a shared understanding of what is to be built. This also helps in curating the requirements which are feasible and have pre-identified risks and challenges. Finally, the Scrum Master should help the teams to be agile and not just allow anti-patterns to grow.How will you help a team that is new & is just transitioning to Agile?Anyone you want to get to do something in a new way or change when they're so comfortable they've been doing something one way for years. Its common to get a lot of resistance & push back. So it was really important to let them know their WHY. ----if they are resistant understand why? even though it might be working for them help them to see its about whats best for the entire team so that we are getting better with every iteration ---one on one coaching ------------ create a positive mindset around scrumWhy arent user stories estimated in man-hours?Few tasks are hard to estimate precisely, e.g. the legacy work If one team member provides the estimate but another completes the task, the estimate becomes worthless. The time needed to complete a task will vary based on a developer's level of experience. Teams usually misjudge impediments they might face and contemplate only the best-case state. The advantages of estimating user stories in points can be - There is no correlation with the skills and experience of the estimator, story points do not depend on who is doing the story. As the story points are a measurement of relative sizes, and the size of the story cannot be changed by external pressure, the team members can estimate more accurately. Story Points invites collaboration as team behavior becomes prominent over individuals. Using planning poker to estimate story points brings the team together. It acts as a team building activity as teams share, constructively criticize each other, debate and have fun playing poker cards to come to a consensus on estimates.Howmuch capacity would you consider to refactor, fix important bugs, explore new technologies, or ideas?e also have a good practice which the teams can follow, 15-10-5 allocation of the scrum team's capacity, which means, 15% of a team's capacity to technical debt, 10% of a team's capacity to defects, and 5% of a team's capacity to exploratory work.If the team is able to follow these allocations, it will fulfill both the code quality and upkeep necessities of most software applications. It is a good practice if followed sprint by sprint, but if for some reason the team is not able to do it in a particular sprint due to high priority delivery, it's fine.How do you deal with a PO who assigns user stories/tasks to the individual team members?As part of a Scrum Master role, one of the responsibilities entail around helping and coaching the Product Owner. It is really critical for the Scrum roles to understand their role and function accordingly. If the product owner is assigning the user stories/tasks, it is the job of a scrum master to make the product owner realize the meaning of self-organization. In the Scrum Guide, a partial definition of self-organizing is given as Scrum Teams are self-organizing. Self-organizing teams choose how to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team." Self-governance is one of the utmost motivators there is for people doing creative and problem-solving types of work. Assigning tasks to people is an implicit claim that the product owner knows better than the team, this not only passes on the wrong notion but it also lowers the morale of the team and at the same time defies the scrum values and Agile principle - "Point 5. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done." And "Point 11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams." Hence, the product owner is assigning work, the Scrum Master should intervene and help the Product Owner in understanding the true sense of working in a Scrum framework and refrain him/her to continue this practiceDo the stakeholders need to attend the daily scrum meeting?One of the Agile Principles states "Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project". The stakeholders can join the daily scrum meeting but they can be mute spectators till the time scrum is not complete. The Scrum Master should encourage the stakeholders to join the meeting by making them understand that it will be worth their time. The goal of the Daily Scrum is to know whether or not they will reach the Sprint Goal. If the stakeholders are joining the daily scrum, then they will get to know the updated picture of product development and can accordingly adjust their expectations. They get to know about the real issues that the team is facing, which helps both the parties. This event gives the opportunity to the development team to directly ask questions with the stakeholders. It not only promotes a platform for discussion but also provides early detection of risk for the stakeholders. But the Scrum Master should make sure that the inclusion of the stakeholders in the daily scrum is not converting the meeting into a status update. Although stakeholder presence is not mandatory, it doesn't matter if they are there as a listener because it can facilitate the resolution of any impediments.who participates in the retrospective meeting?The sprint retrospective is an opportunity to inspect and adapt the process as it is a time to reflect on the process. It is needed that the full Scrum team attends. This includes all members of the development team (includes everyone who is designing, building, and testing the product), the Scrum Master, and the product owner. Since the Scrum Guide also states that the Scrum team = product owner + Scrum Master + development team, we can deduce that (officially at least) the product owner is allowed to attend the retrospective. This is the ideal scenario. However, sometimes, the teams might not wish to include the product owner as it might hinder their discussion. If there is a lack of trust between the product owner and the development team, or there is a low level of safety so that speaking candidly isn't comfortable, perhaps the product owner should not attend until the Scrum Master can help coach those involved towards creating a safer, more trusting environment. Anyone else outside of the immediate scrum team, and particularly managers of team members, should not be invited to participate.What estimation techniques have you used with your team?T shirt sizing Fibonacci Scale Poker Cards; favWhat is the purpose of refinement?clarification & sizing of stories; making sure there is always work in ready stage for the next sprint ----priorities change so the backlog needs to always have been socialized -we plan so that we can adapt to change HAPPENS WEEKLYITERATION CYCLEITERATION PLANNING DAILY STAND UPS ITERATION REVIEW RETROSPECTIVE ---------------------- Refinement; over 2 weeks maybe weekly This meeting is carried out weekly and refining the backlog is beneficial so that the next set of work will not be foregin to the team.How do you deal with a team member who's opposed to agile?understand why? one on one coaching highlight how agile works when waterfall doesn'tCan you tell me about how you coach your team?woObserving Asking powerful questions; think deeper One on One coaching RECOGNITION Ensuring that they know they're valued Help create a positive work environmentIf you get asked about forming a new team then you will definitely mention aworking agreement; so we can all come to a common understanding of our working relationship & also define our process. Self organization; the team owns it & defines it Whats our definition of done or whats our definition of ready?When is the best time to use Agile Methodology? Is it suitable for all situations?Best times are when working on >complex projects >unclear requirements >quick launch of projects >minimal cost of change >frequent change of requirement >no need to deliver fully functional software at once >dont have a fixed budget/schedule >emphasis on teamwork, transparency & continuous improvementas a scrum master the most productive thing you do for a team isresolving or removing impedimentsCan you give an example of an impediment your team faced?Yes connectivity issues with virtual server which set us back on time because we need to build test & integrate all from these servers. Their playground to develop & test. Create ticket for help deskwill the scrum team be involved in the product discovery process?During the early phases of the product development lifecycle, it really helps if the scrum team is made part of the discovery process. You should understand that agile talks about the early involvement of the teams with the stakeholders so that both parties are on the same page in regard to the development. Let's look at some of the advantages of early involvement: The development teams identify the technical challenges in implementation early in the process, hence, can help in reforming the requirements along with the customer. The team along with the product owner also start sharing a common understanding of what is to be built. Sometimes, the teams can help the product owner in identifying the requirements which might have been missed. They share a mutual understanding of what is to be built. It also helps the teams to stay committed and confident, they tend to build an ownership of their work and most importantly it boosts up the morale of the team. To facilitate this, the scrum master can start involving the teams in early discussion of the product where the requirements are still at a high level. The team together with the product owner can build up the product backlog.How can a scrum master contribute to the sprint planning process?Time-boxing the activity Making the team stay focused on the intention of the meeting Facilitating and Resolving(if required) any deadlocks in the discussion Can help them to commit the right amount of work, as per their available capacity. To make sure that the team is invested and asking the right questions. To accomplish this, the scrum master can help the team understand the definition of being ready and the process to create meaningful stories. Also, as discussed earlier in the questionnaire, it is important to get the team to participate in the early discovery process to make them understand the product. The stories should be created as a collaborative effort between the development team and the product owner, this creates a shared understanding of the common goal.What are the 4 values of agile software development as stated in the agile manifesto? and their counterparts>Individuals & interactions over processes & tools >Working software over comprehensive documentation >Customer collaboration over contract negotiation >Responding to change over following a plan Each agile methodology applies the four values in different ways but all of them rely on each other to guide the development and delivery of high quality working software.How can you help your team establish a shared understanding?working agreement; Ateam has a shared sense of vision & missionwhat do I do on jira besides basics?-making sure we aren't deviating from our technical initiative forecast -epics & features -stories & tasks -create backlogs & sprints & tasks -updating status boards -manage releases -code integration -manage workflowswhat is the velocity or capacity of the project youre working on now?PI 10 Iteration 4prioritization techniquesMOSCOW TECHNIQUE Must have Should have Could have Won't haveHow do your developer release the codes?Use automated release systems like DevOps -using automated testers & releasersQ. When is the best time to use Agile Methodology? Is it suitable for all situations?The best time to use Agile methodology would be during complex projects, unclear requirements, Quick launch of product, When there is no limit on time and budget, >There is an emphasis on teamwork, transparency, and continuous improvement or there is no fixed budget/ schedule. As you can see agile is more suitable for small to mid size organizations than it is for large corporations. The fewer people there are the easier it is to make a decisions and respond to changeCan you state some major principles of agile project management?>face to face communication >continuous feedback >good teamwork >technical excellence >simplicity >self organization >sustainable developmentWhat is the difference between agile methodology & waterfall model?WATERFALL >Waterfalls progress flows downward through all the phases, > In the waterfall model you need to finalize the requirements before initiating development activities. >In the waterfall model feedback from the end user is received at the end stage > The waterfall model has poor visibility compared to methodology because in the waterfall model working software is not produced until it reaches the last phase >waterfall model is recommended for long-term projects such as construction, manufacture etc. AGILE >Agile all the phases are repeated in every iteration. >Agile changes are welcome at all stages so it is a flexible approach >whereas in the agile approach feedback is received continuously throughout the development cycle >Agile is perfect for IT, software, marketing etc.Name some drawbacks of the Agile model>Long term projects suffer from incremental delivery >Level of collaboration can be difficult to maintain >Very limited documentation >Fragmented Output (when teams work on each component in different cycles the complete output often becomes very fragmented rather than one cohesive unit ) >Its more difficult to measure >The project can easily get taken off track if the customer representative was not clear what final outcome they want (documentation tends to get side tracked which makes it harder for new members to get up to speed),more difficult to measure progress than it is in waterfall because progress happens across several Cycles, project can become everlasting because there's no clear enD.As we have moved from waterfall to agile, how do you ensure the people coming from the traditional waterfall roles dont continue acting as such? i.e product owner continuing working as PMA. I had the role of designing & assigning task having a conversation with our transformation coach He explained to me that if we keep doing this you dont get a self organizing team & people keep depending on you so focus rather on giving people task you facilitate the interaction so people figure out which task should be worked by whom, so I gradually started working towards the facilitating role. If I facilitate it my team owns it, want to make them more & more responsible for their job, putting more of their mind & energy into their job & you do that through a facilitator form of leadership. >Achieving scrum ceremonies are not the goal, achieving engagement collaboration continuous learning is the goalTell us of an example of. time you had a conflict with a product owner?Prioritization; product owner might think he knows it well. We said we will first do some user story mapping for our product backlog & then we will do the prioritization. The product owner was looking for 1 particular story going in a an upcoming & I realized it wasn't helpful for us to achieve minimum marketable feature. So we both agreed with the team to do user story mapping & after that we would decide the priority. This resulted in him understanding the perspective me & the team were coming from. We were also able to understand where he was coming from. We wanted to see a working skeleton & ultimately we were all able to find out what was best for the customer.How to come on a new scrum team?Do your HW! I use multiple techniques A. Observe ask for a product demo see how things are run i.e team dynamics artifacts (product backlog, impediments, escalations) take time to explore spend about 1 week doing this mere observation B. Facilitate small working agreement to kickoff overall engagementHow do you help with a technical impediment?It is good to have but not necessary. I do expect my team to know the technology far more than me. My background in technology helps me to empathize with my developers & rather solve their problems. If there is a block I need to find out inside the organization who is the best person to help them. I do own the impediment. I dont just say ok this is a technical problem hands up. I need to remain a good network with my external network business analyst etc. to help find the resource. Not solve but help facilitate them to the answer.How do you resolve conflict between 2 scrum teams, maybe 2 scrum masters to be spacific?Needs to be more collaborative & open, more interpersonal skills may be needed. we are apart of our own team as well as another major team.How to adapt to being remote?Electronic work management system, slack channel, Electronic task board. Facilitate easy communication as would be in personHow do you make sure things are on track for time?yea ive experienced this problem. We did a retrospective to design a new structure for daily scrum. We discussed it and decided to only talk about items which require attention. Put specific things on a board. Allocate fixed amount of times to discuss items.Should you be able to handle more than 1 scrum team?Depends on the maturity of the tea I am working with. Can the run their own daily scrum? are they just co ming from waterfall?what are you responsibilities towards a product owner?>coach him towards understanding values >coach him towards prioritizing >coach him towards how to interact with development team >coach him on how to get requirements from the stakeholdersQ. What Metrics have you used and how did you use them?Team Velocity: Used to measure a team's work ability in future sprints using the average of previous 4 sprints. It can only be used with teams that have a history of working together using scrum framework. If no history; AVERAGE OF THE TOTAL STORY POINTS COMPLETED BY A TEAM IN THE LAST 4 ITERATIONS Team Capacity: Used to measure how much work a team without a scrum history can commit to. 8 points per development team members, 1 point for every day a team member is off work, multiplied by 80% to get capacity of story points per iteration. Sprint Burndown and Burnup Chart: keeps track of the work progress throughout each sprint. It presents the results in the form of a graph and it is graphed either by hours of work remaining or story points remaining. The burn-up chart shows how much work has been completed and the total scope (total amount of work that needs to be done) of the project. It is usually calculated by the amount of user stories completed rather than hours. Escaped defects: allow you to identify the quality of the products delivered. This metric helps you track the number of bugs discovered after a release enters production. Measuring the defects is essential so that you can identify the loopholes in the process and improve the production process.How do you help with a team that wasn't completing taskcompleting task wasn't the issue there was a broader issue aggressive product owner who was very persistent on us and wanted things to get done so people were overcomittingWhat metrics have you used in KANBAN?Work in Progress Cycle TimeQ. Do you have any questions for us?Q. Do you have any questions for us? Do you have global teams? Off shore team members. How many teams will I be scrumming? Is your organization new to Agile? What is the organization's culture? Do you think I will be a good fit? Can i know more about the team size & how many teams will I be scrumming? What are your expectations from me if this goes through? Do I fit into the role you're looking for? #1) "From our conversation is there anything you feel I am lacking for this position?" - this brings out any doubts the interviewer has, then you can reassure them that it won't be an issue, site examples. #2) "Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today, I'm very interested and would like to know what will the next steps be?" - gives you immediate feedback on your interview and may even prompt scheduling next steps.Tell us about a time when you found out the team was not able to deliver their commitment for a sprintUse the STAR Method (Situation Task Action Result)Q. What would you suggest to a team that is having a hard time grasping what the problem is?Analyze spikes, enablers & refractors, maybe there's some parts of the story the team doesn't understandQ. How do you calculate team capacity?Capacity is used to project the number of stories a team can plan and commit to deliver. At PI planning, the scrum master will work with the team to calculate the capacity for each iteration. Capacity planning can be used to plan the first couple of iterations for a new team. To calculate capacity, 8 points is assigned to each team member, excluding the product manager and scrum master. It is then adjusted, subtracting 1 pt each for vacations/holidays.Q. Tell us about a project with your last company?3 major Enhancement, Modernization/Upgrade & Data Migration I.e T. Rowe Price; "I worked on the modernization of the Loan Processing application & on that project I was the Scrum Master for 2 development teams." -waterfall 2 scrum I.e DELL " I worked on the Data Migration of their APEX cloud service & for that project I was the Scrum Master for 2 development teams." -scrumbanQ. Is Scrum Master a "management "position?Yes. The Scrum master position Is the management level position, but it is not a manager position. Scrum Master does not manage the Scrum team or even the development team but manages the Scrum process. If the Scrum Master is not at the management position, he or she may not have the influence to remove the impediments.Q. What do you do if your team is not delivering on their iteration commitment?Review the possible root causes: >Is the team committing to stories that are not ready, are we spiking stories and creating time in the sprint for research, unresolved technical impediments blocked the team from achieving the completion of the User Stories considered for the iteration, bottlenecks (when the resources within a project are lacking or already working to their full capacity) in the team's workflow slowed down the flow of user stories to be done. >Checking in order to confirm the underlying impediments. Impediments may deal with estimation, technical planning, platform or delivery coordination. > Targeting Retrospectives that help the team isolate the issues and set action items to take care of them. >Influencing the upcoming backlog to make sure it considers these action items as a top priority for the team. Document backlog items that address these critical impediments with the help of the Product Owner and Technical Architect. >Set aside team bandwidth, by negotiating it with relevant stakeholders, to deal with these impediments as part of the upcoming iteration. >Check in with the Product Owner to confirm the team accepts these items as part of their commitment for the next iteration.Q. Who is a Servant Leader?A servant leader is someone who enables teams to self-organize, self-manage. A servant leader is in a position to serve others. They lead without having to rely on authority or force, they should lead by inspiring others. The team will choose to follow a good Scrum Master. In the SAFE scrum environment a servant leader understands and empathizes with others.Q. How do you improve yourself as a scrum master?As a scrum master there are a few things that can be done to improve yourself. You should be open to feedback from team members, experiment with team suggestions, always ask team members and stakeholders jow you can help them, facilitate a fully dedicated retrospective meeting to discuss new ideas.What is the most important ceremony?Retrospective >continuous feedback >technical excellence >sustainable development --gives us the ability to create improvement action itemsQ. What is the difference between Agile and Scrum?Agile is a philosophy of project management that uses a set of values and principles >Agile is an umbrella term; scrum is a subset. >Scrum specifically gives you its sets of principles step by step to make your project management easier. (incremental builds)Q. Do you have any further questions for me?At this moment I do not have any further questions but I do want to let you know I understand from your perspective this is a difficult role to fill but based on my past experiences my passion for the role and my excellent and interpersonal and communicational skills I I feel strongly you will be impressed with my work ethic, integrity, values and most importantly the results i will put produce as your scrum master.What motivates you other than monetary compensation?Im career driven & looking for opportunities to develop yourselfHow do you promote collaboration with stakeholders?Work with the PO to invite them for Demos to provide feedbacks & collaborate with the teamHow does a SM increase productivity of the team?By facilitating their decisions and removing impediments. Scrum Master does not manage the Development Team. It is the responsibility of the Development Team to manage its own efforts. However, the Scrum Master helps them by facilitating their decisions and removing impediments and protecting them from the external distractions.Is the product owner the only one to communicate with the stakeholders at all times?No. >The entire team collaborates with stakeholders during the product review. >Scrum Master can also work with stakeholders to help them understand Scrum. >Stakeholders communicate with Product owner with respect to Product Planning, its progress, and Product backlog changes. Good communication helps project stakeholders engaged and informed and keeps the scrum team focused on finishing the accepted work for the sprint.A development team identifies a technical issue that requires then to work together. Who needs to facilitate this?The development team needs to facilitate. The development team is responsible for performing development work and meeting the Sprint Goal. If they have any issues within their influence to resolve, they are responsible to solve it. Scrum Master is responsible for impediments that are outside the Development Team's influence.At regular events the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes & adjusts its behavior accordingly.This Principle is embodied in the Scrum 'Inspect and Adapt' Pillar and is enacted through the Sprint Retrospective event.The Sprint Retrospective is not just about discussing what is wrong but also what is good and maybe the team should do more of.At the start of an Agile Transformation, the team may 'find' many things that are 'wrong'; the long list may be seen by some to be time wasting and others as demotivating; 'how are we going to address all these problems?'.Because of this, many teams give up on the Retrospective!The fix - The discovery of good and bad things during a Retrospective should be time-boxed to maybe 15 minutes when the major points will be discovered. There are many Retrospective Games that can be played by the team members to make the discovery more enjoyable.An important part of the Retrospective is that the team prioritize the issues and plan how to resolve the top 1 or 2 issues in the coming Sprint.Progress on issue resolution can be done during the daily Sprint and the overall success of the improvement plans checked at the start of the next Sprint retrospective.What sort of person do you need to be a great SM?-Involves the team with setting up the process -Understands team development. -Recognizes and acts on team conflict. -Encourages Ownership -Nurturing & Empathetic -Is a coach -Has a spirit of inquiry-As a Scrum Master/Facilitator you need to be aware of different peoples' frames of reference when they are communicating so that you can spot possible misunderstandings in listeners. Without a facilitator, at some point, the participants will agree to almost anything, any half-baked, unrealistic, mediocre compromise, just as long as it will get them out of the room. One way to help workshop participants gain an understanding of each other's ideas is to encourage them to ask direct questions of one another and listen carefully to the answers. However, there are some challenges to this 'simple' approach: Some participants fear that asking questions might seem confrontational or rude Many people cannot cope with the ambiguity of unstructured inquiry and dialogue for very longQ. How do you support a product owner who is new to SAFE?COACH THEM They represent the business they prioritize the backlog & they act as a customer to the development team, providing clarification to all the work that needs to be done -------- --CHECK ON THEM support them by helping them understand the concept of prioritization & work with them to engage the stakeholders because thats where they're going to get all the information to bring to the team.A Scrum Master is a person who supports Scrum and is responsible for promoting Scrum. Rooted in leadership roles, a Scrum Master has to make sure that everyone understands the Scrum theory, practices, rules and values. They hold the scrum framework together, easing the process for the organisation, Scrum team, and Product Owner. It is the responsibility of a Scrum Master to ensure that the Scrum team understands the scope, goals and product domains best as possible. Also, they have to find effective techniques to manage the Product BacklogQ. What is velocity?The average of the total stories completed by a team from the last 4 iteration. It is usually used with teams with 4 or more historical reference (iteration). It is used to forecast the amount of work a team can tackle during an upcoming iteration. It is a powerful tool for forecasting the rate at which a team can consistently deliver business value.do you have experience with a team new to agile?yes facilitated a working agreement defined the DOR & DOD of user stories & team building activitieswhat is a good user story?A good user story: Includes a description, Has acceptance criteria defined, Can be delivered within a single Sprint, Has all UI deliverables available, Has all (probable) dependencies identified,----------------As a Scrum Master, one of the responsibilities is to help the team pulling up the backlog for a sprint which is already prioritized and pulling items which are placed on the top (sorted as per the priority). Once, the team is able to identify items that can add value from the pile of requirements, the Scrum Master can help them (Product Owner + Development Team) to convert them into good user stories (if it is not already). A good user story is one which includes a description and has acceptance criteria defined. It should be a piece which can be delivered in a sprint and entails minimum dependencies. The team should be able to develop and test within the boundaries of the sprint along with providing the estimates. In short, good user stories follow the INVEST principle. Independent - Reduced dependencies Negotiable - Describes the functionality, can be negotiated between the Team and PO Valuable - Provides value to the customer Estimable - Too big or too vague = not estimable Small - Can be done in a Sprint by the team Testable - Good acceptance criteria The scrum master can help the team in creating good user stories during the backlog refinement or sprint planning so that the team can pick them up for the commitment.Q. How do you join a team that is already formed?Talk about ice breaker & team working agreementWhat is an example of a testing tool you and your team used?We use test Automation Tools - Jenkins, and Selenium >using mock data & negative mock data making sure it meets the acceptance criteriaWhat goes on during your daily stand up?Teams discuss duties for the day providing info of wha they've done so far & what they're doing todayWhos in your team? how do they work?QA (quality assurance); Tester Developers Architectures ----------------- For every 2 developers need 1 tester/qa engineer to verify their work. i.e 4 developers you need 2 testers ----------------------- Ive worked with a team who had 4 developers 2 qa engineers & 1 data architechtHow can you keep track of your teams progress/performance?Team Board Burnup & Burndown Charts DSU Burndown; hours completing task Burnup; completed story points see if were falling behind to know if there's anything we are lackingQ. Do you have experience working with collocated or virtual teams?what is ado?Q. what are 3 C'sCard, conversation and and confirmation a "Card" (or often a Post-It note), a physical token giving tangible and durable form to what would otherwise only be an abstraction: a "conversation" taking place at different time and places during a project between the various people concerned by a given feature of a software product: customers, users, developers, testers; this conversation is largely verbal but most often supplemented by documentation; the "confirmation" the objectives the conversation revolved around have been reached "more formal"Q.Do you have experience with KanbanYes > i've worked with a team that we had to implement ScrumBan. >The team had a lot of incoming requests that varied deeply in size and mainly there was a repeated process of work.Your teams performance is constantly not meeting commitments and its velocity is very unstable. Why does this happen? And how would you solve those issues?The team's performance is not just related to a single event or a reason but there can be different scenarios that might be building up that situation. A good scrum master has to identify those patterns and look out for ways to minimize it. Let's look at a few of the situations that might lead up to lowering the team's performance: Planned Leaves or Holidays - The sprint commitment is directly proportional to the total available capacity of the team. If there are leaves or holidays, the commitment will go less and hence lowering the velocity. Legacy product - In case the code has been written long back with no documentation, the new members struggle to figure out things. New hire - Onboarding a new associate will impact the sprint commitments as the member is new and needs time to be brought to speed. Resignation - If the team members are leaving, it might take some time to fill up the gap. Experience - If the team comprises of experienced team members along with new one, then the level of seniority might hinder the team formation. There can be many reasons, but the scrum master should keep their eyes open for any such patterns and try to help the teams get back to track through coaching and adoption of best practices.Q. What are some conflicts and impediments that your team has hadA user story is lacking the final designs, and the design team is promising to deliver on Day 2. The PO also agrees with that & tries to push the user story to the sprint backlog. THIS WAS A CONFLICT BC. This story did not meet our Definition of Ready. I explained to the PO that we could not commit to this as a team because it was not estimated into our capacity. And they were pushing us to commit. Definitely didn't want this to be made a regular practice as it would compromise the core essence of scrum. -Accepting stories that doesn't meet the DOR increases our risk & impacts the team efficiency.One of the agile manifesto values are "people over processes". Isn't the Scrum master role which enforces "the process" a contradiction?Though Scrum mentions the Scrum Master role as the person enforcing the process, it is important to understand what exactly does the enforcement mean and what its boundaries are. Enforcement does NOT mean forcing the team to follow the process, but it implies putting in practice the core entities of the Scrum to help the teams be successful. The Scrum Master is the facilitator helping the teams reach their goal. During facilitation, the Scrum Master will use Scrum practices and would encourage the team to follow the scrum values. Again, it is important to mark that we are talking about encouragement and not forcing. It is not a role similar to the project manager but this role will help the teams to bring their blockers to closure, it will be a collaborative effort and not a directive one. From time to time, the scrum master will try to show the benefits of adopting the processes and help the team acquire an understanding on the scrum processes which is like showing the right path but it is up to the team if they want to walk through it. The scrum master will also be acting as a coach for the team to help with outshine in the agile journey and be successful.How do you facilitate your team to solve action items?To make the retrospective effective, the team should identify the action items. This gives a platform to the team to start a conversation, but only identifying will not serve the purpose. The action items should be targeted for closure and scrum master should take steps in realizing this goal. For every action item, there should be an owner, teams should refrain from assigning multiple owners to a single item as the idea of ownership dilutes. The scrum master should manage the repository of action items on a tool or an excel which is accessible to all the team members. Having a backlog of action items also helps as then the team can actually prioritize. In the retrospective meeting, the team should go through the items from the last retrospective and talk about its status, in that way everyone can keep track of where they are and what more is required to achieve the goal of closure. Few organizations use retrospective tracker where the action items are categorized into - priority, ownership, status, description, identified on, type. Working on the actions items gives the team a boost that they are moving forward towards improvement and also it enhances the sense of ownership.What are some topics to be discussed during the retrospective?Culture, Technical Practices, Quality, Backlog Visibility, and Team CollaborationThe meaning of 'Kanban' is a visual board, where 'kan' means visual and 'ban' means board. In Scrum, the sprint board works in Kanban manner. Let me pull up a draft board: It is comprised of vertical swimlanes where each lane stands for a phase in the sprint execution. Horizontally, it contains the sprint items. Each vertical swimlane can be customized as per the product or project need. Usually, it has - Backlog, To Do, In-Progress, Done and Accepted as the header. Once the team has started working on an item, it will start flowing from one phase to another. If the item is blocked due to an impediment, then it will sit in that vertical till the time is resolved. The scrum master has to help the team in a smooth flow of sprint items through continuous collaboration, discussion, and focused approach. The additional information to cover-up the Kanban can be: Sprint timeline - Start date and the end date Sprint Cadence - Pulse or rhythmical flow of scrum events Definition of Ready - Entry criteria for the user stories Definition of Done - Exit criteria for the user stories You can even mention the metrics around the Kanban board. The Kanban board serves as an information radiator for the team and outside the team (stakeholders + management).What would you do in your first 30 days? I dont have time to do onboarding.Observe; any resistance Icebreakers Working Agreement; introducing all ceremoniesWhy is agile bestTransparency Teamwork MAJOR Reduce time to market while paying attention to quality of the work , how soon can we get the product into the time of the customerwhat is the last book you read?SOAR by TD Jakes Take your career to the next level, realize your greatest dreams, and embrace your God-given talents with this practical game plan for your professional and personal life. Too often we remain in jobs that stifle our souls and leave us on the runway of opportunity with the engine of our deepest passion stalled, watching others make their personal vision a reality and build a legacy for their children. But it's never too late to get your dreams off...what is DevOps?The word DevOps is a combination of Development and Operations, symbolizing that these functions must merge and cooperate to meet business requirements. The DevOps approach seeks to resolve these issues by bringing the three functions (software development, quality assurance, and technology operations) together in a single operational model. Development maintains speed of production operations operations maintains stability of production environment, limits disruptionwalk us through a day i.e sprint planningPrepare myself mentally physically get thought materials & logistics together --tell everyone --identify impediments --identify anti patterns Jump to Standup ----I try to evaluate & identify external impediments that will burn the teams time if they try to remove them, those are the ones I will focus on --impediments that can be handled technically within the team I encourage/empower them to remove them ------ when everyone breaks out to do their work lets say I also realize a team member didn't update their board or a team member was feeling frustrated during the planning we would set up a 1 on 1 mentoring to help a team member find the root cause of their issues and walk through with them until they too are under alignment. Maybe after that based off the agreement with the team maybe we agreed to have a 1 hour coaching session or workshop with the team. Major thing is to be observant throughout the day, catching irregularities & anti patterns which will allow me to fill those spaces that I have to really encourage & empire the team.How can you help motivate your team?1. Tie my team to the product goal. I First want to see if they understand the product goal the vision, how the contribution of their work at the little level adds to the big picture & value of the goal. We want to clearly craft that out. Allowing everyone to be in sync with that. 2. Observe to ensure everyone mindset is around the scrum values, respect commitment focus openness & courage. It should be the root of everything we do as a team, so we want to make sure there's no gap in there & apply coaching/ mentoring to foster a positive mindset around scrum -----as one of my key responsibilities is to make sure scrum is established & not only established. but effective in whatever organization I am at ----allow that sense of ownership to be there so there's a sense of accountability i.e you'll see healthy conflict, you won't hear I you'll hear more of we, when 1 person fails we all fail. team members will recognize behaviors around scrum values i.e behaviors -------WHEN PEOPLE ARE EMPOWERED TO DO THEIR JOB THEY CAN TRUST THAT THE LEADER HAS THEIR BEST INTEREST AT HEAR, ITLL BRING OUT THE BEST IN THEMwhat are the 5 scrum values?Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect, and CouragePO putting many unfinished tickets in the backlog not completed user story not prioritizing & ranking causing us to waste time in our refinement ; set up 1on1 with PO to understand the reason for the gap & he stated hes not from an AGILE background & that hes willing to be helped so we established a schedule that we would check on our own to assist with getting that completed --------------- PO So divided on so much work in organization & through discussion it was evident that the role wasn't clearly carved out within the org, which caused the PO to not be as available; connect with the person who defines their role so they know what exactly is their role & responsibility & why their needed for the team to accomplish quality results & our PO was available as needed. Led to our backlog being up to date & always ready for refinement.