1. What is Agile?

Agile is considered as a software framework. The behavior and techniques of the framework encourage in-time project and enable users to get their desired software soon. That software framework is used for project management to bring flexibility. With the presence of this framework, clients may make small changes without doing huge amendments in schedule or budget.

2. What are the other agile frameworks?

There are several agile frameworks including – Scrum, Feature-Driven Development, Crystal, Kanban, Test-Driven Development.

3. What is scrum?

Scrum is a framework that inspires the team to learn through experiences, effectively work together on a problem, and reflect on the profit with constantly improving. Scrum is involved to make a set of meetings, tools, and roles to effectively make the structure of the team and manage them.

4. What are the basic similarities between Agile and Scrum?

Agile is involved to complete projects with the following steps (step by step) and is also considered as incremental and iterative in nature. Just like agile, scrum also follows the iterative and incremental way in terms of functioning.

5. What are the basic differences between Agile and Scrum?

6. Explain ‘scrum of scrums’ in brief.

Let five teams are working on the same project and each team consists of five members. Each of these five teams is leading their specific scrum meeting. In order to coordinate with another team, another meeting has to be organized, this meeting is called scrum of scrums. As an instance – a CEO represents its team in the scrum of scrums.

7. For how long a scrum life cycle can exist?

Scrum is designed for teams of ten or fewer members. The life cycle of scrum generally depends on project size and team size. Team members break the whole work into parts that can be completed within a specific time iteration called sprints. It takes 3-4 weeks to complete each scrum.

8. What does it mean by Test-driven Development?

Test-driven Development (TDD) is an agile framework that can style programs in three different activities: coding, testing, and design. TDD helps to improve design qualities in code and delivers a technical quality for improving cohesion and coupling.

9. Define the “build-breaker” in brief.

When software has a bug on it, the build-breaker situation occurs. Due to the presence of such an uncertain bug, execution of software is failed and a warning is generated. Hence, the software testing team will involve getting back the software into the normal working stage removing the bug.

10. Mention different strategies to maintain agile qualities.

Here are some agile quality strategies are mentioned:

1. Iteration
2. Dynamic code analysis
3. Standards and guidelines
4. Milestone reviews
5. Short feedback cycles
6. Reviews and inspection

11. What is the drawback of the agile model?

The drawbacks of the agile model are as follow:

• It cannot predict the effort that is needed to complete a task. In the case of large projects, it is very difficult to estimate the total required efforts.
• Several times it is challenging to focus on the design and documentation of a project.
• If the requirements of clients are not understood, the final project cannot meet the customer requirements. Hence, the Company may face customer dissatisfaction.

12. What is zero sprints in agile?

Zero sprints are the preparation step of the first sprint in agile. Before starting the project, there are a few activities that are needed to be done. These activities are known as zero sprints. As an instance – setting the environment to perform development, preparing for backlogs, etc.

13. What do you understand by the spike in agile?

Spike is considered as a story type that must be considered between the sprints. Spikes are taking for performing different functions associated with design or technical issues (just like research, design, prototyping, development). Two types of spikes are considered – functional spikes and technical spikes.

14. What does scrum master do?

In a scrum team, a leader or coach is present as the name of a scrum master. A scrum master is responsible for serving and protecting the scrum team to improve their performance.  He is involved in making a well-organized and influence team where all members focus on implementing agile, scrum principles, and applications.

15. What are the basic qualities a professional agile tester must-have?

  A good professional agile tester must have:

• Quick understanding of the necessities.
• Knowledge of agile principles and concepts.
• The ability to establish good communication with developers, testers, and associates.  
• As the requirements change constantly, the tester must understand the risks involved in this stage.

16. Explain the role of a story point in the scrum.

A story point is a scrum unit used to estimate the required efforts which are needed to finish or implement a particular task.

17. What do you mean by scrum ban?

Scrum ban is considered as a software development framework that is made depending on Scrum and Kanban. This framework is designed for projects that have frequent maintenance, consisting of user stories and programming errors. With the presence of this approach, the workflow of the team can be guided in a manner to allow minimum completion time in case of each user story or programming error.

18. What is the role of continuous integration in agile?

Continuous integration plays a vital role in agile –

• It ensures the quality and bug-free state of the code-base.
• It is involved in maintaining the release of schedule on time by time and detecting bugs.
• As agile code is delivered frequently in every sprint of 2-3 weeks, continuous integration ensures the stable quality of building code.
• It also helps to determine the impact of performance on branches.

19. What are the benefits of using scrum?

Scrum plays three roles such as Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Team. Here are the brief explanation of each role –

Scrum Master – In a scrum team, a leader or coach is present as the name of scrum master. A scrum master is responsible for serving and protecting the scrum team to improve their performance. He is involved in making a well-organized and influence team where all members focus on implementing agile, scrum principles, and applications.

Product Owner – The product owner is considered as the stakeholder of the project. He involves representing the product requirement first. He has the vision to form and convey the detailed vision to the team.

Scrum Team - Scrum team has made with collective individuals who are involved in accomplishing a specific task. The team works promptly and they are responsible to deliver the requested product on time.

20. What is the velocity metric in agile?

Velocity is an important metric in Agile used for calculating with adding whole effort estimation regarding user stories that are completed in an iteration. It can track by what value each sprint can complete and how much time it will take to complete the project.

21. What is the product roadmap?

A holistic view of a product feature is called as the product roadmap. It is used for creating the product vision.

22. What are the benefits of managing consistent iteration length throughout the project?

Here are some benefits:

• It helps the team to track the progress.    
• It delivers a consistent means to measure team velocity.
• It establishes a consistent pattern to deliver.

23. What are the basic differences between RUP and scrum?

24. What is the difference between the agile testing approach and other testing approaches?

In the case of agile testing, the whole code is divided into smaller parts. At a particular time, each branch of code is tested. Each branch has continuous communication for testing these parts simultaneously. Hence, the agile process is considered as flexible and focused.

25. What is the scrum poker technique?

Scrum poker technique is also known as planning poker. It is a card-based estimation technique, used as a general agreement. Here are few features are represented:

• The client will read the user story first. Ten estimators select features on the basis of understanding.
• Each estimator has different planning card numbers. These card numbers are the story points.
• This process will repeat until a general agreement is reached.

26. Mention about some agile certifications.

Agile and Scrum certifications are very important nowadays each software developing company is expecting the candidates to have one of them or more. Organizations generally prefer:

• PSM (Professional Scrum Master)
• CSM (Certified Scrum Master)
• ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner)
• ASM (Agile Scrum Master)

27. What is the importance of a sprint planning meeting?

In the sprint planning meeting, the whole scrum team with the product owner and scrum master are present to discuss the essential abilities of the team and also the items present in the product backlog.

28. When we will select the agile model?

In the case of lean software development, or feature drive development, or crystal methodology, or dynamic development we need to use the agile model.

29. Who is involved in re-prioritizing a timebox plan?

The complete team, product owner, and developers have been involved in re-prioritizing a timebox plan.

30. What are the other benefits of using agile methodology in another testing except software testing and development testing?

We can use agile methodology for testing biophysics, biochemistry, biomedical, and these aspects having not enough data and projects are required to be completed in a small team. 

31. What is epic and task?

Epic – It is a software feature defined by users. It is itemized in the product backlog. Epic divides into smaller parts knows as stories.

Task – Further, user stories are divided into small parts is known as a task.

32. What do you mean by Application Binary Interface (ABI)?

ABI is an interface that is involved to compile application programs or the low-level interface that exists between an application and the operating system. Hence, in different system platforms, ABI is considered as a specific defined requirement that is used for portability of application in binary form.  

33. What do you understand by build breaker?

Several times, a developer accidentally commits a bug into the program. This bug may be responsible to stop the compilation or execution process with generating the error. This situation occurs due to the failure in the time of the normal executing of testing. It is called a broken build. Now, testers become build breaker and play a vital role to rectify the bug.

34. User stories are not estimated in working hours, why? 

We don’t need to estimate user stories in terms of man hurt because it brings a lack of product quality. During the work hours, we generally focus on budget and cost estimation of management. Hence, the story point is important as it delivers concepts associated with efforts that are needed for complex works.

35. What are the advantages of using agile testing?

Here we are going to mention some important key points regarding agile testing –

• Customers welcome changes
• Face to face conversation for good communication
• Clients are allowed to make cooperation with developers
• A big free clean mode
• 100% customer satisfaction
• Promotion of sustainable development

 36. What are some disadvantages of agile testing?

Here are some major disadvantages of agile testing –

1. If a big project occurs, we may have a problem estimating the total efforts that we need to put in the completion of the project.
2. We cannot always focus on design and documentation.
3. If clients’ requirements are not understood by developers properly, then the end product will not be able to satisfy customers.

37. When a Scrum master is recommended to follow up action items?

The establishment of a follow up of the works can be done by a team. The scrum master of the team will collect the information.

38. What are some challenges faced by Agile software developers?

In order to develop agile software, developers need to face several challenges including –

• More customers’ involvement
• Impacts management instead of developers
• Each feature needs to be analyzed before going to the next one.
• All codes must work to ensure that the application is in the working state.
• A lot of planning requires.

39. What are some project management tools present in Agile?

So, some project management tools are – X-planner, Agilefant, Icescrum, Agilo, Rally Software.

40. What do you mean by tracer bullet?

A tracer bullet is a spike consisting of the current set of practices or architecture. It is involved in examining the feasibility of an end-to-end process.

41. What do you mean by product backlog and sprint backlog?

Product backlog – A project manager is involved in maintaining the product backlog. He has each and every requirement and feature of the product.

Sprint backlog – Product backlog has a subset of it known as sprint backlog. It contains requirements and features regarding a particular sprint. 

42. What are the essential qualities a Scrum master has?

The role of the scrum master is –

• Involve in understanding the purpose and expectations of customers.
• Share knowledge with the team members.

43. What do you mean by burn-up and burn-down chart in Agile? 

Burn-up and burn-down charts are involved to track the project progress. A burnup chart is used to show the progress of stories that is done over time. Burndown chart is used to show the leftover time i.e. how much work is left to do.

44. What is the role of the test stub?

Test stub is a small code used to mimic the actual component by generating known output and substitute the actual component.

45. When we will not use the Agile Model?

We will not use the Agile model when –

• Customer is not available,
• Requirements are flexible
• The team is not skilled enough
• It is real time-constrained.

46. What are the types of project for what the Agile Methodology works?

Agile methodology is used for projects having dynamic requirements where frequent changes in products can be done on regular basis.

47. What do you know about lean methodology?

The lean methodology follows “Just in time production”. The main objective is speeding up the software development process and decrease cost. An agile process is also a lean approach in the case of the software development process.

48. What is pair programming?

Pair programming is a combined effort where one programmer is involved in writing code and the other is involved in reviewing. It reduces the chance of mistakes and facilitates knowledge transfer.

49. What is the role of the Sprint Retrospective Meeting?

In this meeting, the scrum role comes together and discusses bad and good elements of the sprint to ensure the improvement of the sprint.

50. What is Daily Stand-Up in Agile?

Daily Stand-Up is a regular basis meeting where the whole team meets for a few minutes to discuss –

• The output of yesterday’s works
• The plan for today
• The impediment or block that is restricting their desired works.

51. What are the common metrics for agile?

Some common metrics for agile are – velocity, commutative flow diagram, work category allocation, defect removal awareness, time coverage, defect resolution time, sprint burndown metric, business value delivered, etc.

Please refer below post for Software Life Cycle Development Interview Questions and Answers,

Top 50 Software Life Cycle Development (SDLC) Interview Questions and Answers

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