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Q1. Are Agile and Scrum the same? What is the difference between agile and scrum?
Agile is a set of methods and practices based on the values and principles expressed in
the Agile Manifesto. Scrum is an Agile framework for handling roles, events, artifacts, and
rules/guidelines to implement the Agile Mindset. The table below lists the key differences
between Scrum & Agile.
Factors Agile Scrum
Scrum is a framework that
Agile is a mentality and a set of
Nature & Scope implements agile
principles
principles
Next sprint is planned
Planning occurs at three levels:
after the team has
Planning release planning, iteration
completed the current
planning, and daily planning
sprint activities
Rigid framework & there is
Agile is very flexible and hence
Flexibility to Changes no much room for
adapts to changes very quickly
frequent changes
Works on trying new and
Agile execution is quite simple and
creative ideas, which
Design & Execution it usually something that isn’t done
yields concise and smart
before
outcomes
Monitoring takes place
Requires detailed tracking & it
after compilation of
Monitoring Process takes place after every milestone of
certain features rather
the overall design
than after each design
There is no ‘team leader’,
A leader is accountable for the
instead its fosters a multi-
Leadership Role work done (or not done) by the
functional and self-
team
organized team
The effective mode of Communication is done on
Mode of Communication communication is face-to-face a daily/weekly basis with
within a team on a regular basis respect to the schedule
The priority is always to satisfy the Delivers build to clients to
Estimation Time &
customer by providing continuous get their feedback, after
Delivery
delivery of valuable software each sprint
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Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions
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Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions
The Product Owner is responsible for the work the team is supposed to complete.
The main role of a product owner is to motivate the team to achieve the goal and
the vision of the project.
The Scrum Master ensures that all the team members follow scrum’s theories,
rules, and practices. They make sure the Scrum Team has whatever it needs to
complete its work, like removing roadblocks that are holding up progress, organizing
meetings, dealing with challenges and bottlenecks.
The Development Team(Scrum Team) is a self-organizing and a cross-functional
team, working together to deliver products. Scrum development teams are given
the freedom to organize themselves and manage their own work to maximize the
team’s effectiveness and efficiency.
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Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions
can vary widely depending on many factors, including the team, the business stakeholders,
and the development processes of the organization. Their job is to act as the proxy of the
customer, prioritize the backlog, answer or get answers to the team’s queries and
accept/reject the work that the team generates.
Q9. Can the Product Owner and Scrum Master be the same person?
No. Remember that the Product Owner should never act in the Scrum Master role. These
two roles have conflicting goals and should never be merged. Mixing them can have a very
negative effect on the development process. Both roles require 100% involvement. Scrum
Master, at times, needs to act as a mediator between the development team and PO when
their goals start to diverge. In such a case, if the same person is acting as both, there will be
a conflict of interest, which will affect the team’s progress.
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Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions
Q14. Vision, Strategy, and Roadmap. We keep using these words, but what do they
mean?
Vision basically is a goal you set for your organization, the product or even for yourself. A
Vision Statement describes the desired future position of the company. There are three
elements which constitute a vision on a broader level, the purpose, the picture, and the
values.
The strategy is a system of achievable goals and visions which describes who the customers
are, how the product fits into the current market, and how it will achieve business goals. In
contrast to the product vision, which should have a lifetime of many years, a product
strategy is typically seen to look at a horizon of months to a few years.
The roadmap describes what products and features will be built to realize the strategy and
vision, who is responsible for building those product features, and, sometimes, an estimate
of when those products and features will be released.
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Q18. What is a user story in Scrum? How does a good user story look?
In agile, a user story is a tool used in Agile software development that represents a small
piece of business value that a team can deliver in a sprint. It creates a simplified description
of a user’s requirements. A user story is defined incrementally in three stages:
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>
A good user story should be Independent (I), Negotiable (N), Valuable (V), Estimable (E),
Small (S), Testable (T). In short – INVEST.
Q19.What is the difference between the Product Manager (PM) and Product Owner (PO)?
The terms are often used interchangeably, and admittedly there is some overlap. Yet, those
two are indeed different roles.
Product managers are more strategic. They focus on the product’s vision, company
objectives, and the market. Mainly, they are accountable for strategic roadmaps and
business outcomes.
Product owners are more tactical. They translate the strategies into actionable tasks
and work with cross-functional agile teams more closely to make sure they are
executing on those requirements accordingly. In simple terms, they are responsible
for iteration goals and delivering value to the customer.
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If backlog items are turning into a large and unwieldy lengthy queue, it’s time to prioritize.
As pointed out, there are numerous ways to do so.
Q24. List some popular agile frameworks. Do you know any other agile methodology apart
from scrum?
When you are posed with this sort of question, and if you haven’t used any other
frameworks, you can just name few that you might have heard of. Other frameworks that
are based on agile are:
Kanban
Test-Driven Development
Feature Driven Development
Extreme programming
Crystal
Lean Software Development
Now that we have finished the basic questions, let’s move on to the next set of questions in
this product owner interview questions article.
Advanced Level Product Owner Interview Questions
Q25. As a product owner what will be your responsibilities?
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Q28. How does the PO filter the user stories before putting an idea in a backlog as a
Product Backlog item?
A Product Owner should not outrightly reject any of ideas, nor can he/she accept all of
them. Every idea that comes to the product owner needs to be analyzed. The analysis can
be done in several ways like analyzing through creating a prototype, working on pilot
customers, based on experience, etc. Based on the result of analysis, the PO should decide if
the idea should be added to the product backlog or not.
Q32. Is it ever suggested to use waterfall over Scrum? If yes, explain when.
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Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions
When your requirements are simple, well-defined, fully understood, predictable, and are
not subjected to change until the completion of the project you could probably go for the
waterfall model.
Q33. How non-functional requirements can be dealt with within the product backlog?
Non-functional requirements play an important role in the overall product development and
delivery. They are the requirements without which the functional part cannot be termed as
complete. There are different ways of handlings such requirements, like:
Create user stories in the backlog
Inclusion in DoD
Acceptance Criteria
Q34. What services that product owner receives from scrum master?
Scrum Master serves Product Owner in the following ways:
Makes sure that the goals and scope of the project are understood by everyone
involved
Facilitates Scrum events as and when requested by the product owner
Helps product owner find techniques for effective product backlog management
Ensure the product owner knows how to arrange the product backlog to maximize
value
Helps product owner understand and practice agile practices
Q35. What are a few challenges of with the product owner role?
Some of the challenges that Product Owners face are:
Prioritizing features is not always easy and might involve trade-off decision making.
Product Owners often find it difficult to transforming customer’s ideas into tangible
product deliverables.
Aligning the entire scrum team with customer’s requirements and articulating the
customer’s requirements and project goal to the team is a challenging task
At times, the product owners fail to understand the fundamental of the role which in
turn reflected in the performance of the team
PO might find it challenging to plan releases and sprints to deliver maximum value at
the earliest
Dealing with customers who do not understand the process of Scrum is another
difficulty
Providing timely and constructive feedback to the team to improve the quality of
deliverables is not always a straightforward process
With this, we have finished the theory-based questions. Let’s move on to the next set of
questions in this product owner interview questions article.
Real-World Scenario Based Product Owner Interview Questions
Q36. Is it a product owner’s responsibility to track or measure the performance of the
project?
Yes, it is. Generally, while the development team is one who measures sprint performance,
it’s the product owner, who measures project performance.
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Q37. How does Product Owner maximize the value of the Development Team’s work?
A large part of the Product Owner role is to establish the mission and vision for their teams
work efforts. The Product owner can increase the value the team delivers through different
strategies, which are:
Continuous interaction contributes to maximum value being delivered
Domain Training, investing time in teaching the development team about the
domain, helping them understand the business and how it works
Vision, taking out time explain the vision for the product and the organization
Value Delivery, making the team understand the value being delivered at the story
level.
Doing all the above-listed things not only encourages the team and helps them own the
product but it also helps the overall business.
Q39. If you were a product owner how would you deal with uncooperative stakeholders?
The best way is to find a way to convince them that their presence and contribution is really
important. Also, win their confidence by engaging them through regular meeting and
discussions and demonstrating the value of agile product development. If it still fails, the
product owner should seek help from a sponsor. Also, facilitate workshops, training events
etc to get participation from uncooperative stakeholders.
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Q42. As a Product Owner, how would you communicate your marketplace knowledge to
the Scrum Team?
As a part of the scrum team, it is very much required that the development team and the
scrum master is aware of the changes happening in the market place. And making sure that
the scrum team is up to date on marketplace knowledge is one of the responsibilities of the
product owner. The Product Owner does it continuously as a part of his informal
interactions with the development team and scrum meetings. He also does that through
formal discussions and meetings that are part of the scrum framework.
Q43. How do you align the product roadmap with the product backlog and user stories?
You don’t align the product roadmap with the product backlog and user stories. The Product
Roadmap describes what products and features will be built to realize the vision, who is
responsible for building those product features, and, sometimes, an estimate of when those
products and features will be released. It should generate User Stories for the team’s
Product Backlog. There should be a parent-child relationship between the two.
Q46. How will you know if you are successful as a product owner or not?
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Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions
Generally, the success of the product owner depends on how much invested the person in
this role and understands the true meaning of being a product owner. Certain parameters
that would help you evaluate yourself are:
Strength of Product Backlog
Constant delivery of Value
Attaining of Release Goals
Understanding of Product Vision by team members
Defining a successful Product Roadmap
When the customer is satisfied and pleased
But, in no way, these are the only parameters. There can be many parameters to access the
success of this role.
Q47. Do you hold any agile certification? Why did you choose this certification?
This sort of question might seem awkward if you don’t have any certification. In such cases,
stay calm and just let the interviewer know if are planning to take any in the future. If yes,
then mention why you have that particular certification. Some popular certifications are:
ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner)
ASM (Agile Scrum Master)
CSM (Certified Scrum Master)
CSPO (Certified Scrum Product Owner)
PSM (Professional Scrum Master)
Safe Agilist
Q48. Should the team accept changes in the sprint as requested by the Product Owner?
The agile model has helped the teams to manage changes within the development process
model. According to agile principles, if the change is being requested by the Product Owner,
the team has to decide if they should accept it or not. There will be a negotiation between
the product owner and the development, the team gets to take the final call on the
acceptance of the change.
Q49. Your team is constantly failing to meet commitments, and its performance velocity is
volatile. What might the possible reasons be?
This question basically addresses various issues. There are many possible factors that might
combine to make a team’s velocity volatile, like:
Hiring new people
Team members are leaving
Levels of seniority in the team is causing issues
Working in uncharted territory
Working with legacy code, probably undocumented
Unexpected technical debt
Wy to many holidays and sick leave
Q50. List some of the popular project management tools that you have heard of.
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Some popular tools used in the project management are Rally Software, Version One,
XPlanner, EasyBacklog Agilefant, and many others.
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