Interview Questions

Question 0

I am scrum master for a couple of the teams

Answer 0

One team was doing UI development.

Another team was doing backend development.

Question 1

The technical aspects of the project?

Answer 1

The gold group is developing game analytics platform for games developers (web based games, android, iphone games, but also other publishers) that would analyze aspects such as demographics, and locations to give more targeted advertising.
Measure your game engagement, audience retention, and regional performance so you can optimize your game.
The customers would be the game developer companies.
The competitors would be companies such as Metamarkets, Nativex, ad4game.

Question 2

What did the UI team develop?

Answer 2

The UI development team consisted of developers who were using JavaScript language and jquery framework. They were also using JSP technology.

Question 3

What did the backend team develop?

Answer 3

The backend team was developing the Analytical engine to process complex analytical queries. They were using Hadoop and map processing to derive analytical data stored in Cassandra database for fast access.

Question 4

Q: what was your challenges working with the UI team?

Answer 4

well the main challenge was the dependence of the UI on the backend. So I was often acting as hands-on coordinator between the 2 scrum teams. I was also constantly working closely with both product owners to make sure the project road maps were coordinated.

Question 5

what was your challenges working with the backend team?

Answer 5

the backend team were often facing difficult problems. The problems were production support, and some performance issues of their software (it was sometimes too slow or crashing). So the backend team was working under the pressure to deliver quality product on time for the UI guys to use it.

Question 6

how did you specifically facilitated cooperation between the teams?

Answer 6

I was scrum master for 2 teams but there were 2 more teams (application team, and payment team) who were managed by another scrum master. There were 4 product owners, 4 teams, and 2 scrum masters altogether in the company. Me and another scrum master were working with product owners to coordinate the road map. Between releases, we as scrum masters were responsible for team velocities to deliver features (user stories) that the team committed to release.
So specifically, after we plan the 4-5 sprints for the next release, I was making sure each sprint we deliver user stories which were part of deliveries for the current release. Bug fixes were highest priority.

Question 7

What did you do if you saw that your team was falling behind?

Answer 7

we very rarely had emergencies when we were behind the roadmap schedule.
Once we were behind and team worked overtime. It is wrong but we made an exception once. I have learned it’s important the team doesn’t overcommit.

Question 8

Explain your day?

Answer 8

1. Sprint planning meeting on Wednesday.
2. plan the 4-5 sprints for the next release,
3. I was making sure each sprint we deliver user stories which were part of deliveries for the current release.
4. Daily stand up. Make sure the team focused on Bug fixes were highest priority.
5. Updating of the burn down chart for our costumes to see our teams progress.
6. Scheduling of time with the developers and product owner.
7. Organizing the sprint demo going over the developers work prior the demo.
8. Organizing of the sprint retrospective.
9. Meeting with the other teams.