Scrum is one of the most widely adopted Agile frameworks, known for effectively bringing Agile principles to life in real-world projects. Its simplicity, flexibility, and focus on delivering value have made it a go-to choice for organizations across the globe.

In this guide on Scrum Master interview questions, we’ll equip you with the essential knowledge and insights you need to confidently ace your next Scrum interview.

Scrum Master Interview Questions

1. What is Scrum?

Scrum is a lightweight Agile framework that empowers teams to collaborate effectively, adapt to change, and continuously improve. It promotes iterative development, self-organization, and regular reflection to enhance both process and product.

This is a common opening question in Scrum Master interviews, designed to assess your foundational understanding of Agile and Scrum principles. 

2. Define the roles in Scrum?

Scrum defines three key roles, each with distinct responsibilities that contribute to the success of the product:

Product Owner: Responsible for maximizing product value by managing the Product Backlog. This includes defining features, prioritizing them based on business value, and ensuring the team is focused on the right items during each Sprint.

Scrum Master: Acts as a servant leader and coach for the team. The Scrum Master facilitates Scrum events, removes obstacles, shields the team from external disruptions, and supports the adoption of Agile best practices.

Scrum Team (Developers): A cross-functional group of professionals who collaborate to deliver a potentially shippable product increment at the end of each Sprint. They are self-organizing and collectively accountable for the outcomes.

3. What are the responsibilities of the Scrum Team?

The Scrum Team is a self-organizing, cross-functional group typically consisting of 5 to 9 members. Their key responsibilities include:

Delivering a working product increment at the end of each Sprint that meets the Definition of Done.

Taking collective ownership and ensuring transparency for all the work committed during the Sprint.

Actively participating in the Daily Scrum by sharing updates, identifying impediments, and planning the day’s work.

Collaborating closely within the team and with stakeholders to achieve Sprint Goals and continuously improve processes and outcomes.

4. What are the Artifacts of the Scrum Process?

Scrum defines three primary artifacts that provide transparency and opportunities for inspection and adaptation:

Product Backlog: An evolving, ordered list of everything that might be needed in the product. It includes features, enhancements, bug fixes, technical work, and knowledge acquisition. Maintained by the Product Owner, it represents the single source of work for the Scrum Team.

Sprint Backlog: A subset of the Product Backlog selected for a specific Sprint, along with a plan for delivering the product increment and realizing the Sprint Goal. It is owned and managed by the Development Team.

Increment: The sum of all completed Product Backlog items during a Sprint, combined with the value of previous increments. It must be in a usable condition and meet the team’s Definition of Done, regardless of whether it is released.

5. Who is a Scrum Master? And what does he/she do?

A Scrum Master is a servant-leader who facilitates the Scrum process and ensures the team adheres to Scrum values, principles, and practices.

Key responsibilities include:

• Guiding the team in understanding and applying Scrum theory, rules, and values.

• Removing impediments that hinder the team’s progress.

• Shielding the team from external distractions to maintain focus.

• Fostering a culture of continuous improvement through reflection and adaptation.

• Ensuring value delivery by supporting the team throughout each Sprint and helping maximize productivity.

• The Scrum Master acts as a coach, facilitator, and change agent to enable high-performing Agile teams.

6. What happens in Daily Stand-up sessions?

The Daily Stand-up, also known as the Daily Scrum, is a short time-boxed meeting (typically 15 minutes) held every day of the Sprint. It allows the Scrum Team to synchronize, inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal, and adapt the plan as needed.

During the session, each team member typically answers:

• What did I accomplish yesterday?

• What will I work on today?

• Are there any impediments blocking my progress?

This meeting helps enhance transparency, improves team coordination, and provides early visibility into potential risks or blockers. Any deeper discussions or problem-solving are taken up immediately after the stand-up.

7. What is Scrum-ban?

Scrum-ban is a methodology that’s a combination of Scrum and Kanban. Scrum-ban can be used to meet the needs of the team, and to minimize the batching of work, and to adopt a pull-based system.

It ingeniously includes the structure of Scrum and the flexibility and visualization of Kanban.

8. What is Sprint 0 and Spike?

Sprint 0 is a preparatory phase before the actual development sprints begin. It focuses on setting up the project foundation by:

• Creating a lightweight product backlog

• Performing initial architectural planning and research (spikes)

• Establishing minimal design and technical setup

• Completing a few simple user stories to validate the framework

• It helps teams get ready without delivering full product increments.

Spike is a time-boxed research activity used to explore and reduce uncertainty. Common in Extreme Programming (XP), spikes are used to:

• Investigate technical or design approaches

• Create proof of concepts (POCs)

• Clarify unknowns in requirements

• Spikes improve understanding and reduce risks in upcoming work.

9. What is ‘Scrum of Scrums’?

Scrum of Scrums is a scaling technique used when multiple Scrum teams work together on a complex product or project. It helps coordinate cross-team dependencies, align goals, and ensure smooth integration.

In this setup, representatives from each team meet regularly - similar to a Daily Scrum - to:

• Share progress, risks, and blockers

• Align on priorities and deliverables

• Ensure transparency and collaboration across teams

• It promotes synchronized delivery while maintaining Scrum principles at scale.

10. What is User-Story Mapping?

User Story Mapping is a visual technique used to organize and prioritize user stories to better understand system functionality, plan product releases, and deliver customer value.

• Horizontally, stories are arranged by workflow or priority (from start to finish).

• Vertically, they’re organized by increasing complexity or depth of functionality.

This approach helps teams visualize the user journey, identify MVPs, and ensure alignment between user needs and development efforts.

11. What happens in a Sprint Retrospective?

The sprint retrospective takes place after the sprint review. During this meeting, past mistakes, potential issues, and new methods to handle them are discussed. This data is incorporated into the planning of a new sprint.

12. What is Empirical Process Control in Scrum?

Empirical Process Control is a core principle of Scrum that emphasizes making decisions based on experience, evidence, and observation rather than detailed upfront planning.

It relies on three key pillars:

• Transparency – Clear visibility into processes and progress.

• Inspection – Frequent checks to assess progress and quality.

• Adaptation – Adjustments based on what is learned through inspection.

This approach helps Scrum teams respond to change effectively and continuously improve by grounding actions in real-world data and insights.

13. What are some drawbacks to using Scrum?

• Scrum requires individuals with experience

• Teams need to be collaborative and committed to ensuring results

• A scrum master with lesser experience can cause the collapse of the project

• Tasks need to be well defined, lest the project has many inaccuracies

• It works better for smaller projects and is difficult to scale to larger, more complex projects

14. What are the key skills of a Scrum Master?

• A strong understanding of Scrum and Agile concepts

• Fine-tuned organizational skills

• Familiarity with the technology used by the team

• To be able to coach and teach the team to follow Scrum practices

• Having the ability to handle conflicts and resolve them quickly

• To be a servant leader

15. How can discord be dealt with within the Scrum Team?

• The issue’s root cause needs to be identified and addressed

• Complete ownership needs to be established

• Try to diffuse the disagreement

• Emphasize on focus areas that complement the project

• A common understanding needs to be established to guide the team

• Performing continuous monitoring and providing complete visibility

16. What is a User Story?

A User Story is a brief, simple description of a feature or functionality, written from the perspective of the end-user. It explains what the user wants, why it matters, and how it delivers value, without going into technical details.

User stories typically follow this format:

 “As a [type of user], I want [an action] so that [benefit/value].”

Key points:

• Focuses on the user's needs and goals.

• Acts as a conversation starter for the team to define requirements collaboratively.

• Serves as a building block for larger Agile structures like epics and initiatives.

• Helps ensure alignment between development efforts and business objectives.

• User stories are usually captured in digital tools or on cards/sticky notes and refined over time through team discussions.

17. How are user stories, epics, and tasks different?

• User Stories:

These are short, user-centered descriptions of a feature or requirement, written from the end-user's perspective. They focus on the what and why to deliver business value.

• Epics:

An Epic is a large body of work that can be broken down into multiple related user stories. It often represents a broader feature or business initiative.

• Tasks:

Tasks are the smallest units of work derived from a user story. They specify how the story will be implemented and are typically assigned to individuals or pairs for execution.

🧩 Hierarchy:

 Epic → User Stories → Tasks

 This structure helps in organizing, estimating, and tracking work at different levels of detail.

18. What is a Sprint?

• Sprint is a terminology used in Scrum, used to describe a time-boxed iteration.

• During a sprint, a specific module or feature of the product is created.

• The duration of a sprint can vary between a week or two.

19. What is Velocity?

Velocity is a metric used to measure the amount of work completed by a team during a sprint. It refers to the number of user stories completed in a sprint. 

20. What are the responsibilities of a Product Owner?

• Defines the vision for the project

• Anticipates the needs of the customer and creates appropriate user stories

• Evaluates project progress

• Acts as a liaison for all product-related questions