There is an art and a science to getting through an interview well. There are a lot of unknowns, but you can improve your chances of getting hired by focusing on critical areas or competencies and giving the correct answers to questions about them during the interview. Here is a list of ten areas or skills that the following project management interview questions are designed to test. You can show that you are the right person for the project manager job by answering the questions below.
If you want a job in project management, you should be ready to answer questions that test your skills and experience. In this article, we’ll tell you how to answer some of the most common questions asked of agile project managers during interview interviews. Read on to find out what skills and qualities an agile project manager should have, what questions you might be asked, and how you should answer them.
1. Do You Know What The Scrum Framework Is?
I’ve used Scrum for several projects in the past. I think it’s an excellent way to keep track of progress and organize teams. It also helps me talk to my teammates about their roles and responsibilities in a transparent team. As part of our Agile method, we used Scrum in one of the last projects I worked on. When we used both frameworks together, we were able to meet deadlines and keep the quality high.
2. What Are Some Of The Most Important Traits An Agile Project Manager Should Have?
Communication is the most important thing for an agile project manager to be good at. For this job, I need to be able to talk to my team members, clients, and other important people in a transparent way. I also must be an excellent listener to determine what everyone wants from me. Collaboration is another essential trait. As an agile project manager, I work closely with a team of different developers. Collaboration helps me get along well with other people and figure out how to solve problems.
3. How Do You Manage Sure Everyone’s Needs Are Met During A Project?
I think meeting with everyone involved in a project at least once per Sprint to discuss how projects are going is essential. This lets me know what they want from the project and if I need to change anything about how I do things. For example, when working with a client who wanted more features to be added to a product each Sprint, I had to explain that we could only add a certain number of new features to each Sprint due to time constraints. The client knew what we could not do and was happy with the result.
4. How Do You Go About Making A Project Road Map?
I start by getting together with my team to discuss what we’ve done so far, our goals for the next few weeks, and any problems or challenges we’re facing. Then, I put all this information together and used a program like Microsoft Project to make a picture of the project. This shows me where we are about our deadlines and gives me an overview of the whole project. From there, I break each milestone into smaller tasks and give them to team members.
5. Define Zero Sprint And Spike In Agile.
Let me describe Zero Sprint and Agile in detail.
- In Agile, Zero Sprint is the step of getting ready for the first Sprint. Before actually starting the project, some things need to be done. These things are called the “Zero sprint.” For example, setting up the environment for development, making backlogs, etc., are all examples.
- A spike is a type of story that one can work on between sprints. Spikes are often used for research, design, prototyping, and exploring that have to do with design or technical issues. There are two kinds of spikes: functional spikes and technical spikes.
6. What Role Does Sashimi Play In The Scrum Method?
The Scrum method has a lot to do with sashimi. Scrum uses a method called “sashimi” to ensure that all the functions developers have made are done. With this method, all the requirements for making a product, such as analysis, design, coding, testing, and documentation, are checked, and the product is shown only then.
7. Do You Know Anything Regarding The “Planning Poker” Technique?
Planning poker, also called Scrum Poker, is an agile technique for planning and estimating that uses cards. The product owner reads the agile user story to start a session on the planning poker technique. In the poker planning method, the following steps are taken:
- Each estimator has a deck of poker cards with numbers like 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, etc., to represent story points, ideal days, or something else that the team uses to estimate.
- Each estimator talks with the person who owns the product and then chooses a card based on their estimate in private.
- It is considered an estimate of all the estimators choosing cards with the same value. If not, the estimator talks about the high and low estimates.
- Then, each estimator picks a card in private and shows it. This process of planning for poker is done over and over until everyone agrees on something.
8. What Is The Difference Between A Sprint Planning Meeting And A Sprint Retrospective Meeting?
- : A sprint planning meeting is where all the Scrum roles (product owner, scrum team, and scrum master) discuss the team’s most essential features and product backlog items. This meeting happens once a week and lasts nearly an hour.
- : A sprint retrospective meeting is where all the Scrum roles (product owner, scrum team, and scrum master) talk about the good parts of the Sprint, the bad parts, and how to make the Sprint better. This meeting is held at the sprint review meeting or the end of the Sprint. It lasts for two to three hours.
9. Have You Ever Worked On A Team With People In Different Teams?
I’ve worked on a few projects where I had to talk to people on a different team. When this happens, I find it helpful to set up meetings weekly, so everyone knows what’s going on with the project. I also like to use instant messaging tools like Slack or Skype when I need to. With these tools, I can answer questions from my team members quickly.
10. When Is An Iterative Approach To Project Management A Good Idea?
When I need to deliver a product or service that needs to be changed often, like software development, I use an iterative approach. Iteration lets me work with my team members to make smaller goals that fit the project’s larger goal. This helps me manage my team’s expectations by informing them about their progress more often. It also allows them to change their methods before they are used in the final product.
11. We Want To Make Sure That All Of Our Projects Support The Company’s Goals. How Would You Make Sure That This Happens?
I would always make sure I knew what the company’s short-term and long-term goals were. This will allow me to make project plans that support those goals. For instance, if the company’s goal for this year is to increase sales by 10%, I might want to add features or make changes to our product to help increase sales. If we want to grow into other countries in the long run, I might want to add features to our software that will work well for customers in other countries.
12. Tell Me What You Do To Analyze Stakeholders.
I start my stakeholder analysis by making a list of everyone who has an interest in the project. Then, I make a list of questions I want to ask each stakeholder about their role on the team, what they hope to accomplish with the project, and any worries they might have. I have one-on-one meetings with each stakeholder to talk about their answers and deal with any problems they bring up.
13. What Sets You Apart From The Other People Who Want This Job?
I’ve worked in Agile project management for five years, which makes me a great candidate for this job. I’m also interested in technology and new ideas, so I’d love to work at a company like yours, where employees are encouraged to share their thoughts. In my last job, I helped make a new software program that made our customer service department run more efficiently. This is just one example of how I can think outside the box and find creative answers.
14. Which Method Of Project Management Do You Like To Use The Most?
I like working with Agile because it gives me more freedom. I find that different projects need different approaches, so it’s essential to be able to change my plan when I need to. In my last job, we had to make an app for a client who wanted to be able to make changes without having to wait for us to do it. We chose the Agile method to build the app so the client could add new features whenever they wanted.
15. What Is The Most Important Thing You Think An Agile Project Manager Can Do To Keep Their Team Motivated?
As an agile project manager, I think one of the most important things I can do is make sure my team feels like their work is valued and appreciated. When I worked on a project in the past, we had trouble with our clients because we weren’t giving them what they wanted. I talked to them in person to find out what they were worried about and what they needed from us. They just wanted us to tell them more about what we were doing and when they could expect certain things from us. After we talked, I made sure to talk to my team more often so they knew what we were doing and when they could expect everything to be ready.
16. How Often Should A Project Roadmap Be Changed?
I find it best to update a roadmap every two weeks for most projects. This lets me see what tasks are coming up in the next few weeks and adjust my team’s schedule accordingly. But if I see any changes or problems during one of these updates, I can make changes faster than if I waited until the end of the month.
17. There Are A Lot Of People Coming And Going From Your Team. How Would You Solve The Problem?
First, I would talk to each team member separately to find out why they were leaving. Then, I would use this information to plan how to improve the work environment. For example, if many employees leave because of bad management, I would ensure my managers are more available to their teams. If it’s because employees aren’t confident, I will hold regular meetings to boost their confidence.
18. What Kinds Of Ways Do You Use To Talk About A Project?
I choose how we talk to each other based on the team we’re working with and the type of project we’re working on. As a project manager, I use interactive, written, electronic, and face-to-face methods.
19. How Do You Deal With A Team Member Who Isn’t Doing An Excellent Job On A Project?
To get the most out of my team members, I do the following:
- Get them to act and think the way they do.
- Try not to get too upset in front of the stakeholders and team.
- Developing the skills of team members to make decisions
- Build up their performance tolerance threshold
- Putting the weak employees next to the strong ones can help them reach their full potential.
- Set up the suitable follow-up
- showing how they fit into the company’s vision and mission
- Getting them to do better by giving them rewards and praise, letting them go if there is nothing that one can do to help
20. How Do You Know When A Project Gets Off Track? How Are You Going To Manage That?
I use the following tips to figure out if the project is going well or if it’s going to be late:
- The budget is out of our hands.
- Too much time is being spent on the project.
- No original goals have been set.
- The project’s goals keep changing.
If any of these things happen, we can be sure that the project is going in the wrong direction. In this way, I can quickly get back on my feet. Here are some of the things I do:
- Find out what’s going on.
- Spend more time and effort hiding the timeline.
- Stick to the original plan or goal.
- Change how management, resources, and people are managed.
- Having face-to-face talks with clients and stakeholders
21. How Would You Handle A Stakeholder Who Is Hard To Deal With?
Stakeholders are essential to the project because they have a lot of power, and their approval is critical. They aren’t always easy to deal with. Here’s what I do when that happens:
- Know what’s going on
- Don’t argue with people in charge.
- Avoid all negative emotions
- Be fair and honest when making decisions.
- Ask for ideas and pay attention to them
- Improve communication
- Acclaim them and get to know them.
22. What Are Some Risks You Might Face When Managing A Project?
Here are some of the most common risks in a project:
- Cost
- Schedule
- Resource
- Performance
- Market Risk
- Strategy Danger
- Legal Risk
- Risk of operations
- Governance
- External Risk
23. How Do You Let People Know What’s Going On?
Many project managers find it hard to send out status reports regularly. A few of the project managers I know think that sending reports is a waste of time. In my case, sending status updates to my clients is not a problem.
I have a different way of going about this. I put all the information about the project on an online dashboard. It is broken up into different steps that make up a project. I also like to hold a daily stand-up meeting called a “daily scrum” with the whole team in the morning to set the stage for the day’s work and let people know about any changes. A Kanban board is another helpful tool I use to keep track of things. It can show visually how much work has been done at different stages of a project, making it easy to give different people smaller projects. At the end of each Sprint, I have also used burndown charts, a helpful tool. As the Scrum Master, I have updated and shared burndown charts with the rest of the team.
24. What Are The Best Metrics For Agile Work?
So, here are some typical Agile metrics:
- Velocity is the average number of points you can get from your last three or four sprints. You can figure out how much it is by adding all the approved estimates for the stories. It tells how things are going, what they can do, etc.
- Work Category Allocation – This is an essential factor that tells you how to spend your time quickly. It tells which tasks are most important and where time should be spent as a time factor.
- Cumulative Flow Graph: This is a way to look at the workflow. The time is shown on the x-axis, and the number of tries is shown on the y-axis.
- Delivering Business Value – It describes how well a team works. Business goals are given numbers based on their complexity, importance, and return on investment (ROI).
- Defect Removal Awareness – This has helped the team ensure that the best product is made. It is essential to find active flaws, know about them, and fix them. It is crucial to make a top-notch product.
- Time Coverage: The code is given time during the testing process. It is calculated as a percentage by multiplying the total relative codes and the test suite by some codes.
- Defect Resolution Time: In this step, team members find bugs or flaws and decide how long it will take to fix them. Fixing bugs or resolving defects is a process that involves several steps, such as scheduling to fix defects, clearing the defect, generating, finalizing to fix defects, and dealing with resolution reports.
- Sprint Burn Down is a graph showing how many Scrum sprints have been or have not been done. With Sprint, you can keep track of the work that has been done.
25. What Do You Think Are The Most Used Agile Methods?
Some of the most common ways to use agile are:
- Scrum is a method where there is no project manager. It tells the team what to do and helps them decide what to do first. It also helps get rid of any problems that might stop them from doing their jobs. It should make the organization’s problems clear.
- Kanban is a method that doesn’t need much planning. It works for things that one can’t plan ahead of time. With Kanban, problems are updated as soon as they are fixed. It works well for projects where things change every day.
- Lean (LN): The main idea behind lean software development is to eliminate waste that doesn’t add value by focusing on the concept of cash. It gives you high-quality goods quickly.
26. What Does It Mean To Be Agile?
Agile is a project management method that uses sprints, also called short cycles, to help people focus on making a service or product better. Usually, it makes many months-long cycles more straightforward to understand by breaking them down into the essential ideas to cash for the whole project so that the software is built with the most valuable features first and with accurate information so that one can tightly manage cost and scope.
27. What Is The Difference Between Agile And Traditional (Waterfall) Project Management?
Agile encourages simultaneously doing as little as possible, including design, development, testing, etc. On the other hand, the traditional way of doing projects is to finish one phase before moving on to the next. So, agile encourages short feedback loops that happen often and is open to changes in requirements. On the other hand, in Waterfall, feedback is usually not collected until the very end of the project, and changes are not encouraged.
28. What’s The Difference Between Keeping An Eye On A Project And Running It?
Monitoring is finding differences between the actual project results and the project baseline. Controlling is finding ways to fix the differences and suggesting corrective actions.
Monitoring and controlling a project are both projects to ensure it stays on track and gets done from start to finish. For the project life cycle to go well, these steps must be planned as part of the project management strategy.
29. How Will You Put Earned Value Management Into Action? What Is Evm, And What Does It Do?
EVM is a practical method for calculating project differences and performance based on statistics. This helps the team predict and plan how to deal with differences. EVM is a way to manage projects that uses a schedule and cost performance index to figure out differences in schedule and cost. It helps figure out how well a new project will do and how much it will cost.
A project manager should use EVM by keeping a schedule that lists all activities when they start and end and how much money they cost. This timeline will be used as a standard to measure how far along the project is.
30. What Is The Purpose Of Stakeholder Analysis And A Power-Interest Grid?
In a stakeholder analysis, you list all the possible stakeholders. They will be involved with the project in some way.
A power-interest grid helps divide stakeholders into groups based on their importance and influence. These two tools help develop essential strategies for getting different groups involved by laying out the positions of the project’s stakeholders.
Conclusion
Agile methodology is meant to complete the job as quickly as possible while meeting client needs. At the same time, Scrum is known for being flexible. In this guide, we have answered all the most-asked Agile Interview questions. It will help you learn more about how to work agilely.