Agile and Scrum Interview Questions for Indian Engineers 2026

Agile is a set of principles for iterative software development (Agile Manifesto, 2001). Four core values: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Working software over comprehensive documentation. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. Responding to change over following a plan. Scrum is the most popular Agile framework: it implements Agile with specific roles, ceremonies, and artefacts. The three pillars: Transparency, Inspection, Adaptation. Other Agile frameworks: Kanban (continuous flow, no sprints), SAFe (large enterprise), XP (emphasises technical practices).

Sprint Planning: start of each sprint, team selects backlog items and commits to a Sprint Goal. Daily Standup: 15 minutes, three questions: What did I do yesterday? What will I do today? Any blockers? Not a status report: a team coordination event. Sprint Review: end of sprint, demonstrate completed work to stakeholders. Sprint Retrospective: team reflects on the process: What went well? What did not? What will we change? Backlog Refinement: team reviews upcoming items, clarifies requirements, estimates effort before sprint entry. Definition of Done (DoD): shared agreement on what complete means.

Product Owner: owns the backlog, prioritises by business value, represents stakeholders. Decides what to build, not how. Scrum Master: servant-leader who helps the team follow Scrum, removes blockers, protects from interruptions. Not the team manager. Development Team: cross-functional, self-organising, responsible for the increment. User Stories: As a [role], I want [feature], so that [benefit]. Acceptance Criteria specify conditions for the PO to accept a story. Estimation: Story Points (Fibonacci: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21) measure relative complexity, not time. Velocity: average story points completed per sprint.

Scenario questions separate textbook knowledge from practice: (1) A stakeholder keeps adding urgent requests during the sprint. How do you handle it? New items go to the backlog; the PO prioritises for next sprint. If genuinely critical, the PO may swap scope. (2) Your team consistently misses sprint commitments. What do you do? Root cause analysis: unclear requirements, unexpected complexity, too much WIP. Reduce velocity expectations, improve estimation. (3) Product quality is slipping due to pressure on velocity metrics. Update the Definition of Done to include quality gates.