Describe your method for estimating Scrum project timelines and budgets.
Scrum estimation procedures vary across teams and companies. This question is asked to gain insight into the process you plan to use as a Scrum Master and the level of detail and confidence you encourage your team to aim for.
Avoid discussing estimation processes that would take a long time for a team to execute or going into detail about business procedures that fall outside of the scope of a Scrum Master's typical duties. The interviewers want to know your process for gathering story estimates, velocity projection, and an estimated cost for a proposed scope of work.
Agile estimation is all about providing reliable estimates without investing too much time creating them. In an optimal setting, I prefer to work with my team to generate a backlog with stories that have basic assumptions and scope statements that provide enough detail for my team to point them. We hold estimation meetings to apply points to all of the stories as best we can. I expect there to be a lot of unknowns, but we lean on past experiences and select estimates that are the best fit for what we know at the time.
The team then breaks down a few stories and provides time estimates for the tasks. This data allows me to project a cost-per-point estimate and a total backlog estimate. Finally, we determine a projected velocity per sprint and use it to provide an estimate for how long the project will take.
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Anonymous Answer
Agile estimation is all about providing reliable estimates without wasting too much time. In order to do this, we hold estimation meetings to apply points to these stories as best we can. On the other hand, we expect a lot of unknowns, but we lean on non-past experiences to select estimates that best fit based on what we know at that time.
The team breaks down these stories and provides estimates for the task. These estimates help us to ascertain the velocity per sprint and the needed velocity to complete the project.
Marcie's Feedback
Nice! You clearly have a good handle on estimating project timelines. Don't forget to mention budgets as well. Can you talk about a time when you and your team successfully estimated a timeline and budget for a project? Adding a specific example will further strengthen your answer. Great job!
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