Interview prep

Agile Coach interview questions

13 questions agile coaches get asked, grouped by type. Under each one are the skills it is really testing, so you can pick a story from your own work that shows them.

Technical

  1. A manager starts using velocity to compare teams and rank performance. How do you address that?
    Tests: coaching, organizational change
  2. Two teams you coach want to run their process differently, one more structured and one lighter weight. How do you decide how much to standardize across them?
    Tests: judgment, organizational change
  3. A team says retrospectives feel repetitive and stop producing useful outcomes. How do you refresh that?
    Tests: facilitation, coaching
  4. You're asked to help stand up a brand-new team's way of working from scratch. Where do you start?
    Tests: facilitation, organizational change

Situational

  1. A team is going through the motions of agile ceremonies without actually changing how they work. How do you approach that?
    Tests: coaching, judgment
  2. Leadership says they support agile ways of working but keeps making commitments to customers that assume a fixed scope and date. How do you handle the gap?
    Tests: organizational change, communication
  3. A team starts treating you as the person who decides what work to prioritize, rather than as a coach. How do you respond?
    Tests: coaching, judgment
  4. How do you show that coaching a team actually improved something, when the changes are mostly about how people work together?
    Tests: judgment, communication

Behavioral

  1. Tell me about a time you disagreed with a coworker and how you handled it.
    Tests: conflict resolution, communication
  2. Describe a project or task that did not go well and what you did about it.
    Tests: ownership, reflection
  3. Give an example of persuading someone to adopt an idea they initially resisted.
    Tests: influence, communication
  4. Walk me through how you decided what to work on when you had more requests than time.
    Tests: prioritisation, judgment
  5. Tell me about a time you had to learn something new quickly to get a job done.
    Tests: learning agility, ownership
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Agile Coach interview questions — Gurus Consulting