Product Owner Scenario Interview Questions Examples

Hi Dan,

Something that concerns me about your post is your description of the role: "managing 8 to 9 dev teams in a government tech project with issues around delivery consistency, roadmap, PBL prioritization"

An organization that is looking for the PO to "manage" the dev teams may have some foundational misunderstandings about Scrum.  The additional evidence supporting this is that they have issues around delivery consistency.  If the organization is looking to a PO to resolve issues that a self-organized team with a competent Scrum Master supporting them should be working through themselves, that is an issue by itself.  PBL Prioritization and interacting with stakeholders to set their expectations regarding product increments is where the PO should be spending more of their time and effort.

Many organizations have a superficial adoption of Scrum...though there is opportunity to influence change, you can also be walking into a situation where you are going to have to convince them to go "back to basics".

Thanks, Blake that was my concern with already 8 to 9 Product Owners and delivery consistency issues there must be fundamental issues within the teams... but I still would like the experience of running through some scenarios! 

When I've interviewed for Product Owner (very much from a Scrum Master perspective), I've prepared questions that would fit into separate categories.

Then I prefer to adopt a more conversational style, but slip in a few of these questions, based on context. 

I would want to assess things like whether the candidate:

• respects Scrum; 
• is aligned with the Scrum definition of a Product Owner, rather than something else (e.g. project manager, development manager, etc)
• knows how to get the best out of Scrum;
• embodies the Scrum Values
• would need much help from the Scrum Master, and how open they would be to that help;
• understands the value of saying no, and where there may be opportunities to negotiate.

It's really more about the answers than the specific questions.

Here's an example of the sort of questions I've prepared before, but in my opinion, you should write questions that reflect your own expectations, and the state and implementation of Scrum within your own organization:



Intro

What does Agile mean to you?

What's the point of using Scrum?

How do you define a good product?

Making the most of Scrum

How can you use Scrum to achieve ...?

How can releasing regularly help you as a Product Owner?

How can you work with Scrum Master to improve the product?

How does Scrum help you develop a good relationship with the Development Team?

Experience

(How) have you worked with Scrum before?

Did you follow Scrum as defined by the Scrum Guide?

What did you change? Why?

What did you do extra? Why?

Challenges

How would you get technical estimates for work you want done?

What would you do if the estimates are higher than you want, and it's an important feature?

How can you make sure the Development Team and stakeholders understand what is needed for each other to work efficiently?

Thanks for taking the time to respond Simon! Great stuff... 

Hi Daniel,

please allow me to share my two favourite ones:

1) What is the core purpose of Scrum? (credits to Gunther Verheyen)

2) How do you measure progress in Scum? (credits to Ian Mitchell, I got the question from him)

Good luck :-)