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Interview question - Scenario

Last post 09:09 pm January 8, 2024 by Arsen Grigoryan
4 replies
02:54 am December 20, 2023

There was an interview question recently asked and I found it difficult to answer. Question was:

There are 20 epics in a project and each Epic has 100 stories. Velocity is 35. How many sprints will be required to complete the project and how will you arrive at this assumption?

Experts- please comment.


10:28 pm December 20, 2023

A maximum of 1 further Sprint is required, because each ought to be conducted as if it were potentially the last. In other words, it is possible that product value has been maximized already, and if not, we should aim to do so in the next Sprint.

Depending upon risk appetite, which is indeterminate in the supplied case, we may advise that further Sprints be budgeted for so that emerging product risk can be managed.


12:21 am December 21, 2023

This question is not answerable.

On the surface, you may think that there are 20 epics with 100 stories for a total of 2000 stories and if 35 stories are complete each Sprint, you'd need 58 Sprints to complete everything. However, this neglects the core of agility.

Just because we have something like 2000 stories identified now doesn't mean that we need those 2000 stories to "complete the project". People have tried to develop a complete and comprehensive requirements specification up-front and then build to that specification. Those projects tended to fail more often than not by not delivering what the stakeholders needed or wanted in a timeframe that would be useful to them. Agility was the answer to this. By iteratively and incrementally building the product, showing it to stakeholders, and incorporating their feedback, the team builds change control into their way of working and can adapt when they realize that a number of the "requirements" that were identified aren't actually necessary, another chunk were wrong, and others were missing. Those 2000 stories could turn into 500 of the original, 300 that were modified, and 1200 that were removed.


12:10 pm January 3, 2024

Hello Ravish,

Yes you can calculate the number sprints required to complete the project.


To calculate the number of sprints required:

  1. Multiply the number of epics by the stories per epic: 20 epics×100 stories per epic=2000 stories20epics×100stories per epic=2000stories.
  2. Divide the total stories by the team's velocity: 2000 stories35 stories per sprint≈57.14 sprints35stories per sprint2000stories​≈57.14sprints.
  3. Round up to the nearest whole number, as you can't have a fraction of a sprint.

Conclusion: Approximately 58 sprints may be required to complete the project.

https://www.scrum.org/forum/scrum-forum/79972/interview-question-scenarioselenium 

I hope next time you will find out easily.

A great year ahead

Regards

Jack 

 

 

 


 


09:09 pm January 8, 2024

I guess the Right unser is: "you do not know".

In the agile world, you can’t estimate that far ahead for sure,  more correctly, it won’t make sense.

Also, "complete project" sound strange here - you may ask your interviewer to focus on the Product, and the value it delivers.

 


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