This is a post about our experience of hiring and interviewing a new scrum master and the lessons learned. It’s also about how we attempted to integrate elements of agile into our recruitment and how I was influenced by a wonderful book that I was reading at the time: ‘Lift off’ by Diana Larsen and Ainsley Nies – and how we integrated that into our interview as well. This article is probably only of interest if you’re thinking about hiring for agile related roles or you’re curious about what a post-it machine has to do with any of this.
The article is much longer than I hoped. I’ve described the context, background and the task (part 1), but I think most of the value is in the lessons learned section (part 2) if you do want to skip there for convenience.
Part 1 – Context
Background
A lot of interviews have a predictable format whereby the interviewers sit on one side of a table and the poor interviewee sits on the other side of the table. The interviewers ask questions for fifty minutes and leave ten minutes at the end for any questions from the interviewee.
I wondered if it was a suitable format to find the right scrum master.
I tried to find some inspiration online but found very little information, hence why I’m sharing this here in case there is some value for someone else.
What were we looking for in a scrum master?
We decided that in the first round of interviews, we just wanted to get to know the people in a relaxed and conversational manner. So that’s what we did.
During the second round, we considered doing something different, but didn’t know what to do.
Aside from looking for a great person to work with, we sat down as a group of scrum masters, listed all the skills we wanted from a scrum master within our team and then prioritized the top ten.
The crux of the matter. We asked ourselves …
How could we create an environment so that we can see how a potential scrum master can truly think, respond and act – in real time, and demonstrate the skills we need?
Furthermore, I wanted to see more subtle aspects of the role, for example, can they hold on to strong idea lightly?
Whilst I was thinking about all of this, I was reading Diana Larsen’s Lift off which is a fabulous resource for any project.
We thought – why don’t we get the scrum master to facilitate part of a project lift off?
The new scrum masters would be forming new teams anyway. And by socialising the concept of a lift off with a new recruit, it would be a huge win.
Lift off!
Having now done a lift-off based on what I learned from Diana Larsen, I cannot recommend enough the value of having a solid project lift off. In her own words, Larsen describes the following:
A project lift off is an event to set the mission, generate enough energy to defy gravity and sustain the momentum to keep going.
Remarkably, most projects, however, don’t even have lift-offs! If you’re working on a project and don’t remember the lift-off, get this book.
To summarise very briefly, there are three aspects to a lift off: the purpose (how our team’s mission contributes towards the vision), the alignment (how we work best together to achieve that mission) and the context (how we interact with the rest of the business – what they need from us and what we need from them). For the the interview, we wanted to look at the alignment.
The interview process and the task
We set up a task for the second round interview. The format was:
- 10 minutes for questions
- 20 minutes for mini-facilitation (to begin facilitating an agile charter)
- 20 minutes for the interviewee to ask questions / maybe retrospect if he/she wanted
The task described our current situation in terms of the project. (Established project / new business opportunity / new team / lift off required). The task is therefore to co-create some ‘working agreements’ together with those present in the room. The aim was to co-create a shared statement for each of the questions, which were:
- How we will collaborate across different teams? (ideas prepared by you)
- How we will work together as a scrum team? (ideas prepared by you)
- How we will communicate together? (prepared by me)
- How we want to prioritize work? (prepared by me)
- How we will manage risks? (prepared by colleague)
Tl;dr
Any interview format which resulted in me being appointed, is surely not fit for purpose and needs changing! 😛
We asked the scrum masters to facilitate part of a project lift off (based on Diana Larsen’s book ‘Lift-off’) to see them in action and to see how they fared.
Part 2 – Lessons learned
What worked well from our perspective?
The initial ten minutes of questions were invaluable
- This gave the best insight into how they were thinking and their approach as well as things that already concerned them.
- I was more impressed by a good question than a good answer. Interestingly, a good question seemed to be more insightful than a good answer regarding the same topic.
- The better the questions, the more experience we knew they had, particularly regarding software development processes, business understanding and confidence with agile concepts, scrum or scaled frameworks – i.e. some of the key areas we were targeting.
- It was valuable to have the questions first. Since the questions gave us a true insight into their experience, it meant we didn’t have to worry about this aspect for the rest of the interview.
We could judge their level of preparation as well as their interest in the task
- Some arrived with the book in hand with tabs and markers throughout the book and corresponding notes.
- We could see who turned up with the tools they needed to facilitate. One person even brought a post-it machine! (See image in the title) We were all bowled over by this contraption and couldn’t stop talking about it afterwards.
- Others arrived with nothing although we did not hold this against them.
We could judge their facilitation skills and mediation skills
- We could assess how they could take a problem, bounce ideas off different people and work towards its essence, collaboratively.
- We could see if they could command a room comfortably with potential team members or senior management.
- We could also see how they used the room to their advantage when working, for example by standing up and putting post-its on the wall rather than remaining in the seated arrangement.
- We could evaluate who held strong ideas lightly and who persisted with them, even in a situation where the power dynamics are unequal, like in an interview! We even threw in a curveball. – One person disagreed with us and said that he nevertheless insists on doing something in a particular way. (He was right and his insistence was valuable to hear.)
- We could assess their time management skills to see how long we spent on each topic. One person spent a lot of time talking whilst another worked through things efficient time boxed manner.
- We could assess their agile and iterative approach to doing things. One interviewee indicated that some of our outcomes would be GEFN (good enough for now) and could be improved later.
We could judge what it was like working with them
- Ultimately, we were able to assess how enjoyable it was to be in a room with them. The best performing interviewee conducted the session so well that we all actually enjoyed doing the agile charter and all of us said that we would’ve gladly continued! This was a great outcome to see.
From the interviewee’s perspective
This is based on some brief discussions after the interviews and having spoken briefly with our new scrum master who joined us just recently.
- The opportunity to ask questions reassured them for the rest of the interview.
- This was the most interesting task they had had out of all their interviews.
- But it was also the task that required the most work from them.
- Most said they found the ‘lift off’ concept new and really interesting and they actually learned something in the process!
- There were a few things they were a little bit unsure about and just had to ‘run with it’.
Some more positive feedback
What was really incredible to hear, came from one of the interviewees as he sat down. His first words were,
‘Regardless of the outcome of the interview, I just want to tell you that I am so grateful for discovering this book.’
And he held up the Lift-Off book with post-its sticking out from every other page. He loved the book so much that he said he is telling everyone about it. The pair of us have been raving about the book so much that Amazon UK sold out shortly afterwards.
Also, one of the scrum masters who got the job said later on that the process was invaluable because he could ‘hit the ground running’. By starting this lift off process in the interview he learned so much about the project and was ready to go from day one.
So, what can be improved?
- The task required too much from the interviewees. Instead of five working agreements, we should have aimed to co-create only one or two. Most of the interviewees had prepared ideas for all five potential working agreements (just as a precaution) which we didn’t anticipate, but should have.
- We needed more clarity in the task around the working agreements. We should’ve provided real examples for what we expected as an outcome from the ‘working agreements’, for example, ‘We work best when we challenge accepted ideas’.
- Since half of our team is remote, we needed to have remote colleagues in the interview to assess their communication with remote workers but also to see how they integrate our remote colleagues into any discussion – since they are often easily overlooked. We didn’t get any remote attendees in time to assess this area of involvement.
- We needed a bit more time. We did all of this in one hour and it meant that as soon as they arrived, we had to start promptly. An extra fifteen minutes would have given us more time for some small talk, set the scene and help them to settle in.
- We could have showed interviewees our own existing ‘agile charters’ in the first round and gathered their impressions. Larsen recommends using the working agreements as a great way to start a conversation in an interview to see how they align to our current team. This would’ve been a great first step, and as a pre-organiser to the second round.
- There was no immediate feedback loop. We could have done a retrospective at the end of the interview. The interviewee could have even hosted it and we could see how both we as interviewers could improve the interview for next time and what the interviewees would have done differently (thus seeing their approach to continual improvement).
Summary
I really enjoyed this experience and I think the interviewees did as well. We set out to create an environment where we could see a potential scrum master in action and I firmly believe that we have the right candidates as a result. Along the way, I think we all learned something from the Lift Off book.
I hope that these insights might be helpful to others and I’m very open minded to suggestions or ideas on how to improve this for future reference.
As for the post-it machine, that’s now on the desk opposite me and being used daily by our new scrum master.
It’s good job he brought that to the interview, otherwise we would never have hired him! 😛
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Links / further information
‘Liftoff – Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams’ by Diana Larsen and Ainsley Nies – Amazon
‘Start and sustain successful agile teams’ by Diana Larsen – YouTube