Last week, I posed some questions I’ve asked in interviews when hiring Scrum Masters.
Today, I’ll turn the tables around and answer them myself. I’ll provide my reasoning for these answers so you can have one Scrum Master’s perspective on being the interviewee.
Tell me about yourself.
“I’ve spent about a decade in the tech industry working with companies like Amazon, TripAdvisor and Atlassian as an individual contributor, manager, and as an Agile Coach and Scrum Master. I focus on coaching teams to be motivated and always improving. I experiment with a variety of Agile practices and frameworks in my coaching and I work with teams and leaders to measure what’s working for them. I believe that people are at the core of building high quality products, so my area of interest is in coaching teams in self-management, cross-functionality, and the safety to own their work.”
With this interview question, you have about 3 minutes to sell your experience, establish credibility, and show what makes you stand out. I mention my years of experience, industry, and examples of companies I’ve worked for. I make sure to address coaching multiple Agile frameworks so the company knows that I may go outside of Scrum in working with teams. And I emphasize my personal area of interest – my unique brand of coaching – that emphasizes people.
Tell me about Scrum.
“Scrum is a framework under the umbrella of Agile. It emphasizes having a cross-functional, self-managing team to work incrementally and iteratively, relying on frequent feedback from the customer and self-reflection to improve. I’ve found that when Scrum is understood by the organization – leaders and teams – and the conditions for Scrum are met, like having autonomy and a cross-functional team for example, it can be a powerful and effective way of working.”
I chose this answer to gauge the interviewer’s reaction. I’ve intentionally dropped some points in there for them to address. Will they dive into where their organization is in its understanding of Scrum and how I might play a role in it? What a cross-functional team means to them? Are their teams able to be autonomous? I deliberately said Scrum can be a powerful and effective way of working, meaning I don’t believe it’s a fit for every organization – do they pick up on that? And, if they do, are they looking for a pure Scrum figurehead who thinks it’s the best thing for everyone all the time, or are they looking for a Scrum Master who is willing to challenge Scrum itself?
Tell me about the Scrum values.
“Focus, openness, courage, commitment, respect. As important as the events, artifacts, and roles of Scrum are, the Scrum values, just like the Agile manifesto and principles, are at the heart of everything we do. Without having these as a foundation, we are not truly embodying Scrum.
One that I often see challenges with is focus. I’ve worked with organizations where everything is the highest priority. And that lack of focus trickles down to the team. The team does not have goals or clear priorities. Their work is constantly interrupted. This causes delays and affects morale.
I coach my Product Owners in understanding their role as the voice of priorities for the team. I help them to maintain a transparent, ordered, refined backlog. I coach them in communicating the need for focus to our leaders and stakeholders, or I work with those leaders directly in setting goals and priorities for the organization. I want my team to be in a state of uninterrupted flow as much as possible so they can deliver high-quality work on time.”
I have yet to work with an organization where the Product Owner role is fully understood by leaders, teams, and the POs themselves. When I’m interviewing for a job, I want the organization to know that priorities and their communication to teams is something I will be actively challenging. If they want a Scrum Master who will say “yes” to their demands without question, they should not hire me. I want them to also know that I am here to support the POs and their roles.
What’s your favorite Agile principle?
“Face-to-face conversation has been an interesting one for me. I have seen companies who like to hide behind e-mails, documentation, reporting, and policies. I believe if people have questions or want to brainstorm, we should talk. Work together to solve things. Documentation can only do so much.
That said, I also want to respect people’s time and not interrupt their workflow. I use messaging as my first choice in reaching out to people, including putting together group chats. If we can get answers there, great. If not, let’s talk.
This becomes challenging in a remote environment. I’ve worked with teams who don’t have overlapping hours due to their time zone distribution. It makes my work as a Scrum Master a lot harder because I feel like I’m constantly behind. And we face delays in communication as we’re waiting for members of teams to come back online. I try to encourage asynchronous communication as much as possible but it continues to be a challenge.
Tell me more about your teams – how are you distributed and what are your working hours and communication?”
This has been a huge challenge for me in remote work. As much as working remotely opens up new opportunities, it has also been taken advantage of by leaders.
In the quest to keep costs down, leaders are choosing team members based on how little they can pay them instead of thinking about how to keep teams collaborative.
And then those leaders leave the teams to have to deal with the repercussions, like adjusting working hours in an unhealthy way or scrambling to find some sliver of overlapping meeting time or having to work with inadequate tools for asynchronous communication.
I am no longer willing to work in this type of environment due to the toll on my mental and physical health. So you can bet I will be exploring the company’s practices at length in my interview.
How do you measure your success as a Scrum Master?
“Are we meeting the Scrum values of focus, openness, commitment, courage, and respective? Are we delivering goal-aligned value in every Sprint? I ask this of my teams and leaders and I listen to their answers. If we’re not, I need to know why not and work with the team to do so.”
If the interviewer asks about velocity, I’m out.
But seriously, I want to see if this answer aligns with what the organization perceives as a successful Scrum Master. If it’s someone who drives the team to execution through reporting and planning, then that’s not me (and that’s not really a Scrum Master). I also want to know if they have any practices for measuring Scrum Master success; I’m always open to learning.
How would you work with an organization that doesn’t understand Agile and Scrum?
“I have yet to encounter this mythical unicorn organization where every single leader and team member fully understands and embraces every aspect of Agile and Scrum. In fact, I don’t think I’d want to work somewhere like that. I believe that every way of working should be challenged and questioned and improved.
I do at least think that every organization should have foundational knowledge of Agile and Scrum before challenging these ways of working. I think that the best way to get that is to put leaders and team members through training together, be it a 2-day CSM class or a 1-day Elements of Scrum. Has your organization had that training or are you open to it?”
I’m testing them to see what work they’re willing to do. Agile and Scrum are not an overnight transformation. It’s not enough to say, “That’s why we’re hiring Scrum Masters.” It is not the Scrum Masters’ sole responsibility to align the entire organization on what we’re doing and why. And if the organization isn’t willing to invest time and effort on education and self-reflection (which doesn’t have to come from a paid course, but some time set aside for training), it’s not a place where I can be effective.
Organization-specific questions
I’ve gotten a wide range of these and try to answer them using examples from my experience. For example,
What would you do if a manager attended your Retrospectives?
“I’d ask the team for context on why this is occurring and what the impact is. I’ve worked with teams where a member of the Scrum team managed another member of the team. Thankfully, the team – including the direct report – was comfortable speaking openly in front of the manager. If that weren’t the case, I would have talked to that manager directly to get their perspective, then to the team to see how they’d want to move forward.”
What if someone doesn’t like Scrum?
“That’s great! Scrum isn’t perfect. I love learning about opportunities for improvement.”
I tell the story of how, on my very first day in a new Scrum Master role, a leader in Product expressed his disgust with Scrum when my manager introduced me to him. I always see these instances as learning opportunities and don’t take them personally. I’m not here to convince anyone. I’m here to learn. He was a great person to work with by the way; I respected him and his insights.
What are you into?
This was at a company that focused on audio, video, and gaming. I talked about my interests in music and movies, then tried to not take up the entire interview talking about my love of gaming – video games, board games, and RPGs. Turned out one of the interviewers also played D&D. This remains one of my favorite interview experiences.
What questions do you have for me?
“Why Agile? What does it mean to you and your organization?” Are you open to a role that will challenge how you work, potentially slowing down immediate delivery to make lasting improvements? Or are you looking for a yes-person to buy into and accelerate any existing dysfunction?
“What are your working hours?” I want a company that can support the hours where I work most effectively, which tends to be around a 9 to 5 schedule. Even better, I’m listening for trust and autonomy for employees to manage their own time. And how the company is handling remote, distributed work.
“What is the growth path for Scrum Masters?” Has the company thought that far ahead, on what a career there looks like for Scrum Masters?
“How do you support professional development?” I’m eternally grateful to companies that have helped fund my conferences, books, training, and certification.
Depending on what I learn during the interview, I might ask about team/organization/company goals, support for mental health, work/life balance, a description of company culture, an example of failure and their response to it, their understanding of the difference between a Scrum Master and a Project Manager, information on management style, how people and teams share knowledge with each other (like lightning talks or knowledge shares or town halls), keeping people connected in remote work, the last time you had fun at work, how do you measure success in the product and in processes, challenges, wins, benefits that aren’t mentioned in a new hire package, reasons I might not want to work there, and what keeps them coming to work each day.
Something I haven’t asked but will start to, “I see we ran out of time and I’m interested in learning more. How might I follow up on further questions?” This happens frequently and I used to feel bad about taking up more time. Not anymore.
So… did I get the job?
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
GREAT article!! Thank you!!