4 things to check out before hiring for your Scrum team

Congratulations!  You just got an open rec to hire someone for your Scrum team.  That's always a feat worth celebrating.

While you might be dreaming of the velocity increase this might bring, or the number of unit tests you can improve over every sprint, stop and take a moment to think about who you hire.  What kind of person do you want?

If you hire the wrong person, they could tear down your team and result in negative productivity. 

You don't want that!

I've always learned the A-B-Cs of hiring

  • Attitude

  • Behaviors

  • Competency

Before you break out the coding challenge (competency), make sure you take a good look at the attitudes and behaviors of your candidate.

This was especially driven home to me as I was reading a recent study authored by McKinsey & Co in partnership with titled "How to Select and Develop Individuals for Successful Agile Teams: A Practical Guide"

The report itself isn't very long and is quite to the point and practical.  As I was reading through it, a lot of situations and responses from my own (recent) work life kept popping up as if to validate the points the expensive consultants were making.

Based on the study work that McKinsey and compiled, there were several traits that best correlated with the successful scrum teams.  These were individual traits and behaviors that resulted in the best performing scrum teams.  

I want to repeat that slightly differently.  These were not the traits of the amazing super star performers.  These were the items that best aligned to optimize the overall output of the team.  This makes sense, since with Scrum, it's all about empowering the team and seeing what the team is capable of.

I thought it was interesting that nowhere in the report was there any discussion of specific technical skills or experience.  That didn't even merit mention.  I think this is often the opposite of what Hiring Managers want to see.  It’s super cool to get a stud on board.  It's gratifying to hire the hot shot that can do everything while whistling Dixie.  But that's the wrong direction here.

Attitudes and Behaviors before Competency.

Here are 4 things to look at or for when trying to grow your team.

The ability to handle ambiguity is the most desirable trait.

The ideal candidate here will be able to start on a project (or a story or a sprint) without knowing everything that is needed to get to the end.  They have the ability to work with the data that they do have, and use that to bring clarity on the things that they don’t' know.

As you consider this kind of person, and how you might find them, it would be instructive to as questions like:

  • Tell me about a situation in which the customer or user of your service or product kept changing their mind and were not sure what they wanted.

  • Describe some of the strategies you used to deal with it.

  • How did it make you feel? (page 4)

You can see how this kind of question drills into the realm of managing ambiguity.  The flip-flopping client is a classic ambiguity scenario.  Which way should you go?  How do you start when they might change their mind tomorrow?  For some people this is a path to mental and emotional gridlock.

The follow- up questions offer a couple really valuable pieces of insight into the way the person handles that kind of situation.  As they describe the strategies they used, you can assess how they react to and cope with the ambiguous situation.

Asking how they felt about the situation will let you see if they were comfortable, or if it was something they just wanted out of as quickly as possible.  If they wanted  out quickly that might be a sign that they don’t handle the situation very well, or would wear out over time if the situation persisted.

Agreeableness is the second desirable trait

Agreeableness stands in contrast to competition.  It's the ability to work together on a problem and not erect barriers for one another.  

A couple points here shed light on this trait.  Agreeableness is often rooted in the ability to empathetically listen to another person.  To be able to hear what they say and understand what it's like in their shoes.  The report cites Google's Project Aristotle which determined that a key trait is Trust - a component of agreeableness. It's hard to trust someone if you are always preparing for them to attack.

Interestingly, agreeableness doesn’t mean that one just rolls over in the face of opposition.  It's not being weak.  The agreeable person still needs to be able to state and advocate for their own opinion.  It permits healthy conflict to occur, but doesn't turn the conflict into a war.  When conflict does occur, the agreeable team member works effectively toward a resolution that is better than any of the contributing points.

Some questions to consider here might be:

  • If someone in the team continues to have a different point of view about the customer and solution you deliver, what would you do? How do you typically deal with this conflict?

  • Imagine that during a meeting, one of your team members brought up an idea which you thought was unreasonable. Surprisingly, the rest of the team seemed to be just as enthusiastic about the idea. How would you handle this situation? (p 5)

These questions focus on agreeableness in the crucible of conflict.  The key takeaway here is that the stronger candidate will not retreat into a combative mode, but will focus on how to bring the best out while still respecting themselves and their position.

Definitely beware of the candidate who threatens to walk out of the meeting or discussion if it doesn’t go their way.

Look for extroversion - especially in product owners

Extroversion doesn't mean someone throws a great party, or is a social butterfly.  Psychologically, extroversion refers the way in which a person receives energy.  Extroverts are energized by interaction with other people.  Conversely introverts are drained by interaction and need to retreat to solitude to rebuild their energy.

Since the scrum team is a social setting, people with extroversion are able to build and maintain energy.  When considering product owners, extroversion is useful because a big part of the PO's job is to go talk to customers and find out what they want.  If the Product Owner collapses and spends a week in hibernation after every customer visit, then they will be impaired in their ability to transmit what they’ve learned to the rest of the team.

Look for questions like:

  • When you spend a day with customers learning about their problems, what would you do next? Do you need a day on your own to go through what you've learned?

  • What has to happen during the course of your day to make it a good one at work? What are your day-to-day activities in this position? (p 5)

These will help you see where the energy is created and where it is drained.  If the person is crippled by their energy loss in interacting situations, then they might have some real limits in the way that the Scrum team needs them to function.  

A good candidate might have strong coping techniques for the extroversion bias (we can't all be extroverts).  It's up to you as the hiring manager to determine if those coping tools are sufficient to compensate for the boost that extroversion would give.

Neuroticism is Scrum Poison

This last trait is not something to look for, but to avoid.  Most hiring managers would think this is just plain common sense.  The report says "Emotional stability is crucial, as agile organizations focus on rapid learning and decision-cycles, frequent testing, and experimentation." (p 7)

This is a very non-shocking revelation.  However, when a candidate with strong skills in a number of areas also displays some neurotic tendencies, it might be tempting to overlook that in favor of the strengths.

Remember in a Scrum team, everyone's strengths are magnified and their foibles are leveraged across others.  So bringing neurotic behaviors into the team can magnify them and bring out undesirable tendencies in other team members.  So this is a trait best avoided.

Use questions like:

  • Describe a time when you were frustrated at work. Why were you frustrated? How did you deal with it? What impact would that have on the team?

  • What is your biggest professional mistake? How did you handle it and what have you learned? (p 6)

Pay attention to how these questions are answered and make sure you (and the team) are comfortable with what the candidate says.

It's great that you got a requisition to hire someone.  Now go do something great with it!

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