When interviewing potential Scrum Masters, RTEs, or any Agile Coaches I always ask this question; "What type of Scrum Master (or insert RTE/AC) are you?". The reason I ask this question is because I've continuously run into two types of Scrum Masters that lead to two different types of people in the tech world. These people are:
Type A: This person cannot live without an (or team of) experienced Scrum Masters because of the value add they have witnessed first hand.
Type B: This person cannot seem to justify the investment in the Scrum Master position because they view the Scrum Master as a very expensive glorified meeting facilitator.
To Type B's credit, the professional world is packed full of certified Scrum Masters that have a 3 day certification and have never been properly trained, coached, or mentored. They have the right to be skeptical, in their experience it is additional overhead that cannot and should not be justified. The 'glorified meeting facilitating' Scrum Master in my opinion shouldn't have any role in the professional tech world. Professionals shouldn't put up with it as they are doing a disservice to what the real Type A's know and love. This leads me to the second type of person, the Type A's...:
The Type A people have had such positive experiences with great Scrum Masters and agile coaches that they cannot foresee a world without such leadership. These types of people have witnessed Scrum Masters that have coached poor teams into high performing teams, they have brought forth metrics that uncover root causes of poor performance and coached teams to improve based off their analysis, they keep teams in a very complex environment connected and mission driven, they enable teams to innovate and over come problems they haven't before, and they are key to the culture that retains high performing individuals across the enterprise.
Recruiting and building a team of Scrum Masters that will turn Type B's into Type A's is hard because of all the noise out there. Turning a team of Type B's into Type A's is nearly impossible because of the mindset Type B's bring to the table. So how do you find the Scrum Masters that can turn a B into a A? Well that's the most important question you could ask and here is my advice.
When building your Scrum Master team, ask these questions while interviewing:
What are you passionate about?
Look for candidates with a passion to do whatever it takes to build relationships, analyze data, drive high performance across the teams they support, and build a positive culture through servant leadership. These types of people will turn rocks to help the team get better and are never 'too good' to roll up their sleeves to help their team out.
Outside of meeting facilitation, what value add do you bring to your team?
Look for the passionately nerdy weird. I have had Scrum Masters tell me that they host pod casts to identify ways others solve for problems in other companies that they have not been able to. They analyze data with their team so the team comes to the table with out of the box solutions to their issues. I have even had Scrum Masters during agile transformations put their ego aside to do more Project Management type tasks to accomplish something in the short term that enables the team so that they can improve it into the future.
What does high performance mean to you?
This is where metrics, culture, and personalities collide. High performance is hard especially within a software development organization with highly intelligent people that are solving complex problems. Look for Scrum Masters that are looking to work theirselves out of a job. If they are able to do this, they are likely promoted to an Enterprise Agile Coaching role and become a leader of the enterprise.
What is your agile nirvana?
Look for answers dead set on rigorous continuous improvement. It doesn't matter where you start, but it does matter where you want to finish if you want to compete in today's highly competitive world. Look for agile leaders well versed in a verity of agile frameworks that can expose your strengths and drive your enterprise to high performance.
When building your team be very selective and stay away from the Scrum Masters that lead to the Type B's. The fastest way to sink a ship and drive your organization away from an agile north star is to hire glorified meeting facilitators. You need Scrum Masters that are bold, enthusiastic about efficiency, and can enable your teams to succeed. If you haven't had one of these people or team of people then give us a call.
Author – ‘Process Pat’ McClain
Experience – I am an agile/process coach that has been hired to lead large scale global process change initiatives that drive competitive advantages in different areas such as increased predictability, improved productivity, cost reduction, and increased efficiency across Product Development, Engineering, and the enterprise as a whole. These results are achieved through efforts I have led related to agile maturity, process changes, and toolset analysis/consolidation efforts that align with the people and processes of the organization I am working with.
Disclaimer: This article is not affiliated with current employer and is based off prior professional experience over the last decade.
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