It’s really important that managers equip themselves with the tools and information to test the expertise and experience of candidates hiring for agile project manager jobs. It’s not something that anyone can just pick up and it requires a certain niche skill set. It’s also a tasty bit of information that can be slotted into a resume, but do your candidates really know what it means and what agile involves?
Identifying the right agile candidate for the job boils down to specific qualities and isolated areas that are essential for the successful completion of projects. If this all sounds like a bunch if gibberish, you probably don’t have a clue what agile is, but hopefully you’ll find a candidate who does. In saying that, you don’t want to have the wool pulled over your eyes! To make sure you’ve found the right candidate, you need to ask appropriate questions that will ensure you’ve found someone who’s got Scrum Master qualities that will enhance the success of a project.
No, we’re not talking rugby. Moving on…
Questions To Ask Your Potential Agile Project Managers
Some of the questions you can ask potential agile project managers or consultants include:
- How do they identify a Scrum Master? If they mention anything to do with rugby, show them the door
- What are the durations of the projects they’ve experienced? The candidate should state the duration of any agile project worked on has ranged from 1 week to 4 week sprints. The best answer would be a number of short sprints on any given project
- Does he or she have any certification as a qualified Scrum Master?
- The candidate who has a CSM or Certified Scrum Master training certificate is able to organize and lead a Scrum Team successfully. Ask them to explain how they do this – best to cover all bases
- Does your candidate have any experience using automated test tools or project software?
- Throw a few industry terms out there and see how your candidate fares under the pressure: he or she should be able to explain the logic behind even performance, continuous integration, automated regression and manual testing
- How does the automated test tool work with agile? This question is appropriate for candidates who indicate that they’ve applied this performance testing method on their projects.
- Some agile consultants use CVS and Java as some of the automated testing methods for conducting frequent milestone tests. Ask your candidate what he or she prefers to use
Did your candidate come to the party? Did he or she break a sweat and stumble over words to answer you? You should have a pretty good idea about the level of competency of your potential agile project manager or consultant. If you’re in any doubt, or thought there was room for improvement – keep looking. Your instincts are there for a reason!
Image courtesy of: magazine.ucla.edu