Agile matchmaking part 1: How to choose the right Agile company
In this part, I'll be addressing what an Agile professional seeking a job should be looking for in a prospective company. In part 2, I'll address what an Agile company should be looking for in a prospective job candidate.
With Agile reaching full buzzword status, more and more companies are jumping on the bandwagon. Positions for Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, and Product Owners are becoming more common at companies with recognizable names. Developer positions at these companies have added the line "works well with Agile teams" to the required skills. Many of these companies are struggling to implement Agile, however, because, while they've implemented many of the Agile processes, they've failed to change the mindset in the organization. This is the "secret sauce" that makes Agile actually deliver the results most organizations switched to Agile to achieve in the first place.
The journey to Agile utopia
I like to think of an Agile transformation as a journey towards a Utopian destination. I use the term "destination" here loosely because even when a company nears it, they need to remain vigilant about staying there. A policy change or a bad metric put in place could set the whole organization back.
There are at least three main perspectives for any company to take with regards to this kind of change: leadership, team members, and the organization itself. That last one encompasses the policies and incentives at a company that intentionally or unintentionally drive behaviors. I've found that it's best to describe this Utopian destination from each of those perspectives. In Agile Utopia...
Leaders...
Know why the company is doing what it's doing. They breathe it every day and the employees are steeped in it.
Understand that targets on metrics drive behavior so they choose them carefully and when those metrics indicate something is awry, they ask what they can do to help, rather than seek to put someone’s head on a platter.
Understand that sticks and carrots are not a permanent way to change behavior. That permanent change only comes from inside each person.
Value transparency more than anything else so they insist on a safe environment for people to expose risks, be wrong, try new things, fail, and disagree with each other and leaders.
Value doing the right thing over being right.
Reward and recognize teams, not individuals.
Know the connection between an employee's happiness and the company's success.
Team members...
Trust each other and leadership. They put the team’s and the company’s success above their own.
Don’t horde knowledge or responsibility because they see how that hampers the (lowercase) agility of the team.
Value team synergy and realize that the solutions that arise from it are often better than the ones individuals create - even if that takes longer, it's worth it.
Value connection with each other beyond just working together. They get and value opportunities to build human connections outside of the office setting.
Organizations...
Provide only bonus structures that drive Agile behaviors and that recognize teams over individuals.
Provide opportunities for employees to see how their peers and leaders rate their performance more often than annually. They're never hard-ranked, and the results are used to enable growth.
Involve the teams in the hiring process and that process favors connection and fit over other all other factors.
Are structured in such a way that no team member's loyalties are split between conflicting leaders, incentives, or organizational goals.
Provide more than just technical training. They also believe it's important to train team members in team building, communication skills and so on.
As an Agile professional seeking a job, your prospective company will be somewhere along this journey and it's your task to figure out how far along they are during the interview process. You should have some questions queued up for the inevitable, "Do you have any questions for me?" part of the interview. Here are a few of my favorites:
Is Acme Widgets a safe place to fail or be wrong? Can you give me an example of a time when the company learned a hard lesson?
Can you tell me what the mission of the company is? How well do you think that belief is shared among employees?
What kind of team building does the company do?
How easy is it for a good idea to be implemented?
What is the employee review process here?
Obviously, how far you require a company to be down the path is dependent upon the role you're interviewing for. If you're a seasoned Agile Developer or Product Owner, you may be looking for the company to be really mature in these ways. If you're an Agile Coach or Scrum Master you may be fine with the fact that the company isn't very far along, but their willingness to get there is what you should be watching for.
Very few companies are nearing Agile Utopia and this isn't meant to judge those who've yet to get there. Instead, the goal is to make sure Agile professionals have a way of identifying who's taking Agile seriously and who's paying it lip service.
In part 2, I'll discuss what Agile companies should be looking for when hiring Agile professionals. If we hope to succeed with Agile on larger scales, we must get good Agile people matched up with good Agile companies with both pointed towards a common goal.