Grow your own scrum master

What if we could grow our own Scrum Masters? What would that look like? What would be the benefit? These are some questions that we've been asking ourselves in the Agile Chapter at Genesis for a while now, and recently we've been able to take action to find out.

As part of the agile/ways of working chapter here at Genesis, we've recently been able to do something that's been a goal of mine (and the chapter's) for a long time. We've been fortunate enough to be able to create some new roles for scrum masters. This in itself would be a big thing, as it shows commitment to a role and set of practices that are often taken for granted, or worse, sidelined. However, what's even more exciting is that we're able to create these roles at junior level.

Why is this important? Through our conversations with other organisations working in similar ways, and with the wider agile industry in New Zealand, it's become evident that people want experience when they hire. This stands to reason - if you're paying for recruitment, you'll want that person to hit the ground running. But this misses a fundamental point - if you're always hiring experience, how do you ensure the next generation come through? And that you're not just reinforcing the same perceptions and viewpoints?

We've had previous in this area - working alongside Radically last year, we had someone with no experience as a scrum master come in, observe, and eventually work up to leading some of our sessions. This was brilliant for us, because it opened up the idea of new ways of doing things, and we saw the passion and energy having a person brand new to the role and ways of working brought. Unfortunately at that point we were unable to offer a role, but it really sparked the notion of doing our recruitment differently - focusing on attitude and mindset over experience and knowledge (important as these two things are).

With all that said, and with the backing of our fantastic People & Culture team, we posted adverts for two positions early last month. The response we got was amazing, with well over 50 people applying for the roles. Rather than just invite the top candidates in for interview, we followed this process as a chapter:

• Identify what we're looking for in a candidate.

For us it was attitude and ability, rather than what they knew about scrum or agile

• Whittle down the applicants to the best ones.

We asked every candidate a series of open questions, designed to elicit responses that told us about them as people, such as 'who do you look up to and why?' and 'what was the best team you've ever worked with and why was it effective?', and then assessed these for the criteria we wanted, tying back into agile values and principles, as well as Genesis's own set of values

• Work out how best to gauge and assess the best of these candidates, so we could be sure we were getting the right people, and they could be sure they were getting the right opportunity

After a lot of thought and discussion, we held an 'assessment centre' rather than formal interviews, so we could get to know people, how they worked together, how they reacted in different situations.

The half day session started with all candidates presenting for five minutes on a topic of their choice, then an overview of the role and how we work at Genesis, a group exercise (spaghetti tower), lunch and a tour of our building. Throughout this, we were assessing the applicants for key things such as servant leadership, collaboration, listening and conflict management. After the tour we did a quick 1-2-4-all with the participants, asking them to tell us what was good and bad about the day, so we could make it better next time.

The whole agile practice took part in the assessing of candidates - allowing us to see different things about different applicants, from different viewpoints, through different lenses - which is significantly more robust than one or two people doing a traditional interview. Key for us is hiring people we could help to grow into amazing scrum masters; in our chapter we have the knowledge, desire and experience to support this. It also benefits us in creating opportunities for more direct people leadership and mentoring experience for our chapter members.

The outcome was amazing, and not just because of the outcome. All the candidates were fantastic, with great, and often personal, presentations, and they gave their all in the various tasks and sessions. What was especially heartening is that within this group of people who haven't been working (for the most part) as scrum masters, we saw so much of what makes a good scrum master. The hardest part for us was picking the top applicants, which we did as a group through analysis of how each one had performed against the measurements listed above as well as softer and interpersonal skills. We ended up with five people - any of whom would be a brilliant addition to our team - and now have the task of narrowing this down for the two roles, which will be extremely difficult. We hope to do this by Christmas so we can start with our new scrum masters after the break.

The key things we learned from this experience were that sometimes the best people aren't those with years of experience, but those with the right attitude and desire. This won't be the case for all roles or disciplines - and even for every organisation - but for us right now, this feels like the best approach. We also learned that there are some incredibly smart and capable people out there just waiting for an opportunity.

We'll look to continue providing feedback on the process and how we're integrating our new recruits over the next few months. If you're interested in more details or specifics, in how we got buy in from our SLT, or anything else around the process, let me know.