Over the past few weeks, I've been updating my web pages, which includes (finally) updating my workshops. One of the workshop you might be interested in is Hiring for an Agile Team. Hiring for an agile team can be a bit trickier than for more traditional project teams. The issues of culture, and personal qualities, preferences, and no-technical skills are much more important than in a non-agile team. This workshop is a full day. If you took one of my 1/2 day hiring tutorials at any of the agile conferences, this workshop goes into more depth and explores the combination of questions and auditions that will help make your interviewing and selection successful.

If you want to try this workshop, I'll be facilitating the half-day version at Agile development Practices in December.

Labels: agile hiring, workshop

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 10:14 AM | link |

On my recent trip to NZ and AU (to speak about project management), I had some informal conversations with people who could not find enough people for their projects.

From my non-scientific survey, it appears that we have started a technical hiring crunch (not enough candidates for positions). Consider people you might not have considered before:

1. Part-time workers
2. People over 40. Yes, we can still see and hear. Development is not just a young person's job. :-)
3. People over 65. Not everyone enjoys retirement.
4. People who may not have a degree, but have an avocation for software.

I'll be thinking about this for a while, because if we really are headed for a hiring crunch, it will be global this time.

Labels: agile hiring, recruiting

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 7:31 AM | link |

Last week, I was working with a client in the Netherlands, talking about how to hire for an agile team. We started discussing how the management team reviews resumes. One of the managers said he looked for people under 40, because otherwise the candidate was "too old."

Well, I past 40 a long time ago, so I asked him how old he thought I was. (Yes, it was unfair and a trick question, because no man ever answers either "does this make my hips look fat" or "how old am I?" honestly.) However, the question did help him rethink his assumptions.

I explained that when I started working 30 years ago, we had to test as we went along--we had no testers. If we didn't want to manually run tests, we built regression test suites. We obtained review on every work product. We made sure our work didn't break what was already there--every day. We had to. The costs of making defects were too high to not use the preventative ideas that the agile community has adopted.

When you're hiring for an agile team, the real question is: Can the candidate work in an agile way--the way your team works? It doesn't matter how old the candidate is. It only matters if the candidate is willing to create chunks of working product, or is willing to learn how.

Labels: age, agile hiring

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 1:58 PM | link |