agile coach Interview questions I enterprise agile coach interview questions and answers CareersTalk

so hello friends today we have produced with us uh he is having 17 years of rich experience in various roles such as enterprise agile coach transition consultant release engineer project manager and he himself is a trainer so he's a safe program consultant and he's conducted several agile certification workshop for more than 600 people so far friend yes 600 that's all you are hearing correctly and currently he is leading the asia pacific digital transformation for sun life in india so welcome profuse and it's an honor for us to have you on our show thanks a lot pradesh for your time thanks sunan uh it's always a pleasure uh you know talking to you and uh being part of your show is or you know it's a great pleasure for me thank you thanks for inviting me great pratish so friends uh today we are going to touch up on couple of uh agile coach related questions from pradosh we're going to hear his thought his point of view and of course few tips for our budding scrub masters how we can prepare about interviews and all so pratush shall we start why don't you tell us about yours a little bit okay so i think you have covered it a bit so yeah um as you said i have 17 plus years of experience uh i'll focus more on the agile part uh nine years last line year has been into agility and i would say uh it was a journey so it's like i have played various roles even in agile right um started with scrum master flow manager uh you know uh then uh i moved to uh coaching and in coaching it was at several level uh team agile coach coaching at uh enterprise level as part of coe then moved to transformation and then uh been part of several transformation for different clients that i worked with uh and largely i mean i'm you know uh last few years i have been into enterprise transformation so uh sort of coaching as well as consulting for that yeah okay great great great pratish so uh this very first question is like most asked question like how scrum master role differ from a child coach and what are the few similarities or difference which you can observe so if you want to share your experience as a scrum master and agile coach it will be great for our audience see uh if you see the the two roles uh scrum master as well as an agile coach there is a lot of similarity there is a lot of overlap between the two yet there is some sort of dissimilarity i would not say dissimilarity i would say more in terms of you know focus there would be some differences uh when i talk about similarity uh if you see uh on a larger view from a larger point of view uh both of them focus towards the same thing uh how to enable you know a group of people uh towards value delivery how can an enterprise uh deliver value frequently deliver value which is very close to what customer wants now there is some difference in the span or the scale between scrum master and agile coach scrub master largely focuses for a team you know ideally one team but yeah practically we know um at times we have scrum master you know taking care of multiple teams mainly two team or something like that so they focus towards team while an enterprise uh coach or say an agile coach focuses how to enable other groups uh now when i say other group that might be teams or teams uh you know team of teams or different areas within the enterprise towards value maximization so that's the biggest similarity in that so goal is same secondly uh it comes to how do we achieve that goal when we talk about achieving that goal of neither a scrum master nor an agile coach has an authority right so both of them are more or less servant leaders so again when we talk about approach approach is more towards coaching and enabling people rather than you know guiding them or rather than telling them what to do so again uh when i talk about uh you know the characteristics it's same there is a difference in skill however uh there are certain uh you know differences as well uh if you talk about scrum masters scrub master focuses uh mainly towards one team right or set of team uh agile coach focuses i mean uh in addition to this team uh natal coach will focus on different parameters like um say for example uh if he's part of coe then he will think about how can we have you know best practices shared between uh different teams how can he create a community of practice for scrum masters uh how can um you know um they work towards uh you know having agility in other areas in areas which are very close to delivery such as say uh you know your compliance your security and all those things plus they will also you know have a very close tie up with the leadership so that they ensure that the vision gets translated into value preposition at the team level of course with help of scrum master so that's how it is very much uh similar but yet dissimilar okay okay great and uh there's a still like there are a lot of confusion around the role of a agile goal so if let's say someone is already working as a scrum master so whether he or she is qualified to become a child coach or without agile background yourself you think that someone can be a child coach so what is your thought on that see i think there are two questions in this uh first is uh you know can scrum master be an agile coach i think my last answer uh uh i mean the answer to your last question would have given you an idea it is a natural progression right uh you know you work for a team you work for teams then you naturally progress for working towards team of team you are called you know we are called as a team agile coach then you move up and then you move up like this you you know get into the different roles within the agile coaching community you know practice now um so certainly um scrum master uh uh should i mean can become an agile coach was not the right word because i mean uh they have you know as a scrum must you have multiple dimensions where you can move uh it becomes very easy uh if a scrum master moves to an agile coach so uh it's very natural because uh the characteristics i was talking about you know leading without authority uh enabling people coaching all is part of uh scrum masters role which is very useful and which is very essential i would say for an agile coach now the second question was i think that was uh can someone can someone who doesn't know agile can become an agile coach was that the question yeah yeah i mean without that background but yeah if someone really want to pursue that yeah okay uh see technically yes practically very difficult but not impossible and why i say uh it's because this see when you uh think about agile coach right what is the role of an agile coach i mean let's not talk about you know a role at different levels let's think what an agile coach tries to do an agile coach does a coaching to bring in agility in an organization so bringing in agility is the goal for which the way you adopt is coaching right now unless you are very clear about the goal unless you know what you have to reach unless you know what agility is unless you understand what agility is despite being a great coach you might not be able to reach what where you want to reach right so that's that's that's very important uh so if you know agile and you are a great coach you're a good coach it becomes very easy for you and again i would say this having said that coaching is the main element of an agile coach the knowledge and understanding of agile is important but how successful a person is in as an agile coach depends largely on his coaching skills so that's how it is so i would still say uh if someone uh who is a great coach and uh you know uh does not knows agile uh should not be worried about it what i would suggest do not directly jump into it understand what agile is you know do some training around it do some courses around it and practice scrum mastery for some time so that you get an idea and then move towards you know agile i mean being being a good coach will uh help you to shine as a scrum master and then move towards that so a different path but yes you can okay good and if you want to explain about the transition journey so for example uh how do you work with the employees or with the team who have worked with the waterfall approach for years and now suddenly they have to adapt the agile view of working so obviously there will be some constraint or conflict so how as a child because you are going to deal with that see um waterfall and agile is totally i would say in a lopsided thing um when we talk about waterfall uh approach uh think about a team member a developer right so in a waterfall you will have module lead you will have team lead you will have project managers right so your project is divided into module and all those things and uh you will be given you know you will be assigned some tasks you will be assigned some tasks you will be informed that okay this task as per wbs takes this much time so you know you have three weeks or you know you have six months three months so this is your piece of work right so you are given the work and based on that you work right uh there is less of uh i would say uh you know self-awareness that is required uh it focuses more on your mastery to complete that task in agile of course mastery is required i mean you i mean you cannot you know work without that but that is not sufficient that is essential but not sufficient in agile what we do i mean the whole approach changes from project we move to product right so we uh we plan the planning itself is not for a project planning is for a product and there is a you know uh it keeps on uh evolving so we and that's the reason we you know deliver in small cycle and agile requires lot of collaboration right uh and the whole role of a scrum master and agile coach is to empower developers empower the team so what is expected out of you as a developer is totally different we expect you to be self-organized we expect a developer to be uh you know you know self-motivated uh collaborate uh you know not looking i mean say if there is a he hits a problem and uh that could be resolved within the team he should not wait for a scrum master i mean traditional way we used to wait for the module lead or team lead you know communicate through it so communication should start naturally right so there is a huge difference now uh coming to how should we work how should uh we as an agile coach or a sprub master should help those people right because i mean uh just because you declared the pro you know your work to be you know moved from waterfall to agile will not you know change the mindset overnight so the very important thing is that we need to be patient it takes time so as an scrum must as a scrum master as an agile coach i should be patient and when i say i should be patient means i it's not just we who has to you know understand the importance of patients we also have to coach other stakeholders like product owner leadership management to be patient with them right and then our responsibility comes into providing those opportunities those platform so that they self-collaborate right uh just by telling that we are agile and these are the values these are the principle we expect you from that will not change so we have to bring in those and all the agile ceremonies that we have specific from ceremonies helps to bring that however we should not limit ourselves to that we can add you know additional thing how can we you know create those platforms create those opportunities create uh you know uh things like you know pair working wherein they can cross skill a developer and tester pair works on a you know um user story cross skills after some time uh you know we should you know try to you know uh swap it on similar user story and then they can help each other so we have to bring in those uh opportunities for them to you know learn to grow to that and of course be patient that's very important okay good great thanks for that pradesh welcome so uh the next one is again a little bit tricky one and mostly asked by a lot of people like what would you think or consider a good indicator that agile is working for your organization and as an agile coach how you will know that your efforts are now succeeding or working fine so your take on that british yeah see let's first understand uh why the organization moved from waterfall or traditional hybrid whatever they were to a pure agile or an agile way of working uh what was the necessity right and from there we can derive the indicators so i think uh i mean needless to get into details of that we all understand it was uh you know uh the requirement or the situation wherein you know you have to deliver your product which gives exact value what customer wants and also keeping in mind that with lot of competition with lot of disruption with lot of options the customers taste keeps on changing and it changes very fast so you can also your value preposition or the value that you are delivering to your customer also keeps with that face right so it's all around value and value in terms of customer not value for you right not what you feel is a valuable but what customer feels are valuable is valuable so it's all customer centricity and it's all how much value the customer sees in that so in this case when it comes to measurement i would roughly divided it to you know parts one is organizational measurement how we are faring as an organization and one as delivery or operational measurement how we are supporting i mean from the delivery or operation side for organization to reach that value proposition now if you talk about organizational measurement again it should be around value so it would be something um you know things like uh you know if possible i mean again depends there are multiple ways to capture that you may directly go to the customer through your logs if your web-based application you can capture that so your customer satisfaction how much is your cus how much is your customer satisfied second part is that how many times the customer comes back to you right if you have a set of customer uh you know uh how frequent they transact with you again when i say transact that you know transaction will differ from you know your product product to product how frequently they transact with you right how frequently how you know frequently they uh you know refer someone to transact with you when you reach out to them do they react do they give response one thing which is like uh you know recently in one of the consulting assignment we did how frequently the customer complains to you see now we are in such an environment that if i as a customer is not satisfied i will not even be bothered to complain rather i'll switch you know the you know the product right i'll switch move to a different product so even customer complaining to you in i mean shows that customer is engaged with you or is you know interested to you know be engaged with you so all these parameters that will help you to decide how much customer is engaged with you because customer engagement will happen only when your product is helping them secondly customer engagement by default will ensure that you you know you you know you have an increasing revenue and also all around the value from customer point of view for organization when it comes to the delivery side or i would say the operational side how are you supporting the organization to reach that value proposition now when i say how are you supporting that depends on lot of thing how frequently are you delivering like say if you are a team right who is working on a product what is your delivery cycle i am not talking about release cycle release something that you know organization will decide your delivery saying are you building something which takes around six weeks something which takes around eight weeks or are you able to deliver in two weeks or three weeks your delivery cycle the shorter the delivery cycle the more you are helping your organization to reach that value proposition secondly uh you know what is your lead time when a request comes from business how soon can you pick or this is something that you know waits in your pipeline for say four six weeks i mean you would have improved in your delivery you are delivering two weeks but if it weeks in your pipeline for four weeks you know requirement to delivery is six week now right so how what is your lead time what is your complete turnaround time right what is your commitment ratio i mean and when i say commitment ratio i i'm going to the very granular level at you know for the sprint level how much you committed how much you delivered because that tells business about your predictability right if you're i mean if you are if your commitment ratio is around say 85 90 at the start of sprint when you say that okay i'm going to deliver this they know for sure that 90 of this will be delivered right so your commitment ratio so all this will be at the operational side delivery side and the one that i discussed earlier was uh you know on the uh customer side and these two only when these two works in sync you will be an agile organization i hope that yes yes but then i have a follow-up question on this okay so you mentioned about a lot of mattresses over here and still like people got confused like if you can share some of the common matrices for any organization because we know if we cannot measure we cannot improve over the period of time so if you can share some of your experience with respect to mattresses it will be great sure and as you rightly said uh you cannot i mean unless you measure you cannot improve or you cannot progress so it's very important that every stage we have measurement now uh when we talk about measurement again uh it is very important that we understand that uh what we are measuring is agile we have an agile measurement rather than uh you know um a waterfall i mean that's a trap a lot of people still translate the older measurement into you know an agile you know way or agile words and then start with that so again coming to measurement i think this is uh very much in line with what i discussed right i i have talked about you know um uh you know value proposition to the customer i talked about all those things right so uh that was from the value now if i have to measure the organization right from agility point of view one thing uh we have to understand is that we have to uh understand uh you know the cycle of measurement there are a few thing that requires to be measured you know sprint by sprint there are few things that would be required to be measured what are we say for example right one of the thing that i would uh suggest and that works very well uh when we come to the larger uh uh time frame uh is agility health check i mean a lot of us also call it as um you know agility maturity agile majority or something like that but uh i would rather call it as health check rather than a maturity because um maturity is something that say if you attain a maturity level you will not get down right but health is like our health right at one point of time may be very healthy another point of time i might not be healthy right three months down the line so it keeps on fluctuating so that's why health check secondly uh when i talk about health check it would have different parameters the way we have right we have our bp we will have our sugar we will have you know weight will have all those things right so similarly that will have you might feel some you know good in one parameter right i may not have sugar i may not have you know any problem but i may have high blood pressure right and that will impact me right so it is a factor of all of them if you fear very poor in any of them is something alarming and you need to work on it if you fact you know fair average of all of them then you have to think how you can get to the next level so agility health check wherein um you will have different parameters like say for example uh engineering practices you will have um you know um something like team dynamics you will have something like you know say organizational culture right how openness it has so i mean question here like that wherein you are uh you know uh measured um on different dimensions and within dimension sub dimension i mean that's very common nowadays like uh you will get a spiderweb sort of thing now again when i said you know measure it is very important and i want to focus on this it is self-assessment it should not be measured as an organization i should not have bias against what is the outcome of agility health check it should be an assessment of organization it should be an assessment of you know a division it should be an assessment of say hub or say you know teams of team it should be an assessment for squad from there you will get to know where you stand right and you should have a quarterly plan quarterly plan that okay uh these are the things um you know uh we can you know work on and then this is how we should improve things like okay are uh you know objective uh you know key results and all that actually helps you derive your okay or your quarterly okay around it and then you work on it so that's at the quarterly level now when you have to do it right if you have to say for example uh if you have to bring in uh you know collaboration in the team you have defined an object you have defined key result that will not happen automatically right again you have to break it down and then you break it up down into your uh you know sprint and all those thing now when i say break it down to a sprint which means again the evaluation at the sprint level right evaluation at the sprint level we have traditional metrics like burn down burn up uh if you are having working on um can van you can have a cumulative flow diagram right so and i i think i talked about uh you know commitment ratio so again what i would say uh at the team level these are something very important burn down um you know cumulative flow diagram what is your turnaround time what is your how much what was your whip limit uh how much was your lead time before yeah you know from the product backlog it moved to uh your your sprint backlog because if you have say for example if you have a higher lead time at the organization level then i think you need to add few more teams right so like that and then we when we talk about uh you know uh a sprint uh then again those things which i said burn downs um then we have uh your commitment ratio if you have something like a pi planning or say a quarterly uh planning in your organization then it's very important that how predictable we wear for that quarter how much we uh you know committed during pi planning and how much was uh you know our delivery so uh program predictability measure that is part of safe that could be a good matrix yeah okay thanks for that pradesh okay so uh the next one is again a little tricky so can you share some of the challenges which you encounter as an agile coach or you want to share some any interesting story from your past some example anything like that see uh my uh experience has largely been in transformation um right and uh there is a i mean every organization is unique every uh situation stakeholders are unique uh when you work especially from diverse geography like i have worked for europe i work for i'm working for asia i work for indian clients so every uh you know situation is diff uh unique but there is an underlying similarity in all of them so i mean uh i mean wherever i go i see almost similar pattern you know similar you know tight similar waves maybe in a different flavor so i would uh rather than telling very specific at getting to client client level uh you know i'll talk in general what are the challenges that uh you would face and that would help you know uh those who are seeing this uh video it will help them to understand how it comes and how should you overcome it so most of the cases wherever you uh start the enterprise uh transformation journey you have a leadership buying in the sense that uh they have decided that they have to move to agile right and i think that's the reason you are hired there right or that's the reason you are doing that work now uh everything is fine till then but as you move right and as i was saying i i think you asked a question moving from waterfall to you know agile and how would you support a developer or a team member it not just at that level at every level we need to support as you move towards transformation it becomes very natural for people to get i mean we call it as resistance to change but i would i see it from a different point of view it's not really a resistance to change it's a fear of change right fear of uh you know uh they are all in a status quo they are all in you know in a comfort zone or they are all they know what is happening they know what will be happening and now suddenly things have started changing right so there is a lot of uh you know initial i would say resistance or say fear in an organization and the very first thing that you have to do as an agile coach whatever level you are you i mean maybe at enterprise level uh you know at a team level or even as a scrum master because i consider scrum master as a you know biggest change agent uh in an organizational transformation because they work closely with the team right so whatever level you are the first thing is that you have to support people and give them a psychological safety that it is not something that is going to impact you secondly uh you know uh so that's the biggest challenge you know um that fear and then um that uh you know uh creates uh environment where sometimes they resist or they uh you know also uh creates a situation wherein uh you know it becomes difficult for transformation so how to overcome it the first thing is um you know you have to give them that sense of safety just giving them a sense of safety is not sufficient because after some time they will feel that okay however they say coaches are saying uh they still have you know danger of their their job or their work and all so you also have to enable your people for new way of working there will be lot of roles that will undergo drastic change i mean uh project management is something that will go a drastic change right so you have to enable your project managers you have to see how you can support them um you know who can move to a product leadership who can move to you know a delivery like something like scrum master and if someone is moving as a scrum master how to bring that mindset change and all so enabling your people getting a buying from your people and when i say people is not just leadership leadership by default you have got that's why you are here right enabling everyone in between from there from leadership to a developer enabling support every uh supporting everyone is very important and there is a huge resistance over there similarly uh for enterprise transformations uh you know uh at times you have to dismantle the older structure you have to reorganize your organization and this is very much tied up with the first one that i discussed and that's very much required because your organization might be you know horizontally organized if you really want to be agile you have to cut it vertically right it might not be possible in one go but that is what you have to do eventually slowly gradually right so the moment you touch that part again there will be fear right again you have to apply the same uh you know uh what i said of the same support system the same training mechanism the same uh assurance and all those things so yeah people structure these changes are the biggest challenge but uh having said that not impossible not difficult as long as the whole coaching line from enterprise coach to scrum master is aligned on that and they work closely on that great pratyush uh so i have just one small follow-up question and this is very particular specific with respect to our customer or client so during this journey right do you also encounter some of the pain areas with respect to the client end user at that time and the transition is happening because you just talk about organizational thing but what about the client because sometimes we face resistance from the client because within an organization you can do certain changes but within operation you have a certain boundary so how you interact with the client when those people are not within your direct purview of your organization i hope i hope my question is clear to you pradesh yeah i mean i have some uh you know questions on that question for better clarity i think so for example my i have my product owner he's sitting at the client side right basically most of our product owners are from the client and their way of working is a little bit different so though we are implementing agile in our organization let's say we are the vendors right but how we are going to uh take the buying from our clients i have slightly different view in this uh see i think what you talked about was a client organization as the product organization who has the product that goes into the market and organization by organization you mean uh i.t services organization yeah basically exactly exactly so we are let's say a service organization and we have our certain clients yeah so why i said i have slightly different uh opinion in this uh with my um and and that might be uh off i mean like an uh you know uh a little bit or you know not in sync with uh what uh in general people think but i what i feel is that uh see when we talk about agility agility is always product deliver in a product driven right so unless your product organization is agile agility you bring in your service organization it will not be a complete agile delivery it will not be it will not reach that agility right because it's a closed loop cycle right it starts from product planning gets to you you deliver it and then it you know the feedback has to come from them right so the feedback has to come from them and then it loops in right and then the cycle completes now imagine those situations and which is not uncommon because i have worked in this situation as well so this is not that uncommon if you have a product delivery organization which is not agile right and you as a service delivery organization is very agile all you can do is that within your project within the purview of your project you can bring in agility you can have you know faster uh delivery cycle you can you can have i know less you know a turnaround time less cycle time you can have less lead time you can you will have agility but that will be very much restricted right so you will deliver your project faster will that bring value to the customer i mean when i say client the product delivery organization not sure unless they they are agile so i think uh agility should be driven from product organization and services organization should be part of it i'll tell you one example i'll give you one example um around two and a half years back i was working for a benelux bank that's a you know a very uh i mean that's a major bank in netherlands and uh they started with agile implementation so when i said which means product organization i was part of one of the services organization right and we were trying to bring in agility up in our you know ways of working but how and you know they had uh the organizational setup was such that we had all major you know iot giants uh working there we had ibm we had tcs we had infosys we had cape gemini everyone working over there right now uh uh it was something like say ibm was taking about uh you know uh mostly uh taking care of uh application support tcs was mostly into development uh i'm saying mostly i mean it was like you know in other areas as well all of them uh and kept gemini say our emphasis in uh you know testing right now imagine my client or and and i was part of that transformation journey when we started we started with the very initial thing how can we restructure the organization at the bank level itself how can we you know have the department's merged departments played and we i mean we came up with around if i remember correctly around 400 different uh you know uh hubs and all uh and then it was divided into squad and every squad was cross-functional people from different vendor uh organization and we had a product owner in every squad who was from the client organization bank and it was one of the very one of the most successful agile uh transformation that i have done and that happened only because of client uh you know uh or say i would say the product organization uh being agile otherwise it would be half agile you just deliver fast but whether client you know that goes in the hand of customer administer end user not sure okay so in order to be fully agile you should it has to be initiated from the product side see a product is a client's baby right we are someone who is shaping up the baby right unless the mother is convinced you cannot change everything it's as simple as that yes i agree okay good thanks pratish for that okay so in this uh next segment is more on a scrum master perspective so i'm just going to ask you a couple of things with respect to normal scrum master interviews because you yourself take a lot of interviews in the past so uh the very first thing which you look out in any resume so when a whenever your hr is giving you a resume so what is and we are just you are just skimming through the resume right so what are the first thing few small thing which you look out for the resume because nowadays is very hard there are hundreds of and thousands of resumes available in the market yeah most of the things are just copy paste from here and there so what do you look out for is it like a temple a template or the keywords or the way the responsibilities has been mentioned or what are the few things from your perspective is important for someone to put on their resume to grab the eye of the interviewer i think the first skipping is done by hr with all those keywords and also i don't focus on that part i mainly focus on uh the experience part uh their engagement their assignments what they have done and all and uh one of the things that in fact in your question itself you have uh mentioned uh is it a copy paste resume is it something that has been created you know uh seeing the standard jd's of uh which is you know prevalent so you can very easily find that right any resume which is uh you know it's good to you know go through the jd but it's very common that we find you know you know just uh jd has been picked and you know slightly rephrased and put it over there and uh you know that's the very first thing i see and then i focus mainly on i know what uh they have written what they have done right and if you say that you have that five six right save this was my current assignment this is what it is i have done this i have done this i have done this i have done this does that looks in sync because any copy pasted resume or any you know cooked resume you'll you can easily find that okay six points that you have mentioned is not in sync right so that's very authenticity is something that i focus and i uh you know uh i you know scan through it i see that and then i get into um you know discussion with the candidate uh not spending too much time on you know cv getting an idea and then getting into discussion with the candidate okay and what are the few uh key attributes or traits which you look out for any candidate as a scrum master on a general play so i think that is very much in line with what i uh the last uh question so as i said uh i just go through that uh you know whatever experience that they have given and then i asked i mean i start discussion around that few things uh you know when i say discussion uh i start discussing with them i uh you know the very first thing and the most important thing that i see is authenticity of the candidate uh is it really uh you know what they have written they have done it or was it something that you know as i said from jd second thing i focus on is some of the traits some of the traits which is very much important for the person to succeed as a scrum master and of course um as he moves as an agile coach that becomes uh even more important can the person uh you know uh lead without authority that's very important because scrum master does not has an authority you are not people manager um you are not product owner right and you you are someone who you are the glue right you are the catalyst you are everything right you have to ensure that value delivery has happened right so can you lead without authority and that's something we can very easily find you know while discussing those you know uh those experiences and all and through some of the questions like uh um and these are some of the very you know common uh like say any scrum master who is uh you know uh who has worked uh would have faced challenges like uh you know challenges uh related to you know teaming um conflicted team um challenges with product owner challenges with other stakeholders right so we we discuss about it and i try to find how that person has you know sailed through those challenges is it perfectly fine i mean it is perfectly fine if that person says that you know i had this challenge and somehow i was not able to do that i failed that time that's okay what was the learning out of that failure so how that person managed if that's you know uh that situation was not i mean he was not successful in that what was the learning out of it and third not just learning did he implement that learning somewhere else so that kind of mindset is very important that's something i focus i i talk a lot i mean you know i i comfort the person uh so much that he becomes open and then you get the real thing right so i talk a lot with the person okay any other suggestion which you want to give for someone who just about to come in the role of scrum master or if they are preparing for interview some key areas which they have to focus on according to you yeah few things like uh you know someone who is new to scrum mastery i'll talk about that as well as someone who is uh you know um who has done the work of scrum master and is uh you know moving to preparing for interview and all someone who is new um you know uh again depends on the background if they have already worked in an agile way of working uh you know they know a lot about it if someone is transforming from a say a project manager or a module lead someone uh from waterfall um then i what i would suggest uh you know the traits that i have talked about right up throughout the you know this discussion focus on that and you i mean before directly jumping to say um you know uh getting a scrum master role even in your waterfall project start implementing that see if you empower your people in a waterfall project your project manager will not come and say that what are you doing right why are you doing right so if you uh you know uh empower your people if you help them to mix you know become self-managed no one will question you even in waterfall project right so what you do use your waterfall project as an experiment bed right learn fail even if you will feel that will be something better than waterfall whatever you'll deliver learn fail learn do some you know make your hands dirty learn from it and then move to a agile scrum project of course do some training that is very important time i would uh always insist that you know theory and practice goes hands in hand so do your training practice it wants to get to the next level again train yourself practice it do few iterations of this three four six months then move to an agile project and start your work okay the way i was saying uh give time to others to you know uh you know to pick up the new way of working i would say be kind to yourself as well right give yourself also time do not rush right be patient with yourself as well and slowly learn it it's a matter of few months or a year if you are focused you will be a great scrum master secondly someone who is already a scrub master and uh you know is preparing for interview i would say uh see uh of course you need to be very uh very clear that's that's the core that's the fundamental i mean i have not talked about uh i did not talk about that in last questions but i think because that's something very uh you know um something which is you know taken for granted you should be doing it right you should be very clear on your scrum fundamentals very clear crystal clear right right take uh you know uh exams like psm and all uh you know it will help you be very crystal clear on your scrum concepts then be very clear about your experience right a lot of agile coaches or people who will be interviewing of course they will ask you those initial questions like uh you know how do you measure what is definition of done what is acceptance criteria who writes the user story does team right does pure rights all these these are basic questions i mean i'm not discounting they are essential you have to be very clear about it but to be successful because a lot of people are now there is a lot of everyone wants to be a scrub master right so uh everyone will know this now what will make difference is your experience right think about it when you are writing a cv go through that think what question could be you know come from it think about the challenges think about okay when you write that okay i help my team to achieve you know this much uh reduce their defect from you know say reduce the effect by 10 percent or i increase the deliver i reduce the delivery time by 10 then think what did you do do not just write think and then create a story around it create a story is not a fake story i mean like just you know whatever you would have done organize it in a right way so that you are able to explain and then you know uh the whole interview is in your control hey thanks thanks a lot pradeep for all these tips and last and the important question what do you think about our channel careers talk you have i think you might have seen couple of videos from us and i'm chasing you from last so many months to have this session with you so what do you think about this yes kind of self-promotion but yeah i want to no no no i want to see from your perspective the kind of questions which you are uploading the kind of interviews which you are uh sharing with the audience what do you think about like whether they're going to make any impact or going to help other people all right uh well student firstly apology uh for the delay uh you you know that it was like uh you know some uh personal uh exigency and all so i could not join that i'm just kidding i'm just pulling your leg so so my apologies for that and um and also i know you have been very kind and considerate on that uh you know you have shown a lot of patience which is an essential for any scrub master or an agile coach coming to coming to your channel uh i think uh you know um i have been following your channel since start uh uh i think uh those initial one or two uh uh when you posted right so um i followed uh i was following that uh to be honest i lost track after three four months um and then again uh you know i was seeing that on linkedin one thing i really i mean this channel is unique uh in a sense that i did not see anyone else doing this right and uh when i said doing this is uh again i am saying value that you give i i think see uh the kind of uh time that you invest the amount of time that you invest in this uh is huge i i know i mean uh you know i can very well see you know all the background work you would have been doing and the biggest thing again i see i i talk about a value right so the value or the give back that you are giving to the community that's the biggest right there are a lot of people who are uh you know aspiring scrum master they have done a lot of training right they have done they have you know they have uh worked as a scrub master but they do not know how to answer the question they are not ready for that right and your channel is something that uh talks a man takes care for it right i mean you do not have you know two uh dummy people sitting across and asking uh questions to each other and saying that okay then um scrub master interview question or 15 scrum master interview you have real people you don't have actors you have real people right who have cracked interviews you i mean i have seen some of your um you know videos wherein someone has cracked five interviews six interviews right so you are giving you are supporting the community right i mean there are a lot of people who need this support and you have enabled them so in fact i am very much i'm quite elated and happy about that and just to tell you and others i'm one of the supporters of your channel i mean anyone who comes to me and says that okay i am preparing for uh you know scrum master how can you advise and what is your tips and of course i advise them and then i say go go to youtube follow career talk the information that you will get over there would be 100 000 time that what i have talked about you so you will hear from the real people right so it's very a good channel thanks just because of people like you who are just helping me and nothing much but yeah as you mentioned so time is there but then of course uh the learning and uh the praise and all those things which we are getting is tremendous and the last thing is to give give back to you know to the community yeah yeah that's great like the kind of message i'm getting is so huge that you are helping us a lot we have tracked these many interviews because of these videos so yeah that gives that a little bit of satisfaction that you are creating something so that's great and uh yeah it's just because of people like you i mean i'm just a as you mentioned a small catalyst nothing else nothing great i'm doing but yes uh thanks to people like you who is just helping me and they are coming forward sharing their experiences so that's great so thanks a lot pratyush and i'm sure next time we are going to caught up little early not this long and uh next time referencing yes yes and next time definitely we love to send some of the topics because you are a good speaker i know very well you have to leave a lot of webinars in the past to the large audience so we really love to see you on our channel one more time pratish so thanks again for all your time and efforts thanks a lot pratyush thanks and it was pleasure you know being with you thanks thanks

Channel: CareersTalk

Views: 1,170

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: is agile coach a good career, how to become certified agile coach, agile coach course, agile coach vs scrum master, agile coach training online, agile coach training, agile coach certification, how to become agile coach, Coaching Best Practices, agile coach interview, interview with agile coach, Agilecoachinterviewquestion, what is a role of an agile coach, agile coach interview questions, agile coach interview answers, agile coach interview questions and answers

Id: dgWY3BOKUQ4

Length: 51min 59sec (3119 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021