Situation Based Scrum Master Interview Questions : iZenBridge

hello everyone today again we are discussing some of the interesting topic related to scrum master you know i keep saying it's a scrum master interview series but it's not necessary that we look at these discussion only from the perspective of interview i think it's just a conversation around some of the topics which might get asked in the interview as well so we have one of the professional who is willing to talk about some of the question which he has faced in the recent interviews uh maybe you want to give a brief and then we get started with your questions okay uh hi saket um thank you for giving me this opportunity so i have been lately uh giving a few interviews and i have come across a few questions uh certainly those are good questions and i also see that there are some strong questions as well on how we as new scrum masters actually deal with okay so i faced this challenge at times like how we can how how we can express ourselves in those situations so that things go uh go well so that we don't appear to be very decisive as a scrum master so we want to be as neutral as possible okay let's explore yeah let's explore let's pick up something and then and see what probably we may want to do yeah okay okay um okay i i have prepared a list of questions i think i'll go by this sequence okay so let's say generally what happens is people uh some interviewers the people know that facilitation is the primary goal of escrow master so that he can enable uh enable the team in order to deliver so generally people ask uh share the daily schedule share your daily schedule as a scrum master okay as crop masters we know that yes the day is quite busy because you have you are communicating with with the team with the product owners okay but in order to share like what is the what is the typical day of escrama say it gets a little difficult at times in order to answer that question how i generally try to answer is i i try to say that uh first part of my day i generally start early so that i am a step ahead of my team okay i start with the emails the dashboards reviewing the dashboards of the team is progressing plus then we move jump on to the scrum events uh ceremonies then i have interactions with the product owner and the last part is uh taking up items which when i'm contributing towards a larger transformation initiative within the organization that's how i try to frame my question uh this has become has been a fairly successful but any other recommendations uh that you have how we need to frame this answer so in in your view uh what might be the interviewer is trying to test or extract by asking this question so uh what what i feel is uh the interviewer might try to uh see how do we keep the scrum master eight hours busy okay that could be one person okay what else there could be yeah there could be another perspective they want to test the waters of the scrub master is he just an operational guy that he just uh resolving the issues or is he taking other initiatives as well or is it is he a forward-going person or not that can be another perspective yeah so maybe the first one will taken care if you take care of a second well uh is it like you know yeah so my understanding and my guess is is more aligned with the second prospective which you are bringing in see as a particular role or a particular title will have a different meaning for different organizations and when somebody's tells you know i'm working as a scrum master i may get a 30 40 percent clarity of what this guy might be doing but when i understand his complete day i might know what his title includes other than basic scrum things yeah so i think the the the intruder is trying to extract what you really do uh to perform to facilitate your team to become an effective team so how do how are you making them high performing how are you helping them grow and and deliver something which they are expected to to do now uh that looking at that goal in mind the second is the type of activities you do as a scrum master it also reflect the health of your team so for example if you end up saying i end up reminding everybody to update the zera port so it shows it tells something about what is happening in your team yeah if you tell us you know we have always some conflicts coming in so i end up resolving the conflict so whatever you tell it also tells what might be happening in your team okay so giving examples yeah uh no even when you tell the the the person may interpret that okay your team might be facing this challenge okay yeah so it also ultimately tell about you your scrum master effectiveness so when you say you know i remind people to update zera so it tells something that okay looks like they are very basic you know this team is is is is is still struggling with the fundamental issues like okay keeping everybody transparent and this guy is just working at a superficial level because they have not crossed the first boundary you know they are still struggling with just updating the status they have yet to figure out how do they collaborate and create a high performing team right in your mind you have given the answer but it also give what might be happening in in that particular team so my advice is yeah are you like getting something yeah based on what i'm yeah so my advice is whatever answer you do you look into those activities and see when those activities falls under scrum master kitties like when the team is poorly performing or when the team is high performing so you you look at those activities and and reflect on thought that anger the second thing you also see that in a way related what might be a team stage or team health or team attitude which makes scrum master consuming or spending this much time in this thing you know so for example you say you know i i end up talking to the product owner understanding what he needs so it gives a sense that team might not be talking to the product owner scrum master is the intermediator in this particular team where he's the one who goes and understand the requirement and probably he's the one who under explains this requirement to the development team so it's very tricky it's very tricky and again they also want to see what kind of scrum master they are looking for yeah so maybe you need to craft the answer looking at something what you do maybe there could be some activities which are not taking that much time right now but you may want to expand them further and and and see how possibly these things goes so for example you may have an activity that on in general every alternate day i have a one-on-one schedule with my one of the team member we spend half an hour and talk about how things are going now if you say if you do that activity you talk about that it shows something about the team so you doing 101 you are you are preparing for that 101 you are looking at what happened in the previous 101 what action has been agreed what progress has been made and then you are having conversation so this whole thing maybe you do half an hour 101 but you do a preparation for half an hour 101 and this may become a one hour activity which might be happening on daily basis or alternate uh uh basis so but one individual every day maybe yeah so you may have seen ten members or nine members in the in the team and you may say you know in general once uh once an iteration everybody got a chance to do you know we have iteration level 101 so we we know how we are moving towards the thing something like this so it's a different quality of work now the another quality of another i think extreme could be that i just remind people that they have updated the task boards or not if they have not upgraded it i take the data and then i remind them i send them the alerts that guys you need to update it before our daily scrum that's another extreme and i am not saying it's a good or bad many scrum masters end up doing that but maybe interviewer feels you know okay they are still struggling to update the jam no okay okay okay okay understood understood yeah yeah and then you can think of yeah i got another perspective of what the interviewer might be thinking he might be trying to access the team as well uh so that he could access the scrum master better yes because the team health represent your uh uh like effectiveness because my effectiveness as a scrum master right can only be just uh by looking at the effectiveness of the team yeah may include things like you if you are doing something you spoke about like i i remain involved in organization level uh thing so if you bring that activity for example if you are working in a multi-team context so you may have some set of things where you focus on what is happening in other teams yeah preparing for scrum of scrum or or doing some preparation there so that itself if you talk about it the interviewer gets okay this guy is working in a multi-team environment or something like that yeah and if you talk about you know we also have once in a month some community event and we end up doing we have a scrum master community of practice and i have some duty towards that also you talk about that and also it shows that okay scar master is doing something there as well okay yeah yeah yeah uh yeah i think i think this is this is one thing which i can include because we have uh recently started so we are inheriting some practices from spotify as well it's not like we are directly following the spotify but we have found chapters to be a good concept so we are starting with chapters um so we have an ios chapter one in red chapter one chapter for the scrum masters as well [Music] so just carefully craft something which can relate to your current work there could be some of the activities you believe you might be doing but you you feel that sharing those activities may look risky you may want to devalue them rather than giving them too much attention and and create a plan ready in your mind which is uh aligning with your aspiring kind of a scrum master job you are looking for yeah because it's not right and wrong they are also judging you know is this guy fit in in what we are doing you know so they may feel also reverse or this guy is at a different level we might not uh uh need him yeah so okay but it should match with your aspirational uh profile as well yeah okay okay okay okay um thank you so this was uh quite detailed and i certainly agree to your thoughts okay so uh in conjunction to this only um so i actually have uh another question you talked about type of scrum master they're looking forward wait okay so uh so i i would say like uh as a full-time scrum master so this is my second year i'm completing the second year okay so uh and fortunately i have worked with product teams as of now okay so i have been client side all the time and i have found it uh very easy in terms of communicating with the product owners on how we can make sure that the team understands the backlog and produces okay but now when i try to give interviews so i'm in abu dhabi right now so i'd be returning for returning so in india most of the organizations are service based okay and the product owners are from the client side okay so in these cases uh so being service organization so what happens is uh many uh people actually ask okay that uh how do you deal with a situation where uh the client is actually pushing that yes this delivery has to be done even after they spend planning was done okay how are you ensuring that these uh these deliveries are taken care of without making uh without actually impacting the delivery okay so uh this situation so i i have not personally dealt with it i have seen some first situation when i was working as part of a development team so we used to work for like 16 hours a day but certainly that is not healthy right so as a scrub master so it becomes a little tough for me because it becomes a little tough for me in order to say how do i deal with a situation where i am a service businessman i have my development team of my service organization and the client is just the product owner is from the client side so this this is very difficult question to answer this question sure [Music] so what i see here is one is a reality and another is how do we balance our answer so that we don't look too idealistic as well as it doesn't look that we will just get carried away in the the uh uh in the situation and unable to take care of our team so we need to find a balancing act and that is what i think most of the vendors most of the service providers end up doing technically speaking if i am the vendor i might be getting money on the basis of month not basis of of an hours and if my people are working double the hours technically i'm losing money you know i my people are getting like dissatisfied but my money remains the same you know so as a service provider also it is not something which i want to do if i if i see in that perspective as well but at the same time i need to keep that customer with me also i should not have a scrum master who end up just saying you know this is not possible so i need to have a scrum master who can who can work with such guys and help them to appreciate the the balancing act so that the project also runs healthy and our people also not get burned out or maybe it takes the desired amount of time so these guys also get a desired amount of money so that's a kind of goal a person might be looking at so we need to say okay how do i achieve that so that's how the question i think we should look into now how probably we do that it's primarily about expectation management stakeholder management question you know it's always there sometimes you have this situation or sometimes you have another situation but it's all about one stakeholder is looking for something and you need to manage his expectation yeah now how do you manage his expectation one of the way is you know first you relate to the person make him understand the pain of the other person so it's more about you empathizing with customer you empathizing with product owner and making product owner empathize with you and your development team because creating a sense that only by empathizing with each other we can achieve something which we want to achieve because it's a creative process you know you can't push me until unless it's a very fundamental thing and people just need to do a click click click so then people can get pushed and they may produce something but if it's a creative work where you need to think and code and debug then pushing may not produce the result engagement produce the result so if i care for it yeah i will definitely do it so as an answer i need to find out how do i create that engagement and buying for different different parties and there is no one process yeah there is it depends upon who is sitting next and how do i achieve that and i also work on if you don't achieve the one tealing team feeling you know if you keep saying product owner is someone else grandmaster someone else then ultimately it will not achieve agility you know people will find their own ways there are there are people who there are development companies who might work half half the time and they say they have worked full time you know so there are there could be situations also where teams are not available after half a day but they say they are available for the full day because the product owner who is sitting at a client side might be sleeping during that time because it's the time zone difference so it's very difficult to to run the show without having transparency and trust so what i would say is that i make things transparent i make consequences of such changes uh visible i do empathize with the customer i don't say no because i need to understand from where the person is coming up and i i do see there could be situations where we need to do that you know we need to work for 17 hours in some situations but not every other day if it happens every other day then people will also find their own path there are they are not expected to stick to a given thing so it's it's it's a balancing act so maybe you you now if you need to answer it maybe you find from your experience some amount of stakeholder management problem which you might have faced where you apply this balancing act because you know else it will become little generic you are saying it's a philosophy but have you ever done it so but again whatever you have done it will not matter much because you might have done with a person a and here you are dealing with the person b and person a and person b is not going to respond in a similar way yeah and you had a team a before now you have a team b so team these teams are also different so everything is different i think many people just want to know have you ever done it to sense that okay how possibly you have approached a situation in a given point in time so my recommendation if i summarize focus on expectation management focus on creating empathy as as a philosophy don't tell that this will work you say no i don't know i need to explore and and and there is no one solution it's not like that we will do a one meeting and everything will be fixed there is nothing like that and in order to substantiate that you have dealt with such kind of expectation management problem bring a story bring a situation where you talk about that this has happened before so i have done like this and i believe in empathy and customer stake expectation management and based on these two belief and my previous experience i will work with the team and product owner and then only i can find out what probably will work yeah yeah i i completely agree okay so i have recently i have faced this kind of situation uh so when when the when the product owner is actually part of the team okay so certainly there are negotiations which happen the team certainly comes up with the best solution and i've seen the live examples of that the team even recommends the product owner that out of these four items which we have to do you can select just we can certainly complete two choose the top most uh two that you want yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's so that's a perfect example and and maybe you want to tag it and add it you know when you share your need and detail of your problem then we can solve it but if you just say you know do this also then i can't solve it because i'm not getting what makes you say that so i want to understand what are the reasons which are making product owner to say what he's saying do what he's doing and then as a team we try to find out how we can take care of his pain without getting in trouble for ourselves also so it's like we will solve your problem let's be open about your problem and let's work together so that we can find out and empathize with each other so that we can find out what works best for us yeah okay yeah one general question circuit if you could help me okay uh so uh when we look for these job posts okay job descriptions people actually look for domain expertise uh as a scrum master okay so if i talk about so i have worked on three domains so far okay and throughout my scrum master carrier and i i don't think uh it's uh it's quite uh so domain do not play a super uh huge role okay so i worked on finance i worked on cyber security and also i have worked on um retail okay so i i saw i was fairly able to handle okay so now i'm also a little uh inclined towards data okay so i want to try i have been trying one tool related to business intelligence okay so there are openings related to scum master role required with experience in business intelligence data analytics okay but uh i i generally feel uh they they keep it very domain heavy these job descriptions are quite domain heavy so it's actually difficult to actually get our resume selected plus also if i even if i jump on to an interview it's very difficult to convince how do you think of this situation so it's more about the mentality of the organization and i say it's difficult or i would or you need to find out the appropriate organization who might not be putting that much stress on that area so there are organization who would may want to get something other than the the normal uh um say like planning coordination and inspection and adaption and and and taking care of a team job so they may want something more from the person so that's the possibility for example they may be looking for that this person should be able to face help the product owner also by way of writing some set of user story or by facilitating demos and other stuff so when they look for that they start looking for the specific field experience now you you find these two kind of thought processes one is some set of companies are going for domain and some set of companies are going for technical knowledge you know so they feel you know my developer might be facing some situation so we don't have skill developers or too much skill developers so this guy should be work as a skilled developer as well so that he might be able to guide our development team whenever they get stuck so the these two type of need you may see in the in the market and uh i think it's it's up to uh that that the scrum that the person who is looking for this job because see the title scrum master not necessarily just the role scrum master as explained in the in the scrum body of knowledge uh it is it is something more than that role yeah or it could be a plus plus based on what the organization is needing for and this problem was always there it is nothing to do with scrum master it was there when we were looking for project management profiles also so you had a finance project manager you know analytical project managers and all those dot net project managers and java project managers so you you had those kind of a requirement but personal observation i have is that usually the interviewer may not get into those details of the domain and all and and they they ask for it and it also depends what all is available in the market so many times i may want to have a person from finance background for me as a scrum master because i'm a financial domain company but i may look at if i don't get a guy from a financial domain so like uh sometime in the supply of the profiles are are more than the the the jobs then these things may become tricky yeah yeah then these things may become tricky but there are situations where people were looking for financial domain scrum master but they end up taking the the scrum master which could suits the best so uh this information i i i i feel that you should not stop yourself from from applying for it maybe look for a weight so that you are see we get shortlisted because there could be a probability even if the requirement was talking about the particular domain but you may pass through so that's the one possibility the second possibility is i have seen in in in this is like what i have seen in my experience people might have something else to share as well that lot of recruitment happens through that uh internal uh uh thing referral stuff so if you uh if they get a reference of a scrum master from their employee thing then they may consider even without domain also so they many organizations give little preference to the the employee reference uh thing so that could be the another thing where if you have a position in hand and you are looking for and if you have some connection in that particular organization you may want to follow a referral path uh so that is also a possible uh path to ah overcome this hurdle yeah flooring okay okay okay okay um one actually personal question i have uh so i have been dealing with this uh so as a scrum master how do we keep ourselves motivated you know so it's a describe master's duty is to actually empower keep the team motivated keep the team engaged right here empowering the team to get the things done okay as a school master so i i felt uh about this role because i liked helping people okay i liked enabling people okay i used to i liked delegating responsibilities so that uh we can actually take up newer responsibilities okay i uh actually see when you see other people grow you will get that happiness inside right so when we do some we when we have something if we see a better something better going on this certainly brings in a joy but how how is the scrub master we keep ourselves constantly motivated i think i just go with what you said primarily if you do something which you care for you remain motivated yeah so i believe if i enjoy i'm not doing it because my boss is liking it i'm not doing it because i have a kpi to do it because the kpi and boss things will be always having a limit so if you see that i am in a profession which matches with my interest then i remain motivated each problem is a challenge for me it's a learning opportunity for me so you can say that as the way you said you know you you like working with people you like mentoring and coaching people you see that okay how can they they grow in their technical as well as managerial skills so that is your passion and you enjoy if you see if that happens you know you see you might have seen someone growing from a stage to b stage and you have been contributing some part of of your time in that particular journey and when you see that happening it motivates you so you can say that the whole idea the way i see professional motivation it is not only about scrum master it could be any professional motivation so i see there are in general two things which keeps the people motivated as per my understanding one thing is that i care for for what i am doing so i i align with my my nature my interest my attitude is aligned with my particular job so like people management and all so you you like that and then the second thing is you see the impact of it which is like a feedback loop so you like talking mentoring coaching people so that's why i do that and when i see the impact of coaching mentoring uh teaching people which helps me like people growing people finding a better uh uh say projects or assignments and they could do something which they have never done before then it gives you another feedback loop so you start with your interest and then you do something you see an impact and that circle continues that's how i feel an individual motivation might work if you don't see an impact happening then it may start demotivating you and and it might be a a kind of rather than a word demotivating it might be a reflection point for you also because looks like you might like you are interested in that subject and you are coaching and mentoring but nothing is happening after your coaching you know so you may start reflecting on that okay looks like i need to do something differently because things are are not figuring like coming as i expected so many end up finding and fixing that problem many end up finding that they were not that much passing passionated about that interest they may find something else to do yeah okay okay yeah right right absolutely okay okay uh moving on uh this is uh this is another uh item so um certainly as uh as a scrum master so it is often asked how do you ensure data sanity okay so how do you ensure that the data is actually correct whatever your scrum boards the dashboards or any jitter other filters that you are using is actually correct okay my general answer uh in this case uh generally so i've seen so when we uh so first it starts with step zero would be setting up the working agreements we did that yes we as as team members we ensure that these data actually talks about what the current status is okay so that the data do not have multiple versions so if data is speaking something else and the current state is something else then this is not good so we set up working agreements that this is how we do things okay in and also if we have set something working agreement we ensure that everyone actually knows and follows the working agreement this is following the working agreements will be based on the motivation that we create okay not by force okay and at times uh we as grandmasters we need to remind people so not everyone at every time follows those things right so as uh scrum masters we need to ensure that uh we keep reminding at times if needed and also some some people actually ask how do you like how do you ensure that uh the data is actually speaking the truth at times we see that we have committed a lot and we are delivering thirty percent of what we have committed it happens okay what i generally try to answer is that if we have failed in that sprint okay let the data speak that we failed okay so in those cases i i actually try to say that even if the data is correct let it be correct and let's let's be courageous enough to say that yes we failed i think i actually feel hesitation in terms of reaction so if i see the non-verbal views of the interviewer so i see that the person is quite ready to accept that yeah yeah oh good good good good like how do i handle that like this may result into an unsuccessful interview yeah so see the data sanity and i go back to the the day job of a scrub master and i spoke about that there could be a part of the job which is only about making people update things yeah and you can relate to to it that in a many uh i think when we are still maturing in our way of doing uh the the first stage is data maturity because in in initial stages you will like and i think the the good percentage of organizations are still there only where we still struggle to ensure that we have a single source of truth you know there is always multiple sources there is always confusion so the transparency which is needed is is something is a starting point now that's we understand and the challenge also remains people don't want to update anything because first they don't see a value in it some second they look they may feel this is more about trouble for me rather than any benefit for me uh because if i say that it will take two more days i may get called today only at least i can enjoy two days and then then i will see what happens you know maybe by that time some impediment will come and i don't have to tell that this was a delay from my side someone else may become responsible for it so there could be various issues yeah there could be various issues which might come into the which might become a motivation of not updating the data not keeping people transparent so what we need to see is what is the issue what are the benefit of not updating and what one of the benefit individuals might be getting even if they are not healthy benefits but there are benefits so what what benefits and individuals might be getting by not updating it and still especially when we are in a i would say a remote and distributed world right now it's all about electronic data because we hardly have a face-to-face interaction nowadays so it's about that so we understand that and then we also need to understand what might be the person losing because of not updating the data so we need to find out a balance which ensures the loss is higher than the benefits so i might get a benefit that okay i can enjoy two days but i must be losing more thing by not updating the data so i as a designer of that system or or a facilitator of that system should need to come up with a clarity that the consequences which a team or individual suffer because of not having transparent information should be understood well so that people start caring for it and they these consequences should be higher than the hidden benefit a hidden benefit could be a casual approach could be that i really don't want to do it it takes time to do it so whatever hidden benefit people may have they should be undermined they should not be focused on we need to see for the higher purpose so that's the the one thing which is which is kind of a root cause problem of it yeah and and this is not a problem of only uh project management it's everywhere yeah even you talk about customer relationship management crm systems a good percent of crm system fails because nobody puts the data in it you know so people don't want to maintain a data about like the sales guys and marketing people they don't want to maintain the data of their customers well and when they don't maintain the crm system produce nothing yeah so it is it is a problem there it's problem in a project management it's the problem in a product management and this is an initial thing but again the successful organization that problem has been overcome because only by then the the decision makers the people who need to do something based on that they can look at it they can make the decision based on available latest information at a faster pace because they know what is happening i can decide i can decide my strategy because i can analyze what is happening so there is a value there is a value of that transparency but yeah it requires a selling first to to get there that's the the one point i will start with the second point which i look here is make that data a source of all your conversation because many time what happens is i might be relying something which is told on the daily uh uh scrum and not focusing on what is which what is there on my uh a boat so now i have a two source of information and and i only care about what is discussed there but i don't care about what is there now if if that happens over a period of time within a day or two the second information will become obsolete so whenever someone and this is true for the the developer also so i am there are two developers i want to know where this particular task is so that i can plan my tomorrow's work if i rely on i give a call and ask to the person and i rely on the general conversation it's okay but then the data will not not get updated so if i want to look at the system and i start using information extraction now again it may look like we are reducing individual interaction that's not the goal but we are bringing an agreement as you said working agreement in place so if i as a developer plan my day based on that that the board i see where i can see others works also and and if all the other developers also start doing it the board quality will improve because when i am planning my work i am also sharing my work if people have their own isolated planning process someone plans in their mind someone plans in somewhere and and there is no integration of it then there will be a difficult someone really seeing a value of it because everybody has their own excel a book or notebook or something or a sticky board where they have written what they need to do and nobody else knows about it they may talk about it whenever you talk call call them but yeah in a digital space this is becoming more and more difficult so a second thing which i will put here so first is we we we understand what are the benefits people might be getting by not showing what is happening and we also see the the the the positive benefits they may get because of updating what they are doing and we work on that the second thing is i make those dashboards those information as a centerpiece of information exchange center place for decision making center place of looking at where are we so we make those data usable rather than just put the data and store it and then at the end of a week we will see what how the burn down looks like so that's a just a administrative or accounting kind of a job we need to focus on making it real time and usable real time so when i start making it really usable real time like before the daily scrum i look at the board i prepare i identify where are the issues which i may want to ask some questions and what is the status of impedement i update everything and then i go for a daily scrum so it's like this that all the conversation i as a scrum master is also clear and i may ask you specific question based on even if they they not appear in the in the discussion but i ask based on the data so when i prepare half an hour before the daily scrum using the data over a period of time everybody will look into it something like that so use it and make people also use it yeah then only it will remain fresh yeah else it will get uh obsolete very soon yeah we have to increase the usability of the data yeah yeah visibility usability and and i would say viability yeah yeah yeah these things yeah we need to increase yeah yeah okay okay yeah yeah good thoughts totally i i like the benefits part that you talked about yeah yeah okay yeah that people have hidden benefits you know certainly missing that yeah okay okay i think i i think the uh i'll move on to my last question that i have okay yeah so one uh i think we have we have actually seen uh okay that we talk about this elephant in the room concept we know that there's a problem but nobody wants to speak about as a scrum master okay i i don't have any specific example with this but uh i've seen nap there are problems going on but people do not speak about that they hesitate sharing okay how how um we as grand masters like we uh empower people in order to speak out okay so what happened so yeah so i i i don't have an example as such but uh certainly these these things which we see in organizations because of some uh politics i know there are some uh when what happens is at times when an external member external stakeholder actually joins in it becomes a different scenario altogether in the team okay the actual chemistry within the team gets lost so question is so if i if i repeat your question and based on what i understand is that someone asks you you know how do you make people talk about uncomfortable issues or or do you have a situation where you had something and you you could sense that people don't want to talk about it it's like an elephant in the room yeah right yeah okay so i go back to the the similar thoughts which we had in a previous discussion as well why people are not talking so there could be as you said a fear you know i don't want to get into a trouble maybe i don't want to take a make a political enemy because of political stuff that could be or maybe i don't care about it yeah that's also possible you know i don't care why should i uh worry about it or i am hopeless about it you know even if i talk about it i know nothing is going to happen so there could be multiple things so is it the people are afraid are they really politically knowing and keeping it silent or they they are hopeless about it and i feel the hopeless problem might be the bigger problem because uh they may believe you know they don't care about it so if i see something like that i need to find out why people are not raising that now the second thing is who is losing because of that dysfunction you know we just call it a dysfunction many times the the the people may not feel that they are losing it because that's why they don't talk about it or even if they know that they are losing it they may not see the the complete magnitude of of the impact which is happening on on them so for example uh we we we may have an observation that the one one set of uh team members you know you have a client representative or there are different type of people in the room uh in the in the team and they don't collaborate well with each other and and nobody wants to talk about it you you take it as a granted you know this is how it is and we just work with it but you you as a development team member as an overall team may not understand how this not talking about it and not solving this problem is becoming a trouble for you you end up maybe working more you end up producing less you may end up doing rework you know there is a so much like defect comes at a later stage which could have been avoided if we had a healthy conversation in the beginning and people may not like working on the same code again and again who who wants to do a rework so they may not realize that this whole thing is impacting them as well so what my approach would be is first to see how why people are not bringing this out and what is an impact now once i get these two ideas at some extent i try to work on both dimensions i try to work on the area where which which people start which which is blocking people to bring it out so it's a fear i try to reduce the fear if they don't care i try to create care in them if they they feel nothing can be done i need i i need to show things can change if if we take a proper initiative so i work on the the space which is like a root of these problem and then i also try to quantify make it visible the impact such kind of dysfunctions are making on the team now how can i do that i can probably run a particular retrospective which can be facilitated to expose these issues or i may look for some opportunities when these things becomes little evident they surface you know sometimes they surface uh so small conflict small issue which customer has raised so there will be opportunities which which keeps coming and going small small opportunity i may pick up one opportunity and expand it and bring this discussion in place so like i as a leader have been doing these two so i work uh i i do utilize opportunities conflicts whenever some conflict happens i i look into okay we can resolve this conflict but what could be the the the what could what kind of a benefit i can take from this conflict because it might be exposing something which is a dysfunctional in the team so i try to make use of it so something like this and then you can bring an example so based on these things you can create a example which is relatable to you your experience and he says you know this is how i have done it ok ok okay i think yeah me a second i think uh you uh cleared uh many of my doubts uh i know these these questions with these questions uh it is actually difficult for a scrum master to actually get into the mind of an interviewer yeah sometimes it might be right you might be right but the person might think that you are wrong yeah so again there is no right and wrong and i think that's a very valid point you have said so one the person who is giving an interview should not also get discouraged if he or she doesn't see uh his opinion getting appreciated by an interviewer because the other person may have a different way of looking at things and they might be working in a different world so what you need to validate here is that whatever you are presenting how it is possibly can get interpreted and and you may want to work in those environments only where you want a particular type of interpretation when you see the different interpretations are happening you may not want to work on those organizations also so stick to your values your type of desired profile but again inspect and adapt on your answers to ensure that is it aligning with the desired profile you know am i really chasing something which i am aspiring for and my answers are also going in that direction then i think if this thing is clear then one can find the good alignment absolutely yesterday yeah yeah good okay yeah so thank you i i yeah i appreciate your time and very thoughtful answers and i have been continuously following you for like six seven years now okay great great nice meeting you here and in case in case after after some time if you get some more ideas we can have such kind of conversation again and probably this conversation also helps others because they also get to know different perspectives really i'd love to i'd love to thank you yeah thank you very much have a good evening [Music] bye [Music]

Channel: iZenBridge Consultancy Pvt Ltd

Views: 19,666

Keywords: scrumandagile, scrummaster, scrumtraining, scruminterviewquestion, agileinterviewquestion, scrummasterinterviewquestion, agilecertification, agiletraining, agileinterview, agilemethodology, projectmanagement, agileworld, situationalbasedscrummasterinterviewquestion, scruminterview, agile

Id: R2Zx61KR7iw

Length: 48min 35sec (2915 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020