Enterprise Agile Coach Interview Preparation
How to approach and answer questions from a CIO?
👋 Hello, I’m Vibhor, and welcome to the 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of my weekly Training Series powered by Winning Strategy. Every week, I answer two reader questions and publish 2 posts about Agile Products, Role-Based Skills, and anything else that you need answered about your Career Growth. You can send me your questions here.
On to this week’s question.
Q: I have been an Agile Coach for 5 years and am preparing to apply for the position of Enterprise Agile Coach for a large financial firm. The firm is undergoing Agile Transformation and is hiring Agile Coaches to help with that initiative. My last interview will be with the company's CIO, and I was hoping you could give me some pointers regarding what to expect and how to approach the interview.
Thank you for the question.
First of all, congratulations on the move.
I have a reference document that I have prepared for such interviews, and I refer to it whenever I am asked to plan interviews for Agile Transformation coaches. However, that document also has other unrelated stuff, so I will only share the part relevant to your question here.
When interviewing with executives, remember they will not judge you on Agile. They are not interested in Agile's internal workings.
They are interested in the overall impact of Agile Transformation on the rest of the organization.
They want to understand:
How will this transformation affect their bottom line?
What are the risks involved?
How will it impact their existing processes and systems?
What is the timeline for seeing tangible results?
How will it affect their competitive position in the market?
And!
How will you help with all of that?
They are looking for someone who can speak their language – the language of:
business outcomes,
risk management, and
strategic advantage
Your role in the interview is to demonstrate that you understand their perspective and can translate Agile Principles into Business Value.
For them, you're not just an Agile Coach!
You're a “business partner” who will help with Agile Transformation.
Alright!
The document explains and answers 14 questions below:
Why do we need to explore Agile?
Why are there so many definitions of Agile? What is the right one?
Why is failing fast such a great thing?
What is the impact of Agile on quality?
What has been the regulatory experience for Agile Shops? What is the regulators’ POV vs the enterprise's POV?
We heard there is no need for business cases for Agile — is this true? If there is no longer the traditional business case, what’s the replacement?