Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »
Public Council Teleconference: Application Rationalization — Hidden Costs and Smart Decisions
November 17 at 11:00 am US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Honorio Padrón, of The Hackett Group, who will share the drivers for companies to tackle application rationalization and the results of research that define the hidden cost of complexity. Additionally, we will discuss key decision milestones—to start or not, holding the course steady and fulfilling expectations.
Virtual Desktop Cost-Benefit Analysis — Michael Jacobs, Catlin Group
The analysis contained in this presentation measures the cost of everything from the machines and licenses to the infrastructure for virtual vs. traditional desktop environments.
Honor your best senior team members - Apply for the CIO Ones to Watch Award
Get well-earned public recognition for your top up-and-coming team members, your IT organization and your enterprise. Award winners will be announced, publicized and feted in May 2010, great timing to help attract new IT recruits to your company.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »January 27, 2009 — CIO —
The Agile development model has spawned hundreds of books and dozens of conferences. There's a significant track record of successful companies moving to Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), and other lightweight, highly collaborative development models. Agile can fundamentally change the way software development is done, yet the methods for recruiting and hiring developers hasn't changed a bit. One company has adopted a new approach, and they share their methods here.
Most senior programmers and managers grew up in a time when software engineering classes emphasized "complete, consistent, correct" specifications and the ideal developer work environment was a quiet, private office. It was a time when the way to be most effective as a developer was to be left alone.
The management team at tech problem troubleshooting consultants Menlo Innovations needed to hire several programmers in 2004. But traditional interviewing methods, with the traditional résumé and interview process, failed to take into account a developer's aptitude to work in a highly collaborative workspace. Instead, Menlo's founders Richard Sheridan and James Goebel decided to implement an "Extreme Interviewing" event, led by Lisamarie Babik, Agile advocate and Menlo's evangelist. CIO caught up with Babik and Sheridan right before a presentation of their ideas at XP West Michigan to discuss practical implications of hiring for Agile aptitude, and how to add these skills to an existing enterprise.
CIO: Where did the initial idea for the extreme interview come from?
Sheridan: After experimenting with extreme programming for six months in 1999 at Interface Systems, where I was the vice president of development, my boss and CEO Bob Nero asked me to double my team—from 14 to 28 developers—as quickly as possible. I knew that traditional interviewing practices wouldn't work. My concern was that it would be impossible to describe what paired programming in an open and collaborative environment would feel like. My fear was that we would successfully hire 14 more people who would quickly learn to hate the new environment. I had to find a different way.
Babik: We used it for the first time at Menlo in April 2004. We were sitting around talking about how we needed to hire some folks for a new project we were starting. Rich offhandedly said, "You know, what we need is an Extreme Interview." I had heard Rich talk about it in passing, but didn't really know the nitty-gritty details. I was about to find out.
CIO: What does the interview entail? How is it different than a traditional interview?
Babik: The interview is more of an audition than a traditional interview. Participants are called together in a large group; each is paired with another participant who is interviewing for the same position and an observer who is a current Menlo team member. During the course of the interview, candidates are paired with three partners and assigned three problem-solving tasks.
What they are told, however, is that we are not particularly interested in the outcome of the problem solving. Rather, what we're looking for is good "kindergarten skills." In particular we want participants to "make their partner look good."