Yesterday, following a conversation with a friend who is also a client and who wants to “hire agile,” an idea came to me, the “but of course, obviously” kind. I suggested he use the practice sawmill to understand the positioning, interpretation, approach, and agile sensitivity of his applicants.

Implementation

You need to present the “practices” cards to the candidate and give them five minutes (or more) to select six that seem most important to them. Then initiate a conversation around these six practices: if they had to remove three and keep three, which ones and why?

There are no right or wrong answers, but you should quickly see the alignment between your agile thinking and that of the candidate.

Variant

Play a round of the practice sawmill by placing your candidates within your teams.

Feedback & audit

If you have the opportunity to use the practice sawmill for a hiring process, I await your feedback. I just completed an audit and I regret not having thought of it for that context either…

The practice sawmill at Agile Tours

I will be able to facilitate practice sawmills at three Agile Tours:

And this with a major player in French agile marketing: Stéphane Langlois from scopyleft.