I just spoke to a friend who had applied a few weeks ago for a leadership role requiring experience with agile development methodologies. She submitted a resume and also spoke to the recruiter. In the next step she was then asked to do some online tests that would check for her personality and intelligence.

Based on the test results she was told that she was no longer considered included in the remaining candidates. The way I know her the results that she had delivered in her work have always been outstanding. Her experience with agile methodologies is fantastic.

After I heard this story I was wondering: If you want to fill a leadership role in software engineering which of the following criteria is a better indicator for a good fit:

1. Personality tests without even speaking to the candidate?
2. Concrete results over many years in various roles and various industries supported by data such as shipped product, improved quality, more features, shorter release cycles, increased customer base, lower development costs?

Of course, I am not an expert in personality tests, so I am probably completely ignorant of the value of such tests. In my own recruiting process I have never used personality tests other than talking to the candidate myself and having several of my team members talking to the candidate. This approach has always worked.

Agile approaches are very much about adapting and using short increments when dealing with uncertainty. Starting a new company comes with a lot of uncertainty. Agile principles can help reducing risk and improving the odds of success.

Eric Ries is the inventor/initiator of the “Lean Startup” movement. His concept is to incrementally develop your customers and your business. By running experiments, some people also call them spikes, you learn a lot about the business idea you are working on. By using small increments you avoid spending months or years building a product or offering a service that in the end is fantastic but nobody is willing to spend money on. Eric Ries helps you de-risk your business idea.

A complementary technique is customer development a term coined by Steve Blank. While product development important (your product can also be a service) it is equally important to also develop your customer base. In his book “Four Steps to the Epiphany” he describes this process in details. His book is a work book, so be prepared that you will have to do homework.

Why am I mentioning these two? The work of both of them is based on agile principles. Therefore if you are considering to test one of your business idea then the work of these two authors should be part of your preparation. And both are not limited to new companies. If you are tasked to build that brand-new product in your company then you are basically running a start-up. The only difference is that you run it in the context of an existing company, which can be beneficial (e.g. financial backup) or a hindrance (e.g. bureaucracy).

If you find yourself in a project where you need to deliver and maintain a large number of customized versions of an otherwise standard product you may want to consider designing your processes in support of mass customization.
There are a number of prerequisites that you’ll need to have in place. For one you need a base product that you want to customize. That base product needs a mechanism in place that allows customizing it. For example you could design it so it supports plug-ins.
Next you need a fully automated process for building the base product plus all plug-ins. Ideally you have a continuous integration solution and an extensive automated and virtualize test environment. The latter allows automatic instantiation of different target environments and testing of various product configurations in those environments.
One option for mass customization is then to create a custom package for each individual customer, e.g. by creating an installer containing the base product and plug-ins for just that customer. While the installer might be a good option for a shrink-wrapped product, continuous deployment in a hosted environment will typically benefit from a different approach. For example instead of packaging different installers, you might have a different deployment for each customer. Only the plug-ins for that particular customer would be included to be deployed in their environment.
You can drive this one step further, for example by providing a web site where your customers can select the base product and the plug-ins they want. If they are self-hosted they would receive the custom installer. If they are hosted their deployment in the hosting environment would be maintained accordingly. This web site could include integration with payments systems or with your internal accounting system, e.g. to check whether a maintenance payment was received.
Alternatively instead of having custom installers or custom deployments, the availability of plug-ins can also be controlled through the use of licensing in the deployed product. All plug-ins are installed but only the ones that were licensed are loaded and available.
Of course there are number of other factors that must be considered, e.g. how to design the process and the product so it can be upgraded without downtime. Once you have this in place, though, you will enjoy a scalable solution that allows mass customization.