Answers and Questions

Giving answers and suggestions is very tempting especially when you join a team temporarily as there is obvious time constraint and normally you are there for a reason. Answers can be easily misunderstood because of established behavior, knowledge and etc. answer

I prefer questions first and typically focus on a couple of areas:

  1. How do you make decisions?
  2. What are your dependencies?
  3. How do you deliver?
  4. What ?

Why these questions?

Question #1 leads to a conversation who decides what to do (business, technical), how critical situations are solved if any, what information or KPIs decisions are based on.

Question #2 leads to understanding roadblocks: technical, organizational, business, knowledge

Question #3 gives an understanding of current team’s process, how the plan, how/if collect feedback, how they deploy, ensure quality and etc.

Question #4 leads to a conversation about end users and what services/products/components are delivered to them.