Hire Agile Developers

Agile professionals play an important role in product development due to the widespread adoption of Agile practices in software engineering. The ability to quickly iterate and collaborate with other team members makes Agile developers indispensable assets for many teams.

As the industry-wide adoption of the Agile methodology has progressed, demand for Agile developers has increased. A recent study by Facts and Factors found that global demand for Agile development and testing services will reach $30 billion by 2026, up from $20 billion in 2020. According to Radix, many companies embraced Agile principles in nontechnical departments during the COVID-19 pandemic, and this trend is expected to continue, making Agile skills even more relevant for technical and nontechnical professionals alike.

In this hiring guide, we explore the role of Agile in digital product development and the essential skills to look for in an Agile programmer. We also share advice on how to craft a compelling Agile job description and provide some examples of interview questions.

What attributes distinguish quality Agile Developers from others?

Experienced Agile developers possess many skills and much hands-on experience, differentiating themselves from less knowledgeable peers. Before you start looking for your next hire, make sure your understanding of Agile practices is sufficient and that you appreciate why certain skills and attributes may be more important than others.

Technical Skills

A proficient Agile developer needs a strong technical background, including:

• In-depth knowledge of the programming languages and frameworks specific to your software development project.
• Experience with Git, and continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD).
• Familiarity with databases and cloud technologies (e.g., NoSQL or SQL databases, AWS, Azure).
• Facility with testing, automation tools, and quality assurance practices.
• Familiarity with project management solutions (e.g., Jira, Asana, Trello).
• Knowledge of design tools and component libraries (e.g., Zeplin, Figma, Invision).
• Adaptability that enables them to apply their skills using Agile methodologies.

Note: This is not a comprehensive list of Agile developer skills, as the required skill sets vary depending on project requirements and other factors.

Agile Mindset

Agile is more than a set of methodologies, principles, and practices—it is a mindset. Agile developers need to be adaptable, flexible, and knowledgeable enough to pivot to new requirements and fully embrace the iterative nature of Agile. Due to Agile’s collaborative nature, developers need to have a team player attitude. This mindset allows developers to shift priorities on short notice and quickly align with new business goals without a significant impact on their productivity.

Communication and Collaboration

Due to the collaborative nature of their work, there’s little room for miscommunication in Agile teams. Agile programmers need to be good communicators and adept at using various communication and collaboration tools. They understand teamwork is a necessity and need to excel at articulating technical concepts to nontechnical team members. Quality Agile developers often display leadership abilities and have an excellent understanding of business goals and priorities, allowing them to organize projects into sensible development phases to ensure steady progress. Experienced developers can guide less experienced team members or new hires, allowing them to quickly familiarize themselves with the project and start contributing as soon as possible.

Quality and User Experience

Agile is often misconstrued solely as a methodology used to speed up processes, but its iterative and collaborative nature should also ensure quality and a good user experience. Professional developers should be committed to delivering high-quality products on schedule, making sure the product owner and end users are satisfied with the results. This user-centric approach and dedication to quality improves customer satisfaction and can result in lower maintenance costs, as issues can be identified and resolved early on. A good Agile developer cares about the product and user satisfaction, not merely their team objectives and deadlines.

How can you identify the ideal type of Agile Developer for you?

The first step should be to assess your project requirements and define the skills gap. Are you building a new product or updating an old one? Is your team transitioning from the Waterfall model to the Agile model? Are you ready to emphasize time to market over cost-effectiveness? When in doubt, consult your team or seek expert advice to ensure you have a good understanding of what is needed and at what cost.

Requirements may vary a great deal depending on your project, budget, specific technical requirements, and more. A developer with excellent knowledge of the required language and framework might not be a good fit if their Agile experience is limited; the opposite is true as well.

You must ensure the candidate’s technical proficiency is sufficient to close your identified skills gap. An ideal candidate should be able to meet all technical requirements, but in certain cases, this won’t be practical. Adaptable developers are used to mastering new skills, and in many cases, that is not as difficult as it sounds. For example, if they’ve used a particular JavaScript framework for years, mastering a similar JavaScript framework should not pose a challenge.

Differentiating Among Junior, Mid-level, and Expert Talent

Junior Agile developers are typically assigned simple tasks such as fixing bugs or adding minor features, as they lack knowledge and experience and cannot work on demanding tasks without proper supervision. Their Agile skills may be limited, and it may take time for them to onboard and follow established practices. This process can take time and require guidance from more experienced peers or project managers.

Mid-level Agile developers are used to working on Agile teams and adhering to existing processes and principles. However, they may require supervision when working on complex tasks (e.g., adding a major feature or setting up authentication) or on those they’re not familiar with.

Senior Agile developers tend to have a lot of experience, often in leadership positions, and a comprehensive understanding of developer responsibilities in Agile. They can lead and organize teams per Agile principles, delegate tasks, and review performance. They set the team’s direction and oversee project architecture. Their roles as mentors and supervisors can be equally important when you decide to expand the team.

Project requirements and budget constraints will dictate your choice. While senior developers can handle any task, they also command substantially higher pay and are in shorter supply. Junior developers are easier to find and cost less, but require supervision and cannot handle difficult tasks independently. This is why it’s crucial to map out the requirements early on.

Complementary Skills for Agile Developers

Agile methodologies are employed across various types of teams and projects, including nontechnical ones, which means the required skill sets will vary a great deal. However, some complementary skills and experience in relevant roles apply to all Agile professionals:

Product development – Product developers are responsible for the end-to-end development of the digital product. They ensure the product is on schedule, on budget, and aligned with user needs. Agile talent with a product development background should have no trouble collaborating with stakeholders, developers, designers, and testers.

Freelance/remote experience – Outsourced developers with ample freelance experience can be a good choice for Agile teams, as they’re used to operating remotely and relying on Agile practices to manage their work and collaborate with other developers.

Scaling – Some Agile professionals have years of experience working for fast-growing startups and companies. Their ability to recognize potential challenges and prepare the team for growth can be extremely valuable for companies experiencing rapid growth.

Quality assurance/testing – Agile programmers with extensive testing and QA experience can set up and manage testing procedures and automated testing tools, and help deliver a positive user experience free of bugs.

Agile Development Methodologies

More than a dozen Agile development methodologies are in use today, but for brevity, let’s focus on the three most prioritized by hiring managers—Kanban, Scrum, and Lean:

• Kanban boards are used to visualize the software development process, allowing all team members to check the status of different tasks easily and adapt to changes and new tasks quickly. Kanban’s focus on speed and continuous delivery makes it a good choice for teams working on projects with repetitive tasks (imagine a project where deliverables are expected every month or quarter, e.g., adding new downloadable content to mobile games or creating a monthly sale event page for an e-commerce platform).
• Scrum divides the development process into sprints, short cycles that typically last a couple of weeks, with daily stand-up meetings to keep track of progress and note any issues. Scrum is often used for projects requiring frequent and fast changes, allowing the use of incremental builds. Let’s assume a client is working in an emerging field, for example, generative AI. As the competition rolls out new products and updates existing ones, the client is frequently compelled to change their project requirements to account for new competing services.
• Lean product development traces its roots back to Toyota’s production system rather than the Agile manifesto. In the software development realm, Lean focuses on reducing waste, optimizing processes, speeding up delivery, giving team members more discretion, and maintaining quality through CI/CD. As a result, Lean practices can greatly reduce development time, as well as upfront and maintenance costs. Experienced Lean practitioners streamline processes, which is of particular importance on large, demanding projects involving multiple teams and individuals.

A serious candidate must have an excellent understanding of all three methodologies.

How to Write an Agile Developer Job Description for Your Project

A good job description has to be clear and specific. It should describe the role in great detail and include the specific skills and Agile methodologies you seek. A good description will help candidates self-select.

An Agile software developer job description typically encompasses a blend of technical prowess and soft skills, including adaptability, effective communication, and collaborative problem-solving. These skills are essential to manage the product backlog effectively, align with project goals, and contribute to a robust Agile development team.

What are the most important Agile Developer interview questions?

Crafting thoughtful interview questions will enable you to gauge the candidates’ Agile skills and whether they will be a good fit for your project. You can start with basic questions about Agile principles, but try to focus on questions that will help you assess their hands-on experience and familiarity with Agile principles in everyday tasks.

Keep the questions simple and open-ended, if possible, allowing the candidates to share their own Agile experiences. Here are some examples:

Describe the Agile software development life cycle (SDLC) step by step.

This basic inquiry about the Agile software development process can weed out developers without prior Agile experience. Every Agile developer should be able to list the six phases of the Agile SDLC:

• Concept – Stakeholders discuss costs, features, requirements, and time to market before defining the priorities and scope of the project.
• Inception – Stakeholders select and brief the team, secure resources, and establish a development plan. Designers and developers create prototypes to showcase the product and gather feedback.
• Iteration – Developers, designers, testers, and stakeholders incrementally incorporate feedback into the product. The incremental nature of Agile is clearly visible in this stage, as the team creates a minimum viable product (MVP) and iterates until development is complete.
• Testing – Although testing is involved in earlier stages as well (e.g., unit testing), this is when teams get a chance to test the complete product and perform integration testing and system testing.
• Production – Once testing and quality assurance are finalized, the product is ready for deployment.
• Review/Maintenance – The product is released. Users start to provide feedback, report issues, and suggest improvements. The team now focuses on providing support, fixing issues, and adding new features.

You may follow up by asking the candidate to provide examples of specific problems they have solved or approaches they have used in each phase of the SDLC, focusing on areas most relevant to your project needs.

Can you recall a challenging project and explain how you handled it?

Continue the conversation with this question to gauge the candidate’s ability to handle difficult projects and their problem-solving abilities. The candidate should outline the problems they faced, provide a detailed explanation of how they managed to overcome them, and reflect on what they learned. Let’s say a mobile developer joins a team to help update an old iOS app, but management is forced to change the scope of the project and create an entirely new app for iOS and Android, using a cross-platform framework. This candidate would need to explain how they pivoted to meet the new requirements and whether or not they needed to adopt new skills, e.g., learn a new cross-platform framework.

Can you describe your experience with Agile methodologies, starting with Scrum and Kanban?

The candidate should provide detailed and insightful answers, citing examples from past projects. They might outline their responsibilities on the team, how they collaborated with other team members, and improvements they would apply to future projects. You can always ask more specific questions about their experience with Scrum and Kanban, their preferred choice of project management software (e.g., Jira, Asana, Trello), and so on. Evaluate how their proposed approach would work for your team.

Agile Development vs. Waterfall: Can you outline the differences? Have you ever used the Waterfall model?

This question is important if your team is transitioning to Agile or if you still intend to use the Waterfall model for certain tasks and projects. The candidate should outline the key differences between Agile and Waterfall—flexibility and the degree of customer involvement. Unlike Agile, Waterfall follows a linear and sequential approach to software development in which each step must be completed before work on the next one can commence. This results in less flexibility and can make changes difficult to implement. With Agile, changes can be made in each iteration, and some steps can run concurrently. In addition, Waterfall does not allow for the same degree of customer involvement, as it’s not iterative, and customers don’t get a chance to share as much feedback ahead of launch. A strong candidate should be able to compare the two models in detail and explain what types of projects they’re suitable for.

How do you handle disagreements?

Agile programmers collaborate with other teams and individuals, and disagreements are to be expected. What if a sprint fails or a deadline is missed? What would the candidate do to restore confidence and get the team back on track? This question allows you to assess the candidate’s communication and people skills. A seasoned Agile professional should be able to provide examples demonstrating their ability to listen, compromise, and overcome disputes in a professional and productive manner.

How do you prioritize tasks in a sprint? Can you provide an example?

The candidate’s answer should demonstrate an understanding of sprint planning and time management. Their examples should allow you to gauge their decision-making ability. Suppose a front-end team sprint involves deliverables from other teams and professionals, such as database engineers and designers. How would the candidate prioritize tasks to avoid potential delays? Can they organize the sprint in such a way that dependencies on other teams would have a minimal impact on the project timeline?

How do you adapt to changes while working on Agile projects?

Adaptability and continuous improvement are extremely important for Agile professionals. The candidate’s answer should include real-life examples, allowing you to determine whether or not they successfully navigated the changes. Let’s assume a company had to double the size of the team due to a surge in demand, and this was done on short notice. As a result, roles were changed, and deadlines were moved up, all while new team members were onboarded. How did the candidate handle their new responsibilities? What did they need to learn, and how long did it take them to settle in their new role?

Why do companies hire Agile Developers?

Companies hire Agile developers for their deep understanding of Agile methodologies, their experience in dynamic and iterative development, and their ability to adapt to new requirements and circumstances. Agile software development has become near-ubiquitous, and professionals with the right skill sets and Agile mindset are highly sought after.

The challenge lies in finding the right candidate for specific projects. By focusing on relevant skills, assessing each candidate’s Agile experience, and investing a bit of additional effort into your job description and interview questions, you should be able to find the right Agile professional for your team.

The technical content presented in this article was reviewed by Piotr Kuczynski and Phani Kumar.