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Information Technology Strategy Team

Diagnostic Study - Interview Questions

Interview Questions

This section contains the interview questions to ask to the Directors. When the text is in italics, it means it is only meant for the Interviewer, not the Interviewee. Examples include follow up questions (depending on answers) or probing questions (if the Interviewee has difficulty answering).

Section 1 – Introduction/team information

Themes: purpose, leadership and reward

  1. What is the size of your team (employees and consultants)? Approximate number of filled vs. empty organizational positions?
  2. What functions does your team perform (you may select more than one in the list)
    1. Architecture
    2. IT management
    3. IT change
    4. IT Operations
    5. Quality, Security and Compliance
    6. Analytics and Information Management
  3. Is your team involved in Benefits Delivery Modernization (BDM)? If so, what is your involvement?

Section 2 - Director’s perspective

Themes: daily work, atmosphere and collaboration

  1. What does a good day look like (in the context of your working day)?

  2. What does a bad day look like (in the context of your working day)?

  3. What is the most common source of anxiety (i.e., fear of the future, in the context of your working day)? If more guidance is required, prompt with this question:

    • If no anxiety, is there something that deeply annoys you?

  4. As a director, are you empowered to make decisions to do your work? If yes, has this always been the case or have you done things to build trust with senior management? If no, what is preventing you from being empowered? If more guidance is required (e.g. what types of decision) use these examples:

    • Fully empowered means you do not have to check with someone else (i.e. no endorsements from outside your team is required)
    • Can you do technical changes to a system
    • Can you make a change in your budget
    • Can you hire someone
    • Can you chose a technical stack or software
    • Can you change a process internal within your team

  5. Do you have clear direction on organizational plans and priorities? How well is your work aligned to them?

Section 3 - Director team members’ perspective (all subordinates)

Themes: barriers, motivation and change

  1. Now, thinking about your team, is there anything preventing them from doing their best work? If more guidance is required, say “For example, does your team “:
    • not have the right tools
    • not have the right information (e.g. waiting for another team’s answer)
    • not have enough time during the day
    • not have enough autonomy to make decisions on their own
    • needs training on a particular subject or technology
    • has to deal with too much unplanned work
    • has to deal with too much administrative work

  2. Which communities does your team participate in or follow (e.g., Dev CoP, PM CoP, TBS working groups), if any?

  3. Are you having challenges retaining talented employees in your team? If no, what is helping you retain talent? If yes, what are you observing to be the biggest impediments?

  4. Does your team have enough time to do meaningful work? What motivates your employees and keeps them engaged?

  5. Using percentages, how much of your (team’s) time is spent on:
Activity Management
(e.g. IT-4/5, AS-7/8)		 Working Level
(e.g. IT-1 to 3, AS-1 to 6)

Administrative work

(Timesheet reporting, filling out forms, general miscellaneous admin)

Reporting

(Preparing and reporting up the management chain)
Your core function
(Work related directly to your core mandate)
total 100% 100%

Is CATS (ESDC’s time tracking system) a good reflection of the work that your team does? If not, why not?

Section 4 - Director team members’ perspective of other IITB teams

Themes: resistance, workload and communication

  1. Now thinking about your team dealing with other IITB teams… do you receive the level of service from other teams that you need in order to deliver on your mandate? If not, how does this affect your team?

  2. Regarding IITB as a whole, how would you rate the following six statements?

From Strongly disagree (=1) to Neither agree nor disagree (=4) to strongly agree (=7) if an answer is 1 or 2, prompt the interviewee “Why do you think that is?”

Statement 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
In IITB, information is actively shared between teams
In IITB, employees are not afraid to deliver bad news or news about failure
In IITB, responsibilities are shared
(e.g., quality, availability, reliability, accessibility and security are everyone's job)

In IITB, cross-functional collaboration is encouraged and rewarded

(e.g.: co-locating team members, using real-time chat tools, seeking to understand someone else’s work that you don’t understand or that frustrates you)
In IITB, failure causes inquiry (e.g., teams hold blameless post-mortems)
In IITB, new ideas are generally welcomed

Note to interviewer: This is taken from DevOps Research Assessment (DORA) that re-uses Dr. Ron Westrum’s research on organization topology. If the interviewee has difficulty in answering, use the following explanations:

  1. Regards cooperation: Are cross-functional teams created with representatives from each functional area (business analyst, developers, quality engineers, ops, security, etc.)? Is there good cooperation within the team?

  2. Regards messenger: Are messengers shot? Are they neglected? Or are they trained? Can people bring us bad news so we can make things better? By removing blame, you remove fear; and by removing fear, you enable teams to surface problems and solve them more effectively

  3. Regards sharing risks: Are responsibilities avoided? Do teams limit their responsibilities to the minimum? Are responsibilities shared across teams? E.g. do developers share responsibility for maintaining their code in production? The more eyes on the software delivery process, the more you’ll avoid errors in process or planning. Automation also reduces risk, and with the right tool choice, can enable collaboration

  4. Regards encouraging bridging: This is different than cooperation. Are there evidence that teams break down siloes in addition to cross-functional teams? E.g. co-locating ops with the dev team; including ops in planning throughout the software delivery lifecycle; and implementing ChatOps. Another tip is to identify someone in the organization whose work you don’t understand (or whose work frustrates you, like procurement) and invite them to coffee or lunch. Informal discussions help foster better communication, and you may understand why they do what they do—and you can come up with creative solutions together.

  5. Regards handling of failure: When a failure happens, do we find a scapegoat to blame it on? Do we punish the culprit? Or do we hold blameless post-mortems and look to learn from it?

  6. Regards novelty: Does the organization crush any experimentation efforts? Does it believe it leads to problems? Or does it support their implementation? We are looking to find out if there are evidence that employees are given freedom to explore new ideas. Such as given time each week for experimentation, host internal hack days or mini-conferences to share ideas and collaborate, encourage and reward improvements in process and ideas that help foster collaboration.

Section 5 – Common Hybrid Work Model

Themes: transition, adaptability and change

  1. What is the general sentiment among your team members regarding the recent Common Hybrid Work Model (commonly referred to as RTO) guidance? Will there be any impact to how your teams operate?

  2. How do you intend to implement the Common Hybrid Work Model for team members that are located across the country (coordinated office days etc.)?

Section 6 – Conclusion/reflection

Themes: reflection, influence and outcome

  1. If you were a senior decision-maker at ESDC, what would you change?

  2. In the last 12 months, how would you describe changes to the following aspects related to working in IITB? Have there been any initiatives or projects raised that you’re aware of to address these? Or general commentary on the below subjects. These were some of the most raised topics during the first edition of the diagnostic study:
    • Unclear mandates, responsibilities, and shifting priorities.
    • Cumbersome governance processes affecting procurement, training, etc.
    • Difficulties in hiring - slow and convoluted processes, redundant steps. Understaffed teams.
    • Mental health of executives and their teams.
  3. Based on our discussion today, is there anything else you would like to add before we finish?

Thank you for taking the time to participate in the interview. We look forward to speaking with you. Please let us know if we can provide any additional information.

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