I applied through a staffing agency. I interviewed at IHG Hotels and Resorts (Atlanta, GA) in Feb 2017
Interview
A 30 minute phone screen was scheduled. I had previously spent perhaps 30 minutes in conversation with a recruiter who knew the interviewer on a personal basis. 10 minutes were used skipping down my resume. 15 minutes were spent on describing how I would improve the performance of scrum teams. This was posed as an abstract question with no technical fill-in to support any conclusion. The interviewer let it be known at one point that developers were "spending his employers money." There was the implication that IHG was getting nothing for that.
I attempted to gently suggest that many IT issues begin with managers, hoping to elicit the management context in which developers were performing at what was described as 25% of expected output. My interviewer appeared to be Type A in panic mode.
In the last 5 minutes I obtained enough information through a question that indicated to me where performance issues for developers flowed from. A sad situation like so many other IT related stories in America. Just sad.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Scrum teams or pods were described as meeting 5 of 20 a point metric in completing expected work during two week sprints. I do not know if the performance shortfalls were discussed in daily standups. I do not know if there were reflections at the end of a sprint. This scenario was described then the question posed: how would you improve performance? After this being asked the third time, I finally replied "well three strikes and you are out I suppose." Frustrating. But then to key to the performance issues fell in place -- for me. Perhaps the question should have been: tell me how to solve this, then you can go on your way. :-)